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THE DEPARTMENT OF Foreign Affairs and Trade is currently reviewing Ireland’s foreign policy and external relations, and has invited interested parties to make submissions. Amongst the questions it has asked contributors to respond to are the following:
How can our foreign policy and economic diplomacy support [Irish] economic development and growth?
How can a commitment to international development be better reflected across Ireland’s foreign policy?
Unfortunately, the answers to these two questions may not be compatible, as is increasingly evident if we look at the example of Ireland’s evolving relationship with Africa. The Department produced a document in September 2011 entitled Ireland and Africa: Our Partnership with a Changing Continent.
This new Africa strategy contained a number of elements that suggested an increasing prioritisation of Irish commercial interests in Africa. For example, the discussion of the World Bank in Africa ignored critiques of that organisation’s record – on issues such as promoting the displacement of small farmers from their land – and instead focused on increasing efforts to ensure that Irish companies get as many contracts as possible to supply goods and services to Bank projects. This could be argued to run counter to the document’s claimed emphasis on “building local systems and the capability to deliver local solutions”, which would require that African companies be accorded priority.
The strategy likewise claimed to be committed to reducing hunger in Africa but did not say how this was compatible with efforts (also highlighted in the document) to promote the sale of Irish food and drink products in Africa. If local production is displaced by such exports, how is African food security advanced? And in view of the contribution of the Irish financial services sector to the collapse of the Celtic Tiger, and destabilisation of the global economy more generally, how appropriate was it for the strategy to prioritise the promotion of Irish financial service exports to African countries?
Those Irish commercial interests already present in Africa were lauded in the strategy: “The footprint of Irish economic activity has been enhanced by the presence of a small number of multinational companies with strong Irish connections… Their reach is normally across several countries, and they are brands that would be recognised by many African business people and Government contacts”.
But for what reasons might they be recognised? Kenmare Resources in Mozambique has been documented avoiding local taxation, while Tullow Oil in Uganda and elsewhere has signed contracts for resource exploration that are far from transparent; it also faces charges (denied by the company) of offering bribes to the Ugandan government to help it avoid taxes.
This emergent Irish approach to Africa was equally evident in a consultancy report produced in September 2012 for the Irish Engineering Enterprises Federation (part of the Irish Business and Employers’ Confederation), Enterprise Ireland and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Entitled Winning Business in Africa, the report honed in on how Irish companies might win contracts from international aid donors – the World Bank (again), the African Development Bank, the European Investment Bank and the European Development Fund – with a particular focus on the sectors of infrastructure, energy, water and mining.
The record of the European Investment Bank has been the subject of particular criticism on the grounds, amongst others, that it funds environmentally damaging projects in Africa and elsewhere. Some €12 billion of potential funding was identified in 11 different African countries.
In the foreword to this 2012 report, Joe Costello TD, Minister of State for Trade and Development, said that “The Embassy network across Africa will support Irish business”, a position reiterated by the Minister during trade missions to Nigeria, South Africa and Kenya in late 2013. The 2012 report recommended close cooperation between Irish companies and ventures such as the EU Water Initiative and the EU Raw Materials Initiative (intended to guarantee European access to vital inputs from around the world).
Both these initiatives have been heavily criticised for reasons including the advancement of a water privatisation agenda that has not delivered improved access to water for recipients, and attempted prohibitions on the use, as development tools, by African governments of export taxes on raw materials. There is a strong argument that such EU initiatives are, hardly surprisingly, about the promotion of European commercial interests rather than the interests of African users of water or suppliers of raw materials.
To return to the opening question, “How can our foreign policy and economic diplomacy support [Irish] economic development and growth?” The answer is, in part, through the adoption of some of the policies advanced in the documents discussed above. But that is, again in part at least, at odds with “How… a commitment to international development [could] be better reflected across Ireland’s foreign policy”. Highlighting the incompatibility of these objectives should be a high priority for those making submissions to the current review process.
Andy Storey is a lecturer at the School of Politics and International Relations, UCD, and chairperson of the NGO Action from Ireland (Afri, www.afri.ie)
Vote NO to both proposals. !
To balance this out I will say vote ‘YES’ to both!
You must never criticise commisar kenny or his comrades. You must never report negative news…
You now can’t even show people having a go at Enda during the All-Ireland…
Not one image of him was shown
Luckily you have the journal Leslie Alan Rock – the majority of your comments are about Enda Kenny – you are obsessed with the man.
No Soneps, Leslie can move from topic to topic pretty easily unlike a lot of one trick pony’s around here that only surface on a given subject. It’s posters that can do that, that make online media worthwhile.
There are certain talk shows that the host will put forward their completely biased opinion and won’t let anybody disagree with them just because they seem to have a certain point of view and just label anybody that disagrees with them as an idiot or moron, hosts should remain neutral at all times and should never be able to give their own opinion because it brainwashes people, I’ve heard serious bullying on the radio because the host would agree with one caller and then they would both bully the other caller by calling them an idiot and a moron
George Hook over on Newstalk is indeed fond of doing this.
And what’s even more funny is that the next topic on the show may be about bullying and how it ought to be stamped out and the host will be dead against bullying for this instance but will bully anybody that disagrees with them, it’s hilarious but the average caller to these shows is not very intelligent, the amount of people embarrassing themselves for our enjoyment on Irish radio is off the hook
Jonathan Healy on Lunchtime at Newstalk.
Sorry for going off topic.
but all this talk of radio has made me realise that we havent had a Pat Kenny story in over a week!
How is he..?
Pat Kenny used to be a great way for me to get some sleep, he’s so bloody boring he’d put an insomniac asleep for a week
I’d hate to say it myself, but Kenny is head and shoulders above the rest. As a broadcast journalist he’s superb. He has no equal in Ireland {and it pains me to say that}.
Did he move to newstalk after
Good article Christine. Between this article and Hugh O’Connell, Michelle Hennessy, Sinéad O’Carroll, Aoife Barry, and Daragh Brophy’s article on the Banking crisis today the Journal seems to dramatically upping its game. Most welcome.
Can somebody explain why we have the broadcasting moratorium that exists from the day before an election (and I presume a referendum) in Ireland? It seems a bit antiquated.
Because we,re regulated into a knot in this country in the things that don’t matter and not in others like banks and developers.
Please correct me if I am wrong on this but are all high court judges elected by politicians?and if so if this referendum is passed who is going to elect the next group of Judges? Politicians! That is something I don’t understand and if this is about the supreme court than the Government will always win unless you have the extradorinary amount of money to challange in the European Court or Civil rights courts. To me this is not very well debated. Kenny will not Discuss or will any politician so to me I have to vote no and I don’t believe newspapers they are editors opinions.
The IT and Indo both ran Susan Denham’s speech supporting change – we must have a Court of Appeal but I am not telling people how to vote (yeh, right!) – but prevented readers commenting on the story.
Why the censorship?
Does anyone believe that these new toothless BAI codes are actually going to make a difference to VB and the rest? No is the answer. Nothing will change. Politicians will continue to waffle, VB will continue to shout, Mary Daly will continue to give soft interviews, Sean O’ Rourke is now too busy being an entertainer, Dobson will still be more concerned about his make up than anything else, George Hook will continue to make himself centre stage, morning Ireland and Ivan Yates are a little too early in the morn for me.
have your say