WITH A PER CAPITA income 50
percent less than that of the next poorest region, South Asia, sub-Saharan
Africa’s growth has lagged since independence 50 years
ago.
Many reasons
have been put forward for the region’s slow development: a lack of human and
government capacity, poor infrastructure and trade access, the effects of too
little (or too much) outside aid, the legacy of arbitrary colonial boundaries,
low productivity, the Cold War, climate, and geography. From the vantage of
most of
Africa’s leadership the answer to the
question ‘Why is Africa Poor?’ is because of the world at large, and the
solution thus out of their hands.
But the world has not
denied
Africa the market and financial means
to compete: far from it. The modern era of globalisation has afforded
unprecedented opportunities to billions in emerging markets. It may have
hiccupped recently, but global wealth has trebled since 1990. It is the varying
abilities of governments to translate such opportunities into development and
prosperity which has accounted, in large measure, for the widening inequalities
within and between countries.
It has not been because
of aid per se, even though this
thesis has recently gained currency. Nor is African poverty solely a consequence
of poor African infrastructure or trade access.
Africa
has enjoyed preferential access to international markets, but has still slipped
behind because of its over-reliance on primary commodity exports. While much of
Africa’s infrastructure has deteriorated and fallen
behind that found elsewhere in the world, this has not always been the
case.
Africa’s poverty has not been
because the necessary development and technical expertise is unavailable
internationally. It can be bought on the international market, just as many in
Asia have chosen to do. It could even have been accessed
for free via donors.
Africa is not poor because
its people do not work hard. Their productivity is low due to various factors
including poor health and skills, inefficient land use, and chauvinism. But few
if any persons worldwide could claim to work as hard (for less reward) than
rural African women.
Nor is
Africa poor because it lacks natural resources. Compared
to
Asia, it is a venerable treasure-trove,
from hydro to carbons to hydro-carbons. Yet, with few exceptions (
Botswana is
one), these resources have been used only to enrich elites.
And
Africa’s
people are poverty stricken not because the private sector does not exist or
has been unwilling to work in sometimes difficult settings. They are, though
the private sector is often not ‘private’ at all, but rather an elite-linked
system of rent-seeking.
The main reason
why
Africa’s people are poor is because their
leaders have made this choice.
The record shows
that countries can grow their economies and develop faster if leaders take
sound decisions in the national interest. Success in the global economy has not
required a miracle, an elixir. Good examples to learn from abound, from
Vietnam to
Costa
Rica to
Georgia.
African leaders face particularly difficult challenges; no one could dispute
that. Yet in other parts of the world they are usually regarded as obstacles to
be overcome, not as permanent excuses for failure.
In a half century of
independence,
Africa has not realised its
potential.
Instead, its greatest
natural assets have undermined its prosperity.
Africa’s
youth, far from being a huge source of talent and energy to be harnessed, are regarded
a destabilising force – a threat to nations’ security – because they are
largely unemployed and uneducated. By 2025 one in four young people worldwide
will be from sub-Saharan
Africa.
Far from being the font
for development,
Africa’s oil wealth has served
to instead enrich elites. For example, despite an estimated $400 billion in oil
revenues over 40 years ensuring that oil revenues per capita rose from $33 to
$325 from 1965 to 2000, the number of Nigerians living on less than one dollar
per day rose from 19 million in 1970 (of a population of 70 million) to 90
million (from 120+ million). Instead of being the fuel for
development, oil has tainted governance and accountability across
Africa.
Far from being the
world’s breadbasket,
Africa’s agriculture
potential has similarly been squandered. Despite many African states possessing
natural advantages, 35 of 48 sub-Saharan economies were net food importers at
the end of the 2000s. Africa’s share of world agricultural exports has halved
since 1970, to under 4 percent. Not enough time, effort and money has been invested in
improving yields through extension services and better systems.
If
Africa’s
dismal economic performance can be put down to bad choices by African leaders,
then we have to ask: Why have they made them?
A key reason is because
Africans and the international community have allowed them to.
African leaders have
successfully managed, with the help of donors, to externalise their problems,
making them the responsibility (and apparently the fault, too) of others. In
response, the donors have lacked the tools or political will to manage the
relationship and their money flows according to the reform and delivery record
of the recipients. In the case of ’fragile’
or ‘failed’ states, too often donors have stepped, unwittingly or not, into the
shoes of the state and thereby weakened the already tenuous link of
accountability between the government and its people.
That African leaders
were permitted to get away with ruinous, self-interested decisions can be
attributed in large part to a relative lack of democracy (or to single-party
dominance) in
Africa. There has been little
bottom-up pressure on leadership to make better choices, notwithstanding the
encouraging growth of civil society in parts of the continent over the past
decade.
Africa’s tradition of neo-patrimonial
‘big man’ chieftain styles of rule, in which favours are dispensed and power
maintained through kinship ties and sometimes witchcraft and the church, has
done it no favours in economic terms.
But the cultural aspect
has worked both ways - an uncomfortable fact that most scholars and
practitioners have not subjected to sufficient scrutiny. Whereas African
leadership has lacked the commitment to popular welfare displayed by many Asian
leaders, Asian societies have in turn assumed themselves a responsibility (and
suitable mindset) to fill their part of the development bargain – the
Confucianism aspect so often cited but so hard to quantify in
East
Asia’s success.
Africa’s relatively low
population density has also played a role.
Africa
has historically lacked the critical mass of skilled people to participate in
development, especially in the cities, resulting in high labour costs and low
economic growth.
Africa’s land holding
structures have also been an impediment to entrepreneurship where they have
impeded the collateralisation of land value through individual ownership and
mortgage schemes. There has been little interest among the leadership of many
countries for reform; and quite the opposite in
Zimbabwe, where land has been seized
and redistributed based on political allegiances.
The top-down imposition
of states and borders on
Africa’s rich ethnic
and sectarian tapestry by colonial powers has institutionalised weak governance
structures. These were both formed and maintained not by raising taxes and
ensuring public goods, as with European state-building for example, but by
international fiat from the colonial powers, through the Organisation of
African Unity, to today’s public alliance with the donors who have provided the
major share of many African governments’ expenditure.
Finally, and perhaps
most importantly, bad choices have been made because better choices in the
broad public interest were in very many cases not in the leaders’ personal and
often financial self-interest.
The answer to Why is
Africa
Poor? lies in the difference between success and failure in the world at
large – and African countries are no different in this regard. To succeed, the
continent’s leaders must put their long-suffering people rather than narrow
minded politics at the heart of
Africa’s development.
