“In support of existing IMF and World Bank structural adjustment programs, both the Cotonou Agreement and AGOA will pressure African countries to continue implementation of structural adjustment policies, while further dividing them and undermining Africa's efforts at regional integration.”

Rick Rowden, An Overview of the Increased Coordination of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, and World Trade Organization (WTO) Trade Liberalization Policies, 2001

In what would prove to be a moment of ignominy, in November 2002, in Brussels, a substantial number of African states would refuse to succumb to the whims of European parliamentarian Glennys Kinnock who had refused to accept the presence of officials from Zimbabwe for the Fifth ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly in Brussels[1]. As serious as human rights abuses in Zimbabwe are, it falls beyond the scope of this paper. Furthermore, when compared to that of the tortuous nature of the ACP-EU discussions around the Cotonou Agreement, it looks like a storm in a teacup.

The Cotonou Agreement is a new treaty that aspires to govern “a substantial part of the relations between the world’s biggest market and almost half the countries on the planet for more than twenty years.[2]” What exactly its  ramifications will be for African, along with other (i.e. Caribbean and Pacific) ACP countries has yet to be seen.  However, some of its most likely implications can already be identified. 

The objective of this paper is to highlight, in brief, the origins of the ACP-EU agreement under Lomé; and its future with Cotonou. More specfically, I will present the Cotonou Agreement as a neo-liberal recipe of the European Commission for the African continent, with the WTO as a cooks. Evidently, then, a rejection of neo-liberal orthodoxy is at the heart of this paper. In the context of African regionalism, this is especially dire for two reasons.

First of all, whereas regional integration is one of the pillars upon which the agreement will operate, African regional organisations such as the Economic Committee West African States  (ECOWAS) are woefully unprepared for the astronomical and arduous task that lies ahead in its negotiations regarding the Cotonou Agreement.[3]

Secondly, there is no like-minded vision within the ECOWAS countries on how to approach the behemoth agenda of the WTO. Furthermore, there are serious impediments to the prospect of integrating the region into the global economy through Cotonou. For one thing, this presupposes a measure of stability - not only political, but also economic -- that is fundamentally lacking in the region.

In the quest for global trade liberalisation, no actor other than the United States, has exhibited as much audacity as the European Union. In my opinion, it is displaying the quintessential qualities of what I described elsewhere as the ‘New Crusader’[4].

According to the EU’s official pamphlet, Cotonou, along with the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs), are the “EU’s global response to the needs of the ACP Group.”[6] Yet, already, what we have seen is that the EU countries are not playing much of a role in the decision of this North-South partnership; instead the European Commission is taking the lead[7]-and it is one that is familiar with many of the ACP countries. It involves one of promoting an increasing liberalisation, under the guise of fostering poverty eradication and sustainable development. The EU also claims that this putative relationship will assist in fostering regional integration in the ACP countries. This claim is hardly new: what I would call IFIs most-notorious[8] have claimed to be operating under the pretence of poverty eradication for decades.

Nonetheless, it bears reminding that Cotonou is new and, as rightly pointed out by Jeune Afrique’s Christian D’Alayer, the actual agreement is almost ten centimetres thick. This means that there is a lot of discussion, wheeling and dealing to thrash over not just for the EU negotiators, but also ACP countries. For D’Alayer, what remains most attractive about this agreement will be the commercial aspect, which will be more important than anything else.[9]

This contention itself speaks volumes about his perception of the EU towards the ACP economies. Africa is, after all, a blip on the international trade statistics, comprising only two percent of world trade. It is therefore curious as to why the EU is so interested in pursuing this so-called partnership when for 25 years, partnership with the EU has not resulted in a reduction of either poverty, or a reduction in the status of developing country economies into least developed countries. Instead, it has witnessed a significant and sharp decline in overseas development assistance (ODA)[10]. All this has happened despite the number of UN-sponsored conferences that have aimed to help push the agenda of the developing world into mainstream development thinking-with little success.[11]

Also, what one has seen has been the success of a neo-liberal doctrine comprising market fundamentalism that has served to aggravate and exacerbate the problems of many of the ACP economies.  According to Henri-Bernard Solignac Lecomte, a free-trade area (FTA) is a reciprocal preferential trade agreement, under which each party undertakes to abolish restrictions on imports from the other party, thus constituting positive discrimination towards one or several WTO members.[12] The EU is very keen to negotiate with the ACP group through the aforementioned EPAs. It is potentially a significant gain because, first and foremost, it will provide European multinationals an ample market within which to operate, inadvertently consigning the responsibility of erstwhile development by way of the former ACP-EU cooperation agreement under Lomé aside.

