Transcript in English

MOT: Colonial power from Finland
Finnish Broadcasting Co., TV1, October 6th, 2008
By Kati Juurus

MOT Trailer, music

(Pictures from Namibia)

Nahas Angula (Prime Minister of Namibia): “We are back to a neo-colonial arrangement.”

Alfred Ndabeni (Chief, Trade Policy, Ministry of Trade and Industry of Namibia): “That is where I say Finland has failed us.”

Paavo Väyrynen (Minister of Trade and Development of Finland): ”Well, I just can’t remember what the agenda of that meeting was.”

(Screen of episode title)

(Black limousines cruising in Helsinki)
Voice over (VO), reporter Kati Juurus: This June, Finland welcomed a state visit from Namibia.

Angula: “Yes, we’ve been discussing with the Finnish colleagues…”

VO: Namibia and Finland share a long common history. Finnish missionaries preached in the Ovambo-Kavango area already in the 19th Century. - In 1918 a proposal was put forward to make Ovamboland Finland’s own colony. - Martti Ahtisaari helped Namibia gain its’ independence in 1990.

Martti Ahtisaari (archive film) ”It’s a good start.”

VO: For years, Namibia was one of the main recipients of Finnish development aid.

VO: But prime minister Angula was not happy when he visited Finland.

Angula: “This is a question of fairness. Any trade agreement which is not fair, not just, obviously is not something good.”

Angula met with Finnish government leaders, among them Paavo Väyrynen, the minister for trade and development. The main topic of the talks were trade relations between Namibia and the EU, which includes Finland.

Reporter Juurus asking: “You feel that you are being forced?”

Angula: “Yes! How (else) to put it?”

VO: Europe’s former colonies in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific have traditionally enjoyed trade advantages in the European market. With this policy, Europe may have eased its’ bad conscience over the suffering brought about by colonial rule. The former colonies have not been forced to allow EU products toll-free in their own markets.

VO: The times are changing. EU’s new policy demands that, it is time for former colonies to open up their markets for European producers. They should remove most of their protective tariffs and do away with protecting their domestic production. The new agreements (pursued by the EU) are called EPA-agreements (Text on screen: EPA = Economic Partnership Agreement).

VO: The EU is negotiating EPA deals with 77 former colonies. Namibia is one of them. And down there, it is feared that the EPA’s will force African countries back to their old role as producers of raw materials.

Angula: “If you cannot have policies, instruments to encourage manufacturing and value addition in your country, it is a plight. In other words, perhaps Europe wants just to get the African raw materials there to create jobs in their own countries. That’s not fair.”

VO: The EPA deals have been a bone of contention for years, although there has not been much publicity about them. - International research institutes have done many studies about the effects of EPA’s. The reports warn of the consequences to many African countries.

Väyrynen: ”A great deal of the criticism we have heard stems from a negative attitude towards trade.”

VO: One of the concerned institutes is the World Bank, usually known for its’ positive attitude towards free trade. Even it has warned about the dangers:

Quote from World Bank report: “What’s worse, there is a real risk that, removing protective tariffs from EU products without a larger tariff reform – will result in a loss to African economies.”

VO: Trade and development minister Paavo Väyrynen is responsible for Finland’s policies related to the EPA process.

Reporter: “Why is Finland an advocate of the EPA-agreements?”

Väyrynen: “Because they are deemed to have a beneficial effect on development…”

Angula: “The opposite is the truth. We would become an appendage to the world economy.”

(Move to Namibia, Prime Minister Angula drumming, pictures from Windhoek)

VO: Windhoek, the capital of Namibia, is a busy town, about the size of Tampere, Finland. – An emerging middle class fills the streets and shopping centres. – Some poorer areas also have electricity, running water and a sewage system. The city has an orderly appearance. – But Namibia is still a developing country.

Ndabeni: “Namibia is a small economy. We don’t have a very strong manufacturing base – and therefore, (for) us to diverse our economy, we need to do value addition - And that is what have been trying to embark upon.”

The danger is that, EPA agreements will bring an end to the trade policies that Namibia itself has deemed good for its’ economy.

Ndabeni: “Some of the instruments that we have now the EU wants to abolish. It’s like someone who comes to you and says well, I have a flood today or an earthquake, but for you to help your people you have to come and consult me in Belgium. – Then, it’s not (like) I am determining my own policies. Someone (else) is determining my own policies.”

