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ADS Alex Duval Smith
PI Police inspector
HT Haoussa Tandina
SI Salha Issoufou
AOdB Anton Op de Beke
AT Amadou Thiam
CB Coumba Bah
ADS I’m Alex Duval Smith and for this Guardian Global development podcast I’ve come to Timbuktu in northern Mali. It’s been a year since President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita was elected to run a country whose development challenges – education, malnutrition, sanitation – are as acute as they come. Mali is in the bottom dozen of the United Nation’s Development Programme’s world development index; and of course more than two years of crisis have made matters worse. I’ll be going round Timbuktu speaking to people about their everyday challenges. And then I’ll take my impressions to the capital, Bamako, and put them to a politician, to an activist and to a man from the International Monetary Fund.
There are now 1,200 United Nations police and military in Timbuktu, 10,000 in the whole of Mali. There are at least 1,500 French troops. They’re here to bring things back to normal. But normal is not good enough. Normal was the state that prevailed pre-2012. Tuareg mercenaries came back from Libya. They used their weaponry to stage a rebellion. The neglected Malian army revolted and ousted the president; then Islamists linked to al-Qaida took advantage of the chaos.
Mali will achieve only one of the millennium development goals – access to improved water. At least 40% of the population lives more than 5km from a health centre. Unicef says neonatal problems, malaria, pneumonia and diarrhoea still account for 70% of under-five deaths. Malnutrition prevalence in under-fives is 27%. 90% of girls and woman have undergone genital cutting. Six out of 10 are married before the age of 18. Then you have a population growth rate which at 3.6% is in the world’s top five.
According to the United Nations, the crisis affected 2.8 million people. More than 100,000 Malians – mainly Tuaregs – are still refugees in neighbouring countries. A year since his election, President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita has not sealed a peace deal with the northern armed groups; people are still very afraid. The buildings here are low-rise and clay brick, the streets are paved here in the city centre but there are drifts of sand across them. All this dust has a peculiar way of deadening the sound. You don’t hear a vehicle, for example, until it’s really up close. Arab men run small outlets but I’m not spotting any Tuaregs in their distinctive turbans. I get chatting to a Nigerian police inspector.
PI I’ve been here for about a year.
ADS So you’ve seen the situation change quite a lot, I imagine, if you compare [it] with when you arrived?
PI Yeah, tremendously. We arrived here on about 28 July 2013. There was nobody so we started patrol, people were happy. But now the place is full. People are here. The town is filled out with people. So with our presence on patrols I believe people have confidence to come back.
ADS You can’t miss the United Nations police in their sky blue helmets and bullet-proof vests, our foot patrols through the narrow streets of Timbuktu is all about a show of presence. The officers are Senegalese, Beninois, Turkish and Nigerian – most of them can’t even have a conversation with the local. They’re no crack force either; many are rather portly! They look like they’re more used to sitting in an office than patrolling in heavy body armour in the stifling heat. But, in the absence of an effective Malian police force, they’ve brought back a sense of order and it makes a change from the harsh Islamist order that al-Qaida imposed in 2012.
Near the 12th-century Djingareyber mosque in Timbuktu, I walk into Haoussa Tandina’s house. Haoussa Tandina is 35. She has five children. Her husband, Oumar Jex, used to work in a hotel but he’s unemployed now. Mrs Tandina makes ice in a tall freezer. She sells it to a man who calls twice a day on his motorbike and buys each lump for 25 francs, that’s five US cents. He then rides down to the Niger river, 18km away, and sells the ice to fishermen. Soldiers’ wives used to have the monopoly on ice-making because electricity was free in the Malian army barracks. But the soldiers and their families ran away when the Islamists came. Mrs Tandina and hundreds of other Timbuktu women have filled the gap.
She also sells patties and juices outside a school. She sells fabric and jewellery that she buys in Bamako. But last time she took the 48-hour trip to the capital to collect the stock, the bus she was travelling on was attacked by bandits on the way back.
