12th October, 2007

DAVID ADAMS

The African economy is drained of as much as $US18 billion very year thanks to armed conflicts with as much as $US284 billion lost over the 15 years to 2005, according to new research released by Oxfam this week.

The report - Africa’s Missing Billions - found that, on average, a war, civil war or insurgency shrinks an African economy by 15 per cent.

“Armed violence is one of the greatest threats to development in Africa,” said Irungu Houghton, African policy advisor at Oxfam, who conducted the research with the backing of non-government organisations International Action Network on Small Arms and Saferworld. “The costs are shocking”.

In a forward to the report, Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf said the money lost through conflict was money Africa “could ill afford to lose”.

“The sums are appalling: the price that Africa is paying could cover the cost of solving the HIV and AIDS crisis in Africa or provide education, water and prevention and treatment for TB and malaria,” President Johnson-Sirleaf writes.

“Literally thousands of hospitals, schools and roads could have been built, positively affecting millions of people. Not only do the people of Africa suffer the physical horrors of violence, armed conflict undermines their efforts to escape poverty.”

The research - believed to be the first time analysts have come up with figures for the cost of conflicts on the African economy as a whole - shows that between 1990 and 2005, 23 nations on the continent were involved in conflicts.

Among them was Rwanda, where conflict ravaged the nation from 1990 until 2001 at a calculated cost of $US8.4 billion to the country’s GDP, and South Africa where conflict which took place between 1990 and 1990 was calculated to cost the country’s economy $22 billion.

Thirteen years of conflict in Burundi, meanwhile, resulted in negative economic growth (-1.1 per cent) compared with projected growth of 5.5 per cent while in Eritrea, a three year conflict between 1998 and 2000, also resulted in negative growth (-3.8 per cent) compared with projected growth of 4.8 per cent.

In broad terms, the report shows that the average loss of 15 per cent of GDP in African nations as a result of armed conflict equates to around one-and-a-half times average African spending on health and education combined.

It also shows that while the number of armed conflicts globally is falling, 38 per cent of the world’s current conflicts remain based in Africa with almost half of the “high-intensity” conflicts in 2006 based on the continent.

Elsewhere, the report looked at the flow of arms into Africa and concluded that 95 per cent of Kalashnikov assault rifles - the most commonly used weapon in African conflicts - come from outside the continent.

Oxfam, IANSA and other non-government organisations are currently campaigning for an international Arms Trade Treaty under which arms transfers would be prohibited if they were likely to be used to commit serious violations of international humanitarians or human rights laws or undermine sustainable development.

In 2006, 153 states voted to begin work on an Arms Trade Treaty at the UN General Assembly (the US voted against the idea), and so far this year 97 states have submitted their views on the treaty to the UN Secretary General.

Next year a group of experts selected by the UN Secretary General will meet to develop the next steps toward a treaty.

President Johnson-Sirleaf of Liberia said the treaty provided an opportunity “to agree tough controls on the arms trade that would significantly help reduce armed violence in Africa and across the world, an opportunity that is truly priceless”.

~ www.oxfam.org.uk

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