Alfred Ndabeni has taken part in the EPA-negotiations from the beginning.

Ndabeni: “I remember end of last year, November, when we had long protracted meetings towards the final round and we were being threatened that if you don’t finalise this negotiation by this time and agree on this, come January 2008 you are going to loose your market access to the EU. So what do you do? You don’t have any ammunition, so the only option is to take it or leave it.”

Last December the Namibian government decided to initiate an interim EPA-agreement with the EU. Negotiations on the final agreement are continuing again in November 2008. Namibia has many worries. One of them is protecting its’ agricultural production.

Gernot Eggert (Maize farmer): “We are mainly maize farmers. If it’s a good rainy season the main income is maize, but we have also cattle… We have got quite a few goats.”

Namibia protects local maize and wheat production by banning imports during the harvesting season. When the crops have been sold, imports are allowed again.

Eggert: “For our people, I think it’s very important. There are a lot of people employed directly on the farms, not only the maize farmers but all the families…”

(Farm hands working on a fence)

A: Shall I tie it this way?
B: Is that tight enough?
C: No, turn it around an tighten. Pull this one, too.
B: This?
C: Yea. – That’s in the wrong place.

Timo Guruseb (Farmworker): “What I do here, I cultivate the fields, plough, after the ploughing we do the planting, and now fixing the fence and that’s what I do here.”

Guruseb: “Our team is me, Efraim, Ousoul, ‘Naub and Kennedy. We all work together on this farm.”

Guruseb: (showing his house): ”I’m okay with the money I make here, no problem with that. I have enough for my needs, so I’m not complaining. – I have five kids, but one of them not my own. So I have four children. They are not here now, because they went along with my wife, to attend her aunt’s funeral.”

Guruseb: “Whatever I get I give to my kids. I’m trying to put them through school, so that they can look after me when I quit work at the farm, when I don’t have to work the fields and fix the fences anymore.”

Eggert: “When you go around the country now today, you will see a lot of farmers, and they show you in their lifestyle a lot of resilience. Namibian farmers, they can go through a drought, or like in the northern areas, a flood, and they will be sure planting next year again…”

Eggert: “But one thing is for sure: if you don’t have a market for the crops that you produced, then you will lose your resilience and you will not be planting again, if you’re not sure where to market.”

Ndabeni: “In our negotiations with the EU the EU says that we must lift all these quantitative restrictions…”

Ndabeni: “We are developing countries that want to do more for food self sufficiency, food security in general so that we protect our own farmers just for a shorter period for them to sell their maize, and once that has been done so we’ll open up but the EU is saying no, just abolish all quantitative restrictions…”

Eggert: “I would surely not be able to employ 12 permanent workers anymore. So I would have to reduce workers, I would have to look for other working opportunities for myself and for them also.”

Paul Goodison (Independent trade analyst, Brussels): “If they can’t use these import licensing tools, within a couple of seasons, irrigated cereal production in Namibia will have disappeared completely. – And no government can realistically accept that as an outcome of bilateral trade negotiations.”

Eggert: “We are waking up each morning on the farm, we go out into the fields, we are deciding what to work and what to do and what risk to take for the next season. And it’s, it’s lovely.”

Gernot Eggert sold a part of this year’s maize harvest to the Namibmills plant. It is one of Windhoek’s largest industrial establishments.

Koos Ferreira (Managing Director, Namibmills): “The maize mill started here in 1982. We then started with a with a new wheat mill. – We produce our own pasta flour from the wheat mill. And we produce pasta as best…or as good as anywhere else in the world. - We employ just over 600 people in the different activities.

Besides its farming sector, Namibia protects some fledgling industries with import tariffs.

Ferreira: “You normally get the infant industry protection for a specific period… After 8 years it’s phased out. – You have the opportunity then to establish the business, establish your own brand and write off part of your plant so that at the end of the day you would be able to compete with whatever imports there are. – I think that it would have been quite difficult to start with a pasta plant would we not have had the infant industry protection.”

Ferreira: “We’ve progressed to a point where the per capita consumption of pasta in Namibia is even higher than in South Africa…not as high as in Italy yet, but quite high.”

According to the preliminary EPA agreement, Namibia must eventually do away with protections for new industries.

Ndabeni: “If an industry in Namibia is born today, and that industry has a potential to grow, how do you protect it from the competition of more of less similar product from the EU?”

Ferreira: “Those guys can knock us off like flies.”