HT [Translated] It was around 8pm; there was machine-gun fire. They blocked the road with a truck. Everyone out. On the ground, face down hands on our backs. They took all my stock, my phone, some silver necklaces I’d bought. The value was 190,000 francs. I don’t know who they are but as soon as you’re outside Timbuktu they’re everywhere. That attack really hurt me a lot. We really just want peace. We are trying to pick up from having lost everything and then once again we lose everything.
ADS At least Mrs Tandina lives in town with its UN police patrols and night time curfew. Médecins sans Frontières has been in Timbuktu since 2012 but it’s scaled down its coverage of the Timbuktu region since March this year when a mobile clinic was targeted for a car hijacking. This means that MSF are only in the city centre; the region which is the size of Nigeria has little or no health coverage. Head of MSF Mali, Dr Salha Issoufou.
SI The main challenge is how to set up good security in order to help the population in the rural area 200-300km from the town.
ADS Because the health centres outside the city aren’t working, is that right?
SI The health centres are not fully working. There is no ambulance, a system of ambulance to refer the patient in the hospital. And there is this problem of security.
ADS What strikes me when I’m in Timbuktu is that you can count on the fingers of one hand the international NGOs that are there. There’s Plan, there’s Handicap, there’s MSF, there’s NRC [the Norwegian Refugee Council] and there’s the Danish Refugee Council – that’s it, that’s one hand. And yet Bamako is full of WHO, IOM, IRC – everybody’s in Mali. But why are they not where they need to be?
SI Yes, of course all the humanitarian and UN try to make their best but it seems to be the problem of Mali in the north start to become like something that people start to forget but then it is there.
ADS What in terms of the health of the population are you observing?
SI The people are coming at the end so we are running the hospital of 91-bed capacity in which the ministry staff are not back.
ADS This is a problem isn’t it, anything in the public sector has been depopulated in the north and it’s been very difficult for the authorities to get staff to go back. I mean, to what extent is it sustainable in the long run? MSF can’t presumably keep paying the staff of Timbuktu; it should be Malians.
SI Yeah MOH [ministry of health] staff are very worried about the security and they have to come back. Of course, we are not going to stay for five/six years, we have the limit.
ADS I’ve come to the centre of Mali’s capital, Bamako, to a little office occupied by Anton Op de Beke, the resident representative of the International Monetary Fund. In May 2013, five months after the start of the French military intervention, international donors met in Brussels and pledged a whopping €3.2bn, or $4.4bn, to get Mali back on its feet. That amount included some direct budgetary support. A year on in May this year, the donors came to Bamako; days before the meeting this diminutive Dutch economist revealed that President Keita’s administration had bought a presidential jet for $40m on the sly. Without going to parliament, the presidency had also provided a $200m guarantee for defence spending. I asked Op de Beke if he thought aid money had been used to buy the Boeing 737.
AOdB The donors pledged basically to resume their aid at the old level or, in fact, at a somewhat higher level so the €3.2bn is being dispersed in the course of 2013/14/15 in the form of resumption of the old aid relations.
ADS That includes direct budgetary support?
AOdB That includes an amount of budget support and so, yes, that money would have paid for a little bit of the presidential plane you can say.
ADS So, in other words, once its budget support you really can’t do very much about how it’s spent?
AOdB Exactly. And we, the IMF, we don’t generally take issue with specific spending items but you can imagine if you’re a donor you may want to reconsider your budget support.
ADS Which indeed is what’s happening because the World Bank and the other donors who give direct budgetary support, such as the European Union and I think the Danes and the Norwegians, have also deferred their payment.
AOdB Once we decided that we could not complete our review in June, all the donors who had budget support that was about to be dispersed informed the government that they were suspending their disbursements until these issues were resolved.
ADS How serious is that for the treasury?
AOdB Donor assistance to Mali’s budget in 2014 is around $900m and of that amount about $340m is budget support, in principle, no strings attached.
ADS But how much of the budget stems from budget support?
AOdB That would be about 12% of government, say 12-15%, one-sixth of government spending is budget support.
