Betrayal of development in Nairobi

Cabinet Secretary Amina Mohamed try her hands on a gavel during Tenth Ministerial Conference at Kenyatta International Convention Center on saturday, Dec 19, 2015. PHOTO: JONAH ONYANGO.

The draft Nairobi Ministerial Declaration is a sad disappointment for the interests of developing countries in this first WTO ministerial on African soil.

It is not in any way an affirmation of the achievement nor even affirmation of the development promised in Doha, so critical to Africa’s economic prospects, but rather the near-burial of the Doha Development Agenda.

The draft agreement, yet to be discussed and agreed by members, is being offered by the chair after consultation with an unrepresentative group of five countries - the US, EU, China, India, and Brazil. No Africans or LDCs were included in the final drafting, and they are now being presented with a take-it-or-leave-it text. They should leave it, not take it.

The text fails to affirm the past decisions made in the course of the Doha Round, including key commitments to act on cotton, of key interest to West African countries. It offers meagre progress on agriculture, with small advances on export subsidies, but little movement on export credits which the United States uses to favour its agricultural exporters.

It provides no resolution of the public stockholding issue so crucial to India and other developing countries, despite commitments in Geneva last year to resolve the issue in Nairobi. Most notably, the negotiations excluded the most trade distorting policies – domestic support in developed countries - because the United States and other developed countries refused to allow it onto the agenda.

This means that cotton-producing countries will continue to be subjected to price suppression and unfair export competition from the United States.

Perhaps worst of all, the draft declaration fails to reaffirm the commitment to the Doha Development Agenda, instead offering tepid support for the priority resolution of outstanding Doha issues. It then goes on to welcome the introduction of new issues - the Singapore issues of investment, public procurement, competition policy, transparency -proposals firmly rejected by African and other countries in 2003 in Cancun, Mexico.

As 27 African civil society representatives in Nairobi state in their reaction to the declaration, “Africa is being marginalised on the very soil of Africa.”

—The Author is Director, Research and Policy Program, Global Development and Environment Institute, Tufts University