If the EU truly were concerned about poverty eradication, as it so claims under Cotonou, it would ensure, first, that astronomical debt servicing is cancelled. As Dr. Rugumama argues, “the arguments for debt cancellation are disarmingly straightforward: debt repayment for poor countries is economically exhausting as it continues to block future development; repayment is politically destablizing as it threatens social harmony; and it is ethically unacceptable as it hurts the poorest of the poor[13].” Secondly, impact assessments of EPAs on development[14] would be conducted. So far, it has been found wanting-and no less than by the Secretary-General of the ACP Secretariat himself.

In a statement delivered to the European Parliament’s Commission for Development Co-operation, in March 19 2003, on the negotiations of EPAs, Mr.Jean-Robert Goulongana argued that as far as the ACP is concerned “the EPAs must not consist of mere free trade agreements but {should} aim mainly at the achievement of sustainable development, elimination of poverty in the ACP states, and their progressive and harmonious integration into the global economy.”[15] He maintains that the long and short of it is that “EPAs must be development-oriented by contributing notably to sustained economic growth, an increase in the production and supply capacity of the ACP countries…as well as the removal of the physical and other constraints to the development of trade.”[16]

Finally, there is nothing to indicate, as Henri-Bernard Lecomte has pointed out, that EPAs and regional integration will be compatible.[17] EPAs, he argues, may actually make trade relations {between} ACP more complicated, and hinder regional integration.[18]

This would be a serious blow to an organisation like ECOWAS that has pitched itself as one of the first to engage in regional EPAs for later in 2003[19].  In a document that I obtained from the ACP Secretariat[20], it was indicated that ECOWAS and CEMAC had put themselves forward as two of the panoply of regional organisations in Africa that were ready to negotiate Regional EPAs with the EU[21]. Although, according this document, their stance was unequivocally candid -- “current WTO rules are inherently unfavourable to the development needs of the ACP states, as testified by the outcome of the Ministerial Conference at Doha”[22] -- , Michael Davenport maintains that it will be “relatively easy to agree the terms of the EPA-at least on the trade side-since access to the EU market is already established for the LDCs and for the non-LDCs by far the most important export good is tariff-free oil.”[23] In the same vein, when we take a look at the document again, we see that not surprisingly, out of three issues that were promulgated as important for the ACP group[24], market access is critical.

At the heart of the debate on the EPAs is not only the issue of market access, by way of the so-called Everything But Arms (EBA) initiative[25], which stands to benefit LDCs at the expense of developing countries, but also the very important issue of Article XXIV[26]. This, according to Henri-Bernard, is “the WTO’s tool to unmask ‘marriages of convenience’”[27] What this means is that “the restrictions [the article] posed on the application of regional agreements are supposed to ensure that they are not used as instruments of everyday trade policy, but that they reflect a strong political will for integration on the part of the contracting parties.”[28] What article XXIV specifically does provide is a legal basis upon which the ACP-EU agreement can be negotiated in the framework of the WTO. However, given the fact that the EU is interested in pursuing the EPAs, it begs the question of where the rhetoric of development fits in what is theoretically going to be a free trade area.

Henri-Bernard maintains that this is because “while the multilateral system is based on rules applicable to all members, an FTA rests on a power relationship that permits the dominant partner, especially within a preferential North-South agreement, to influence the process of liberalisation of the other party as a function of its own interests.”[29] Most African countries consequently find themselves in a huge impasse whereby they are compelled to negotiate with the EU, at the risk of undermining their regional integration. ECOWAS, especially, is a serious case in point, with seven designated Least Developed Countries (LDCs) among its membership of sixteen.

A case in point is Burkina Faso which is an LDC as well as a member of WAEMU, a customs union, and ECOWAS. It has the choice of keeping non-reciprocal preferences, or going for an EPA between the EU and WAEMU. As Henri Bernard puts it, “it is up to these countries to look at either of the available options, based on their perceptions of the risks and opportunities associated with…them.”[30] Ultimately, Burkina Faso will lose out, in trade terms, finding that it will cost it dearly to opt for an EPA, which would yield very little, or worse, where it would have to open its market with very little hope of obtaining concessions from the EU in return. Conversely, if it were to stay an LDC, there would be no guarantee that the benefit it would obtain from the so-called EBA initiative would yield sufficient economic gain for it.[31] .That remains the case for Burkina Faso, but what about a country like either Ghana, or Nigeria, two non-LDCs from the ECOWAS region?

If we take the case of, say, Ghana, we are confronted with an illustration of the potential divisions inherent in the Cotonou Agreement. Ghana may not be oil-rich like its bigger neighbour, Nigeria, but it is neither tied by other allegiances with other regional organisations either. It remains an ECOWAS country. However, with regard to the world market, it is an ACP country, as well as a rapidly developing West African country in its own right. Given that it is not an LDC means that it cannot enjoy preferential market access to the EU. Will this, therefore, prompt Ghana to negotiate a separate deal-as foreseen in the Cotonou Agreement[32]-- with the EU at the expense of its spearheading attempts in fostering regional integration in ECOWAS? Or would it prefer, along the way, to call itself an LDC (as it has fully qualified for an LDC status already)[33] so as to benefit from favourable market access?