ADS Does that mean that if the deferments were to continue, or if international donors were to cool in terms of giving direct budget support –which it is my sense that they have cooled – this could have an impact on government spending on teachers’ salaries, nurses’ salaries, hospitals, health centres?
AOdB In the past, we have seen that the government makes salaries its number-one priority. So in the case of such a setback what normally suffers is the investment spending. So I would say not nurses’ salaries but new clinics. Not teachers’ salaries but new schools.
ADS President Keita came to power with 77% of the vote. His slogan was “Le Mali d’abord”, Mali first. But several nepotistic appointments later, his critics accuse him of putting his family first. They question spending priorities like the jet, and point to the lack of progress over peace. What you can’t take away from IBK, as he’s known, is that he’s given a chance to a new generation of politicians. I’ve come to parliament in Bamako to meet the youngest of them – Adadou Thiam. He’s 30 and is already second deputy speaker of parliament.
AT The president IBK did a lot first of all in his government. There was the creation of a minister for reconciliation. And secondly there was also a minister that was in charge of the development of the northern regions of Mali. And third he also nominated Modibo Keita as the higher representative of the head of state as to the talks between the government of Mali and the different groups. So all these efforts towards reconciliations will lead to a definite peace agreement. If we take also the economy of Mali, the government has been able to stabilise the prices of the basic food stuff.
ADS What was done to stabilise the prices?
AT There were lots of subsidies so all those subsidies have been maintained despite all the economic hardships. I’d also say the men are fighting against corruption, the government has initiated a law against illicit enrichment. There have also been some flaws.
ADS Are you referring to the presidential jet?
AT Yes, the presidential jet has created a lot of talk around it. I personally think that government could have done a lot to avoid all the wrath of the IMF that we have today and our partners. There has been a problem as to the procedure.
ADS My reading has been that there has been a lot of effort spent on institutional reform, laws being passed but Mali has a historic problem which goes back from before the crisis of implementation being poor. Has the ordinary Malian seen change for the better?
AT We are coming from a major crisis. The president has been more concentrated on how to come to normalisation.
ADS Among President IBK’s and the parliament’s priorities [is] how highly does development rank? How highly does poverty alleviation rank? We never hear that rhetoric from the Malian government.
AT Poverty alleviation development – you wouldn’t probably hear development much. There is no development without peace.
ADS Why has it taken a year to get the government and the armed groups to the negotiating table when it was supposed to happen within 60 days of the president’s election?
AT It’s taken a year because of so many issues. First of all, the armed groups were supposed to be camped which wasn’t the case. So there was a reluctance from both sides because both sides wanted to be in a position of force before talks would begin, which is normal in any conflict.
ADS It’s assumed that Mali will not reach a number of the millennium development goals, if you look forward, if you look at the plans for the coming year, do you see plans which will have an impact on Mali’s development scores?
AT I am very hopeful because now we show that the peace talks that have started in Algiers are on a good run. There are so many companies, so many investors as well waiting at the door. So once we are able to sign a definite peace treaty or agreement they will invest in Mali. And definitely there will be lots of financial aid because now it’s because of the same crisis that institutions like IMF [and the] World Bank are a bit reluctant. And once they come in full flesh, so many other better aids will come in. That’s why everybody agrees that we should expedite the peace talks in an outcome to a peace agreement which will definitely encourage development.
ADS But here and now things aren’t rosy. So why do Malians find themselves in such a precarious position? Where is the country headed? I’ve come down to the quartier du Fleuve; the International Monetary Fund is housed in the public debt office. Joining me again is the local representative of the IMF, Anton Op de Beke. This time we’re also with the civil society activist, Coumba Bah. Can you introduce yourself, Coumba?
CB Thank you very much, Alex. I’m Coumba Bah, a mother of four. I’m currently working in civil aviation but my background is really in chemistry. I’m a Malian citizen who since the last event of 2012 has really decided to be active in the life of my country.
ADS Over the past, I would say up to a decade of Africa emerging, Africa rising, great growth scores in certain countries that hasn’t happened in Mali. Could I turn to you, Anton, and give us an idea, I think of course there was a crisis in 2012, but I think one can with this question look a bit further back and ask why didn’t Mali get on that bandwagon?
