Billions of pounds a year is being plundered from Africa through illegal logging and fishing that is prolonging poverty in the world’s poorest continent, the former head of the United Nationssaid on Thursday.
Kofi Annan‘s annual update on Africa says that money needed for a green revolution in agriculture and to improve infrastructure is being lost to illicit logging and unregulated fishing.
The Africa Progress report, which will be launched by the former UN secretary general in Londonon Thursday, estimates that the losses from logging amount to $17bn (£10bn) a year, while fishing fleets flouting international conventions are costing West Africa at least $1.3bn a year.
The report from a panel of experts including Tidjane Thiam, the chief executive of the Prudential, Michel Camdessus, ex-managing director of the International Monetary Fund, and Sir Bob Geldof, says that despite strong growth since the turn of the millennium, progress in poverty reduction has been slow and that by 2030 Africa will account for 80% of the world’s poor.
Annan says that Africa imports $34bn of food but could feed itself within five years if agricultural productivity improved. Almost $50bn a year needs to be found for roads, railways and other public investment projects.
“Investing in infrastructure will certainly be expensive”, Annan says. “But at least some of the costs of filling Africa’s massive infrastructure financing gap could be covered if the runaway plunder of Africa’s natural resources is brought to a stop. Across the continent, this plunder is prolonging poverty amidst plenty. It has to stop, now.
“Last year’s Africa Progress Report showed how illicit financial flows, often connected to tax evasion in the extractives industry, cost our continent more than it receives in either international aid or foreign investment. This year’s report shows how Africa is also losing billions to illegal and shadowy practices in fishing and forestry.”
Annan says that problems are being stored up for the future “While personal fortunes are consolidated by a corrupt few, the vast majority of Africa’s present and future generations are being deprived of the benefits of common resources that might otherwise deliver incomes, livelihoods and better nutrition. If these problems are not addressed, we are sowing the seeds of a bitter harvest.”
The report draws parallels between the plunder of logging and fishing resources with the money lost to Africa through tax evasion.
“In each case, Africa is being integrated through trade into markets characterised by high levels of illegal and unregulated activity. In each case resources that should be used for investment in Africa are being plundered through the activities of local elites and foreign investors. And in each case African governments and the wider international community are failing to put in place the multilateral rules to combat what is a global collective action problem.”
The report says unregistered industrial trawlers unloading illegal catches are the economic equivalent of mining companies evading taxes and offshore tax havens. “The underlying problems are widely recognised. Yet international action to solve those problems has relied on voluntary codes of conduct that are often widely ignored. The same is true of logging activity, with the forests of West and Central Africa established as hotspots for the plunder of timber resources.”
Annan’s panel says there needs to be a collective global agreement to ensure a “blue revolution” for ocean management. All governments should ratify and implement the 2009 Port State Measures Agreement to tackle illegal unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, and establish a global register of fishing vessels. African governments should increase fines on IUU vessels, support artisanal fishing, increase transparency, and provide full disclosure of the terms on which commercial fishing permits are issued.
On forests, the report calls for all commercial logging concession contracts to be subject to full disclosure, along with the beneficial ownership structures of the companies involved. Concessions should be provided with the informed consent of the communities involved.