It is such questions that have been unwittingly (or wittingly?) thrown up by the EU’s multi-pronged approach. In my opinion, it unequivocally serves to illustrate a neo-liberal agenda the EU has cooked up. It is, frankly, aimed to cause a slow and sure fragmentation of the regional organisation that is ECOWAS as many more of the countries seek to either enjoy their preferential market access by way of EBA, and otherwise, rather than putting minds together at the regional level and working with the EU en bloc, like ASEAN aspires to do.

Having said that, one of the more interesting aspects of the Cotonou agreement that lends credence to the neo-realist theory is the use of the language the EU employs to describe the raison d’être of the putative partnership. For example, according to outgoing director-general of development, Philip Lowe, interviewed in Jeune L’Afrique/L’Intelligent, one of the reasons why the EU has embarked on this ambitious project has been to “boost trade between ACP countries in the same region and to lay the groundwork for competitive agriculture and industry by offering economic partnership agreements.

The long-term objective is to set up, he maintains, “a veritable regional market that can attract foreign investments.”[34] According to Dr.Roberto Savio, director-general of the Inter Press Service, the word competition is but one of many words, and values, that globalization has brought to the international system[35]. Other attendant monikers include “modernization”, and “free market”-two other words that the EU has enshrined and ensconced within the Cotonou Agreement. Go through any publication on the ACP-EU agreement, and you will uncover the usual rhetoric alluding to the idea that Cotonou will aim to increase competition between ACP economies and increase potential of investment-as if that only mattered!

Small wonder, therefore, that the EU has attracted a lot of critics who equally believe that the EU’s partnership with the ACP is nothing more than a cosmetic exercise to show continued solidarity for a project that for a quarter of a century, has yielded very little. According to the Brussels-based European Research Office, (ERO) “questions arise as to whether EPAs, in and of themselves, are likely to provide a stimulus to investment in ACP economies, many of which are either remote from major markets, have poor transport infrastructure…face serious human resource constraints…to investment.”[36] The ERO equally questions the Commission’s claims on investment, arguing: “the Commission assumes that new investment flows will take place into ACP economies, which will enhance their international competitiveness. However, such new investment flows are by no means a certainty. Indeed, it is far from apparent in what products and sectors individual ACP countries would be first choice investment locations to serve EU markets.”[37]

Consequently, this emphasis on investment lends credence to how crystal-clear it has become to so-called globaphobes that globalisation has seriously skewed development against the favour of ACP economies, but even more so when it comes to investment. The Commission, however, does not think this is the case. In July 2002, European Commission official Inge Feustel[38], at the Commission’s regular DG Trade Civil Society Dialogue, argued that Economic Partnership Agreements will trigger investment: “task of investment… is private-sector led, no public sector, which should only provide framework, or facilitate climate conducive to private sector investment.” He maintained that the “public sector should create enabling framework for EPAs, ultimately open[ing] ACP economies up to European investors.”[39]

Whilst this may be the case, it therefore beggars belief that one of the tenets of this ACP-EU Cotonou Agreement should be an increase in competition, and investment. Youssof Cissé is one of those who do not understand the EU’s insistence on investment as a conduit for development. He argues that commercial and investment policies do not and will not favour ACP economies. He maintains that these economies are “marginalised by globalisation while the system that governs international trade and investment…has been institutionalised within the WTO does not offer the ACP countries genuine access to the world markets.”[40]

According to Dr.Severine M Rugumamu[41], it is “unrealistic” to advance the idea that “liberalization of ACP economies will lead to competition against products from the EU, to efficiency and to greater investment.”[42] He maintains that such “imprudent liberalization”[43] will most likely have adverse consequences on government revenues and balance of payments, as well as promote de-industrialization and massive unemployment.[44] Some observers would be quick to argue that this a high--stakes game that the EU is playing, trying to capture a primary slice of the world’s trading system that it inherited, by default, thanks to a lofty, albeit illusory, notion of partnership between colonizers and the colonized.

As much as this critique is damning, much of the evidence suggests that although the negotiations are in their infancy, development could be still-born. True development cannot be achieved merely with neo-liberal tactics, which include market-based and market-led fundamentalism that proposes foreign direct investment (FDI) as the conduit to development, when human and social infrastructure is consigned into the historical dustbin along with Keynes.

That being said, as much as I have levelled a lot of criticism against the European Union and how it is (ab)using Cotonou for a regional organisation like ECOWAS, a similar tactic is being played out by the US in the Asian region. In my opinion, the US is employing similar neo-realist tactics to prescribe a neo-liberal agenda in the ASEAN region by using APEC to further the interests of the United States.

Full text of the Cotonou Agreement and related documents.