AOdB If you look back, say, two decades and Mali has had an average annual growth rate of about 5% in real terms, that’s not negligible, but with a population growth rate of 3 to 3.5% that’s clearly not enough. What’s holding Mali back? I would say the most significant general explanation would be the poor governance. Also, we have done studies at the IMF comparing good Asian performers with comparable countries in Africa and one striking factor is that in those Asian countries the productivity in agriculture is much higher than in Africa.
ADS Coumba, what’s sometimes forgotten is that Mali is Africa’s third gold producer. Of course, it’s some way behind South Africa and Ghana but there’s potential here. So in your view as somebody here, why isn’t Mali on the fast train?
CB Mali always say we are an agricultural country but the agriculture is really done the Middle Age way, and is done by people who have not gone to school, who are labelled as peasants and second-class citizen. They are not given the education, the knowledge, the technical knowledge, the scientific knowledge, the market knowledge that really they need to build their business. It’s a very inefficient sector. What really bothers me sometimes is knowing that actors like Anton, they know very much what’s happening but they keep working with the system.
AOdB The IMF’s role here is to make sure that the government has a budget that can finance adequate education spending, and in fact help them to augment this budget. But it’s not our mandate to discuss with the authorities, or with the government, the details of the education policy.
CB Again, that’s what adds continuously to the questioning. Because yes they know it’s not working but they don’t want to reinvent the process. There is money given but when money was given there was no follow-up. There was no accountability. Yes, you put a lot of money in agriculture but I know we are not talking about the World Bank. But has anybody done any evaluation, an audit of the productivity and the meeting of the goal? We put 30 billion in this agricultural sector to have this much done in rice; can we go and see if that rice has been produced? And if the rice has been produced, has it been stored properly? What is meant [is for the rice] to be shipped out of the country, sold to have value added – is that being done? But the government just sit and send you a report how many people we have trained, we have done so many forums, so many symposiums – I don’t care if you have done a thousand meetings. If the peasanthas not increased his productivity, to me [it] is a failure.
AOdB All the questions that you just put about the effectiveness of spending, the Mali government should be willing and should be able to answer these questions because that’s how you improve your policies. And that is part and parcel of what we call governance. So we want the government to become more effective so that they can answer these questions, empirically use numbers, look at the money spent and the results achieved and then discuss with civil society. Civil Society but also the political system, the assembly; but eventually the push has to come from the Malians.
CB Yes, the push will come from the Malians, but whenever we have an opportunity to lobby with partners, like yourself, we will do so. Because we also know you have more power on our government than we do. The sooner Malians have a critical mass that really looks after the government, the better for the whole wide world. Because if something happens here it’s your resources, it’s taxpayer money from developed countries that are gathered to come help. So why don’t we change the policy to target the priorities.
ADS And, Anton, is and has the IMF been guilty of a kind of one-size-fits-all approach to the economy of South Africa? Mali is a particular country. I was looking at some of the figures; not only does it receive $900m of aid every year but it also receives $350m of remittances from its diaspora. Now this makes if a country of people who receive, this makes it a country of people who not all of them are working for the money they receive – I’m not saying that Malians are rolling in money, but I think it creates a particular dependency culture – you can’t have a one-size-fits-all approach to Mali.
AOdB IMF is often accused of a one-size-fits-all approach. Obviously, that’s not true but we consider countries on their characteristics. But let’s be honest; there are lots of similarities between countries. The IMF is not a development finance institution. Our contribution is fairly small, in fact, and it’s expensive money, I would say, and it’s short term. The IMF’s lending is just to permit us to have these sorts of programmes with the government that allow the government to discipline itself and benefit from our technical assistance and show to their own population and to the donors that they are moving in the right direction. The people here need to get away from the financing and look at the quality. I think there is a lot to be achieved with better quality policies. At the same time, we believe that there is a lot of scope here to raise more revenue locally. We think that currently Mali has about 15% of GDP revenue, a fiscal revenue ratio, we think it could easily be a quarter to a third higher. So by reducing tax evasion, by minimising the exemptions in the tax system. And as it’s not going to come from abroad, it’ll have to come from Mali.
