Thomas Pringle (Donegal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Bill seeks to establish Ireland’s membership as a non-regional applicant country to the regional multilateral development finance institution, known as the African Development Bank. The bank established in the 1960s declares its aim to be to contribute to the economic development and social progress of African countries. The African Development Bank declares its central mission to be helping to reduce poverty, improve living conditions and mobilise resources for the continent’s economic and social development.

Ireland’s status as an ex-colony with a long history of missionary work fosters a natural relationship between this country and African states. We have a long tradition of offering strong support in programme countries in Africa as part of our overseas development budget. The Government is very open on its policy objective in joining the bank which is to reinforce Ireland’s political, development, economic, trade and cultural relationships.

While development and social progress is the motto from the bank and Ireland’s interests are spread out over trade and cultural relationships, unfortunately significant failings exist in the operation of the African Development Bank. I believe the membership of developed nations in the bank is mainly to blame for these shortcomings. The bank’s ownership structure consists of African and non-African countries. However, over time a situation has developed in which only 11 African countries feature among the top 20 of the bank’s most powerful member countries. Between them, the 11 countries account for only around 40% of the vote.

Ireland’s subscription for membership of the bank will be €65.14 million to be encashed in up to eight annual instalments of approximately €8 million. This would notionally place Ireland 34th of 79 members with a shareholding of 0.799%. Ireland will have a higher percentage share in the African Development Bank than Tanzania, Mauritius, Madagascar and Mozambique. This level of inequality is a huge concern for the African nations involved. How can a small western developed country like Ireland with a population of only 5 million have more voting rights in an international bank than, for example, Tanzania which has a population of 57.3 million, Madagascar which has a population of 25.5 million or Mozambique which has a population of 29.6 million?

The African Development Bank has failed to retain significant voting power within the region because it is designed and modelled on other international banks set up by developed nations such as the World Bank. These banks are beacons for the global neoliberal agenda, the exact cause of persistent economic poverty in African states. They have promoted a system of trade injustices robbing countries of funds which are rightfully theirs.

Instead of being free to follow economic policies that best suit them, countries in southern Africa are being put under enormous pressure to open up their markets and expose their producers to unfair competition. Trade rules and agreements also often allow big business to profit at the expense of people and the environment. Will Ireland's involvement in the African Development Bank put a stop to that? Unfortunately, I doubt it.

Let us not forget that most development projects in Africa are still World Bank-led, with the African Development Bank only occasionally playing a supporting or facilitation role. African members of the bank are demoted to positions of subservience to richer developed nations and their economic priorities - no doubt neoliberal in nature.

The EU engages in harmful trade practices. According to one analysis, of the 7,000 harmful trade measures implemented by countries across the globe since 2009, more than half have come from the EU. The bank itself has made it clear that the continent’s nations bore the brunt of measures including export taxes, tariff and non-tariff barriers and state aid.

Ireland should be pushing for more democratic change and transparency as part of its membership because as it stands the model the African Development Bank has copied means that development needs are not prioritised based on the fundamental needs of its member countries. The decision-making process is thereby compromised and we are feeding into this neoliberal machine by seeking membership without calling for a change in its governance structure. For effective agenda setting, the bank must revisit its ownership and voting structure with the required acceptance of responsibility this would entail.

Africa cannot afford to replicate neoliberal institutions like the World Bank or maintain their hegemonic existence in nation states. Despite strong economic growth in the past decade, 45.1% of the population of African countries represented in the bank still live in extreme poverty, subsisting on less than $1.90 a day.

Representatives of various African civil society groups met in Dakar from 10 to 12 May 2009, shadowing the 44th annual assembly of the African Development Bank. At this meeting, the performance of the African Development Bank in a number of countries and the role the bank has played in mobilising resources for development on the continent was assessed as was the bank’s relationship with civil society, which is vital for the promotion of the welfare of people in member states as is the stated mission of the bank.

However, these civil society groups remarked on how the bank has drifted away from its original message of welfare of the African people and the development of the continent. In their view the bank had become nothing more than a clone of the international financial institutions. Profitability had replaced meeting the basic needs of the population as the main criterion for project selection. The bank has submitted to the neoliberal agenda by subscribing to the tenets of market fundamentalism. The African Development Bank has further served to promote the very liberalisation and privatisation policies that have exacerbated the economic and social crisis on the continent. The group also felt that the bank had not come up with a single noteworthy initiative of its own to resolve the African debt crisis and has instead merely adopted the proposals put forward by the World Bank and the IMF.

The incorporation of non-African countries has provided these new players a level of unprecedented influence that is not reflective of their investment in the African Development Bank. Many have power of veto over the orientation and the policies of the bank making it a completely undemocratic institution, serving the interests of the global elite.

It has been documented that the African Development Bank does not engage in true dialogue with civil society, preferring to engage in policies that avoid any critique by African citizens.

Civil society groups have called for the following to bring about greater engagement with civil society in its policies and decision-making: first, to establish an information-sharing policy; second, to re-establish an independent environmental assessment mechanism; and third, to consider the long-term financial needs of African countries within the context of sustainable development.

There is a need for Africa-relevant development strategies. The bank's coming of age after 50 years must reflect in its engaged understudy of the region’s problems, development of appropriate strategies and readiness to offer technical support to implement them. Collaboration with experts across African universities is a prudent way of ensuring this. Scholars who study their environment from within are best placed to point to relevant and effective solutions.

Alongside trade justice, will Irish representatives in the bank promote the principle of climate justice? Our economic practices over the past century have caused this global phenomenon and yet it will be the poorest populations paying the highest price. To what extent will funds be used to develop defences for communities most exposed to climate change and will we do our part leading by example on climate change mitigation? Crises due to drought in Africa is certainly not a new phenomenon. However, with climate change, the frequency and intensity has risen sharply over the past decade. Rainfall is becoming increasingly unreliable. As a result, crops fail, animals die, livelihoods are lost and people have no food to feed their families. Many are forced to flee to the cities where they live in slums in appalling conditions. Africa, the poorest and least developed of the world’s regions, will find it particularly difficult to adjust without assistance from developed nations. Although sub-Saharan Africa produces less than 4% of the world’s greenhouse gases, scientists predict with very high confidence that the region’s diverse climates and ecological systems have already been altered by global warming and will undergo further damage in the years ahead. A third of Africa’s people already live in drought-prone regions and climate changes could put the lives and livelihoods of an additional 75 million to 250 million people at risk by the end of the next decade. Flood-prone areas in southern Africa, on the other hand, are likely to become wetter as rainfall patterns shift, causing floods to become more frequent and severe and diverting resources from development to emergency relief. Ireland must address the issue of climate justice on global platforms like African Development Bank and use its political and economic leverage to encourage alternative economic models suited to African nation states and their populations' needs. It must encourage the opening up of the bank towards more democratic and transparent governance structures and decision-making processes with central involvement from civil society. Unfortunately, I do not think we will do that.

See this speech in context