Ferreira: “You look at how many people are dependent on the agricultural side, leave alone a company like us, for instance, how many people we employ. – That could have a devastating effect on the country. And I mean it’s really to a large extent still a third world country that you would like to develop, and if you hamper the development in these areas, I think that’s, I can’t see what the benefit is.”

VO: The Namibian policy for industrialisation may sound old-fashioned. But its’ purpose is to increase production value, create jobs and economic growth. Just like Finland used to do.

Jaakko Kiander (economist): “We’ve had a lot of this kind of industrial policy, where the aim has been the protection of local production under state guidance, building of production plants and other things that would not have come about in a fully open market situation.”

VO: Finland and the EU are also familiar with protecting the domestic agricultural sector.

Kiander: “For the most part, Finland has protected its’ agricultural production and food industries, with import restrictions, price controls and export subsidies. – The EU’s common agricultural policy is the clearest example of protectionism on the EU’s side. It has used both import restrictions and export subsidies, with which overproduction has been dumped on the world market.”

VO: The EPA agreements are not designed to interfere with agricultural subsidies. But this is an expenditure that the EU countries can afford, the former colonies can not.

Reporter: ”The means that poor countries could resort to will be forbidden, and the permitted means they can’t afford?”

Kiander: ”Yes, you might simplify it like that.”

Goodison: “Namibia has enough problems being a country consisting largely of two deserts without having to deal with unfair trade rules which take away the use of tools which they can use and allow them to use policy tools which they can’t afford to use.”

Ndabeni: “So that’s why we are saying: now please allow us some room where we decide ourselves what is right for us.”

VO: The Namibians have come to the conclusion that, if the EU won’t allow Africans to support increased value addition in their production, the continent will remain a poor producer of raw materials. A bit like in the colonial days.

Angula: “Neo-colonialism will not take us anywhere. If someone has to keep you to be the producer of raw materials, how else can you describe that kind of a situation.”

Reporter: “Why do you think the EU’s insisting on this?’

Angula: “Well, that question could better be put to the European union.”

Reporter (In Brussels): “Why is the EU insisting on this?”

Peter Thomson (Director, Development and EPAs, European Commission DG Trade): “Well, we don’t insist upon them – We want a strong world out there, one that’s living in peace and prosperity. There’s no point in us having Africa going down the tubes. We want a safe, prosperous Africa. We think that this is the best mechanism that we can do on the trade side.”

Reporter: “Why do you think that these EPA’s then have provoked so much controversy and criticism in African countries if they are…?

Thomson: “Because it means change, and change means reform and reform means big questions being asked.”

Ndabeni: “When we agreed to negotiate on EPA’s, it was because we wanted a change. But the changes that we were promised right from the beginning are not the changes that we are seeing now.”

Reporter: “So what if a country like Namibia decided at the end that they are not going to sign the final EPA?”

Thomson: “It’s their choice at the end of the day. We always feel that when you make an engagement promise to somebody, when you actually go to the church, you actually go through it. It’s possible to walk out of the church in that point of time, but it’s rather unfortunate. – It is very unfortunate in fact. But you know, there’s nothing we can do about it.”

Ndabeni: “We are not happy. We have said, and we are still saying it, but the other part is not listening.”

Thompson: “I think it’s a good result so far, yes.”

Ndabeni: “Almost all ACP (Africa, Caribbean, Pacific) regions are not happy…”

Thomson: “There are differences of vision and differences of view, and we have to reconcile them. And we will go in with our vision of things. And we will listen and we’ll address. But that’s all we can ever do. You can’t write down a set of preconditions and say so before the negotiation starts, this is what your position will be. And yes, you can reach an agreement on that, but it’s not going to be very satisfactory for both sides. So we have agreed that we will address their concerns. And that means that we will do our utmost to move our position in sure flexibility. Does it mean that we will have infinite flexibility? Certainly not.”

The EU commission bureaucrats are negotiating on things that do not pertain to their personal lives at all. For the other side, it is a question of livelihood.

Because of beef, fish and grapes, the Namibian government decided eventually to accept the preliminary EPA agreement. Those are its’ three most important export articles on the EU market. Also the beef produced by Reimer Thiessen ends up in Europe.

Reimer Thiessen (cattle farmer): “Yeah, this farm was bought by my father in 1940’s, so it’s been a family farm now for 70 years.”

If Namibia had refused the preliminary EPA late last year (2007), beef import duties would have gone up so much that exports to the EU would have stopped right there. And what happens if Namibia decides to opt out of the final agreement?