ADS Coumba, just spinning off from my other question to Anton: is Mali in a dependency culture?
CB We are very much becoming dependents on foreign … And we are even like sitting and waiting like beggars. Yes, the Malian diasporas send a lot of money in but I have a feeling that 90% of the money that is sent by diaspora is all eaten for no business development whatsoever. But also if you look at the foreigners that when they come they help us, I don’t know if you look at the Malian TV, for example, there will be reports, “Oh so many people, this partner came and gave 3 million” they will spend over 750,000 to just have reports done to show that they’re giving 3 million. What is 3 million? Like we just passed Ramadan. [During] Ramadan every day there were donations being shown on TV. And everybody comes to have one litre of oil and one kilo of sugar – what is that if it’s not a begging culture?
AOdB I can sympathise with what Coumba just said. When I read a newspapers, I’m also struck by the large number of articles on initiative donor projects. What I would like to see is for the government to produce more results and report on its results. The budget is full of initiatives. In the end, the donors finance only about a quarter of the budget so there is three-quarters of spending that is not donor-linked, and government should become more resource-oriented. I’m glad this is part of this government’s strategy they are just at the beginning of it. They need to for all of their policies start formulating strategies, concrete objectives and then compile the data for following the achievements for these objectives.
ADS So a problem of communication coming from the government. Do you see that as well, Coumba?
CB Of course, that’s obvious. But when you speak to your own population in a language you know very well they don’t understand what are you trying to do. Because even if you do tweets, Facebook, internet – how many of us are on Twitter? Please let’s restrict it to the Malians, have debates in the language that they understand.
ADS So we’re coming back to better communication needed from the government, an enhanced relationship between the government and the people. Could I ask you to finish, both of you, to look forward a bit if those were those two elements on a wish list what more would be on the wish list to actually accelerate Mali’s development now from this point on? Coumba.
CB Really, we need to be able to reinvent things. I think humans are so intelligent we do not need to copy and paste. Currently, the country is mainly youth who are not productive so the adults, who are productive, that have not been to school. We know adults learn in a different manner than kids so we need to get education tools designed to the adults who still have 10 years/20 years of production. Because there are some people who do not produce one thing during the whole year, they just wait with their palms open, they do not add anything.
AOdB I totally agree. The economists would say to create more human capital so that’s by investing in effective education, all sorts of education, but of course also health and then in physical infrastructure, the road structure, the energy infrastructure. That with the better private sector operating environment you need a strong government that supports the private sector in doing what private sectors around the world have proven that they are best at.
CB I want to add something because what Anton said is so right, but again to me it’s really not proper to our specific situation. Training is first. Why put billions into health sector but you don’t tell people, “Please, the first thing is for you to be clean”. Because we are at that basic level.
ADS A strong government, effective education, a better business environment, suitable infrastructure, security – the list is long. Direct budget support to the government will not resume until at least December. Since the presidential jet incident, international donors have become filled with hesitation about how to support Mali. President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita’s government has failed to convince that Mali is actually in a very similar place to what it was when it was plunged into chaos by the Islamist occupation. Yet energetic activists like Coumba Bar, and to some extent the young MP, Adadou Thiam, emerge from that crisis. They’re Mali’s greatest hope.
I’m going to leave you with another young Malian, the 24 year old musician, Mdas, a member of the Timbuktu regional orchestra. He’s in Bamako now. He fled his city after spending two days in Islamic police custody; they threatened to cut off his tongue. A prominent imam intervened and Mdas was released. He fled on a motorbike across the desert in the dead of night. Here he’s singing acapella the last song performed by the regional orchestra one week before the Islamist occupation began in 2012. It’s a cry to God for divine intervention to bring peace to Mali.
For Guardian Global development, I’m Alex Duval Smith in Timbuktu.
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