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Oxfam Lifts Lid On Africa's Military Folly

Business Day (Johannesburg)
NEWS
June 23, 2004
Posted to the web June 23, 2004

By Siseko Njobeni , Trade And Industry Correspondent
Johannesburg
Aid group shows how continent's taste for costly arms impoverishes its people
AFRICAN governments' taste for expensive weapons is impoverishing the
continent's people, says a report on the effect of arms purchases on
development.
Against the backdrop of rising poverty and falling life expectancy,
international aid organisation Oxfam says African governments continue to
stockpile arms.
In its latest report, titled Guns or Growth, Oxfam says several African
countries are struggling to meet the United Nations (UN) Millennium Development
Goals, with some more than likely to miss the 2015 targets in key areas.
For instance, in 2001 Tanzania bought a 40m Watchman radar system with military
applications from the UK, and many observers, including the World Bank,
believed that the purchase was too expensive.
Oxfam says Tanzania is lagging in its development commitments, and is unlikely
to meet targets on hunger, education, reproductive health and infant mortality.
The number of people living in poverty in sub-Saharan Africa is expected to
rise from 315-million in 1999 to 404-million by 2015. Life expectancy in the
region has declined from 50 years in 1990 to 46 years today. The region has,
however, seen a 47% increase in military expenditure between 1995 and 2001.
The report also deals with the role of the five permanent members of the UN
Security Council the US, UK, Russia, France and China which supply 90% of all
arms sold to Africa, Latin America, Asia and the Middle East.
The US exports 41% of new weapons to these countries, followed by the UK with
19,5% and Russia with 17,1%.
France and China account for 7,6% and 4,7% respectively.
The report says exporters have a responsibility to ensure that the arms they
sell do not threaten development in the buyer country.
The controversy following Tanzania's purchase of the radar system saw the UK
begin considering the sustainable development conditions of potential
customers. Bulgaria, Sweden and the Netherlands do the same.
The report argues that excessive arms purchases drain the social and economic
resources of developing countries.
Oxfam says that in 2002 Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East
accounted for 66,7% of the value of all arms deliveries worldwide. The
purchases totalled about 17bn.
The World Bank argues that big military spending has contributed to the debt
woes of many developing countries by reducing public and private investment, by
diverting funds and personnel from civilian research and development and by
retarding economic growth.
Several African countries, including SA, spent more on arms than on key
development challenges such as education, health and the fight against AIDS.
"Developing country governments continue regularly to commit huge proportions
of meagre national budgets to the military," Oxfam says.
Last year the UN Development Programme's human development report showed that
battle-scarred and poor Ethiopia, Eritrea and Sudan spent more on their armed
forces than on health and education combined.
The arms budgets of Ecuador, Nigeria, Guinea-Bissau, Rwanda, Angola and Sierra
Leone were bigger than their health or education budgets.
The report does not spare criticism of SA's $6bn arms purchase from suppliers
in Germany, France, Sweden and the UK.
Oxfam says SA needs to spend less on arms and more on health, housing, water,
AIDS and education. Stopping short of accusing government of skewed priorities,
the report says: "The $6bn could have bought treatment with combination therapy
for all 5-million AIDS sufferers for two years."
The report is also critical of the tendency to justify arms expenditure on the
basis of future offsets, saying that "experience has shown that the full
promised benefits rarely materialise".
SA's government argued when its arms deal was concluded that it would create
thousands of jobs.
But Oxfam says that offsets are hard to monitor, and that it is "extremely"
unlikely many jobs will materialise.
"An equivalent investment by SA, in, for example, water supplies would have
provided far more employment and other practical benefits for the poorest
strata of the population," the report says.

   

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