Thiessen: “If they do not sign, then for the beef market in particular, it will have a devastating effect.”

So the Namibians must choose between two evils: if they sign the EPA, agriculture and industry will suffer and Namibian income from customs duties will collapse. If they don’t sign, beef and other exports will lose their markets in the EU.

Thiessen: “As a cattle producer in the first line, I’m thinking of myself. I hope they’re going to sign it. But on the other hand, I wouldn’t know what to do. – We actually have to open up our markets for European goods that are being produced in Europe, and which are often subsidised. They come onto our markets, and through that our industries, our small industries that the government is trying to protect through government support and all that, they will of course suffer. And unemployment and all the terrible effects that go with it. – I think that for the economy as a whole as it stands now, we cannot sign, because also we farmers would suffer in the end.”

Ndabeni (driving with his wife and children to a restaurant, talks to his family): “Why are you so quiet?”

Ndabeni: “It’s just epa epa epa, that is all I do, nothing else. My wife does work, she’s a librarian. And my kids – I have three kids, two girls and a boy – the thing that makes them suffer from the EPA is that I’m not always there with them all the time. Travelling has just been too much for me.”

Ndabeni: “Let’s hope that the issues that are on the table that we are trying to negotiate now as part of the full EPA's, the EU will listen, and try to have them addressed for the benefit of a small economy like Namibia. – That is what we are praying for.”

VO: The EU and its’ member countries are saying that, the EPA-deals are needed in order for Africa to develop.

Väyrynen: ”Yes, the thinking in the EU is correct.”

Reporter (to Väyrynen): ”They just don’t understand this attempt to being developed.”

Väyrynen: ”Well, they have a different view, and they may even have their suspicions.”

Ndabeni: “For the last 40-50 years we have been dependent on EU aid, but we have not developed. We are trying to get ourselves out of that scenario. That is exactly what we’re trying to do. – So we want to decide on how we address our own development agenda ourselves.”

According to Väyrynen, there is nothing in the EPAs to benefit Finland or the EU.

Väyrynen: ”Not directly, in my opinion.”

But the commission’s trade directorate admits that, the new free trade agreements are not just charitable in character.

Thomson: “We are not interested in just being able to receive particular imports or to send out particular exports. We’re interested in developing industry through our own investments over there. – We’re thinking about years ahead so that we will have markets where we can export and trade.”

Africa is a trivially small market area for the EU, not to mention the Caribbean and Pacific countries. Some foreign trade experts say that, the EU has larger plans on its’ mind. If the EPA agreements are finalised according to the EU’s wishes, they can be used as a model in coming world trade talks. At least that is the opinion of Paul Goodison, who has studied the Southern African economies and European-African trade for years.

Goodison: “You have to recognize that there’s 77 of these African, Caribbean and Pacific countries. And 27 EU member countries. – If you’ve got agreements involving over a 100 countries dealing with these issues, you can go back to the WTO (World Trade Organization) and say, ‘Look, we have these agreements with all of these countries involved. We now need international rules on these areas. – So Europe has what you could see as a structural interest in these issues, quite independent of the significance of these issues for African countries.”

Goodison: “They become the precedent and the model for similar provisions in other agreements with advanced developing countries like Brazil, China, India, Thailand, South Korea, where the EU has far more economical interest. So nominally it’s about development. In reality these wider policy concerns tend to dominate.”

Angula: “We’ve been discussing with the Finnish colleagues. The impression they give us is that, they have understanding for our concerns and they are asking for flexibility.”

Reporter: “(Flexibility) from whom?”

Angula: “From the European union, bureaucrats.”

VO: But minister Väyrynen does not remember what worries the guest from Namibia had.

Väyrynen: ”Well, I can’t remember about the concrete issues that came up in that discussion. I think the objectives set by the EU for these negotiations fully serve the goals of our development policy.”

Ndabeni: “I think there has been a lack of understanding from the EU member states on what is at stake.”

Goodison: “The Commission is not going to move unless the member states make it move. And the member states don’t understand the issues, and that’s the problem.”

Angula: “It would be in the interest of everybody that our concerns are taken into consideration. Otherwise we are back to a neo-colonial arrangement.”

Ndabeni: “You may go to them, to the minister who is in charge now, you will go and ask her or him about the EPA’s, they may not know what is happening. – That is where I may say, Finland has failed us.”