The Asia-Africa club

What is it that this week's Asian-African Summit in Jakarta hopes to accomplish? Why go through all the trouble of bringing in leaders and representatives from 106 countries, given the logistical and security nightmare, not to mention the financial challenge, that gatherings of this magnitude usually create?

Anyone seriously looking for concrete results out of this summit will most likely to be very disappointed. One has a better chance, however, of seeing real results in the bilateral meetings that the leaders will be holding on the sidelines of the summit.

If concrete stuff is what you are after, skip the summit. With over 100 participants, it is next to impossible for this gathering to reach a consensus on anything of substance.

The series of meetings this week are expected to produce a plan of action by the ministers of foreign affairs and a final declaration by the leaders. These will contain grandiose words, but essentially they will not go beyond rhetorical statements of forging greater solidarity and a strategic partnership between countries and peoples on the two continents.

Not that solidarity and partnership, as abstract as they may seem, are unimportant.

They are important. Rhetoric can move people.

If the first summit of Asian and African leaders, in Bandung 50 years ago this week, is any indication, then even rhetorical statements can have strong repercussions on international affairs. The Bandung Conference, attended by 29 leaders, most of whom came from newly independent countries, became the source of inspiration for many nationalist movements in Africa and Asia to fight for their own independence. And they got it.

This time, membership in the Asia-Africa fraternity has swollen to more than 100. And it is harder to manage. The club is a collection of countries with a great deal of diversity in historical and cultural backgrounds, and in economic and political conditions, and are at different stages of development.

It does not help that some are democratically elected leaders and thus can legitimately claim to represent their people, but the presence of dictators among them raises questions about the credibility of some delegations and who they actually represent.

It is thus much harder to find anything that binds such diverse countries today than it was in 1955. Fifty years ago, we had a common destiny. Our desire to be independent and to be free from poverty brought the 29 leaders to Bandung. And we had a common enemy: the scourge of European colonialism.

Fast forward 50 years, now we are all independent nations, and some are wealthy, but most are still in poverty and underdeveloped. As tempting as it may seem to put the blame for the current state of affairs on economic globalization, it is unlikely that the Asian and African leaders will be able to forge a common position on this when many of these countries are among the prime beneficiaries of the trade and economic liberalization measures of the last decade or so.

Our common enemy remains poverty, something many nations, for one reason or another, have failed to overcome in spite of their independence. In some countries, people may be even worse off than when they were still ruled by Europeans. Many Asian countries have made some advances on the economic front, but there are still many more poor people -- in absolute terms -- in Asia, including some fast-growing economies like India and China, than there are in Africa.

Acknowledging a common problem is one thing. Agreeing on a common approach is another one entirely. The latter would touch on the economic, and ultimately, the political system adopted in each country. But that would be too touchy a subject to be discussed at a forum like this.

Forging a strategic partnership for most countries still dogged by domestic problems, is a long distance dream, especially in the absence of the necessary infrastructure. Only a handful of countries are well-positioned to take advantage of such a partnership. If anything, this summit could herald the beginning of a partnership between the two continents.

For what it's worth, the gathering is really a poor man's club, in which the members meet to discuss their problems and compare notes on how they go about resolving them. Who knows, out of these exchanges we may not only learn from one another, but we may also discover opportunities for working the problems out together. Join the club.