The Africa Solution
How to save the continent M. Harrison
"It takes a revolution to make a solution." -- Bob Marley
OK, so what do we do about Africa? Actually, where do we even start? Disease, war, poverty, human rights abuse? Most pundits bring it down to poverty, and thus ask for more money for the continent as the solution. But let's get serious here. Who thinks Africa hasn't been making money?
The continent has been making plenty of money since the slave trade, but history has shown that the acquisition of wealth has no bearing on the quality of life for the African people. Guinea - the location of Africa's first permanent European trading post - exported gold, ivory and their own people, among other things, to the tune of some $7 million dollars per year, all the way back in the 1580s. As early as 1770, the king of modern-day Benin was earning $500,000 a year (over $5 million in today's dollars) in the slave trade. The Good King, in a prelude to the fiscal intelligence of successive African rulers, quickly squandered his blood money on guns and industrial-grade alcohol.
Sadly, few things have changed since the end of the slave trade and colonization. No longer selling their own people into Western bondage, African governments continue to export other lucrative natural resources for a healthy profit. Libya, for example, has been rich in oil since the 1959 discovery of the substance, and recently inked a $900 million gas deal with BP. Through its state-owned wealth of Black Gold, Libya has even provided an impressive welfare state by African standards, one that might even impress Ted Kennedy. But all is not peachy in Al-Jamahiriyyah al-`Arabiyyah al-L?biyyah aš-Š`biyyah al-Ištirakiyyah al-`Udhma - far from it. Libya's wealth is substantially concentrated in the country's elite, the nation is ranked 152 out of 157 countries in the 2006 global Index of Economic Freedom, and it also happens to be run by one Muammar Qaddafi, a serial supporter of Islamic terrorism. It has some of the worst human rights conditions in the world, lacking even a right to free speech and a fair trial, and boasts the most restricted media in the Arab world, which is quite a feat. It also has the least creative flag design in the modern world, or perhaps ever designed by the mind of man, the Green Rectangle. Truly mind-numbing. Want more proof of what money won't buy you in Africa?
As centuries of trade money failed to reach the people of Africa, rich Western ex-imperialists rapidly felt guilty about leaving Africa in such a deprived state, and turned to foreign aid to help the starving huddled masses. But that didn't work, either. African governments (surprise) kept getting in the way. AidAction, an NGO based in South Africa, recently published a study finding that 90% of aid to Africa is lost to waste, internal recycling within donor countries, misdirected spending and high fees for consultants.
ONE still wants more aid, though, asking for another $29 billion to Africa by 2010, calling it the amount necessary to "meet the needs of the world’s poorest by 2015." OK. And then they all starve and die on January 2, 2016? Or perhaps they survive to still face endemic warfare, a lack of public infrastructure, a non-existent job market, and distorted agriculture markets. Or perhaps they'll even survive to have ten kids, expand the population and thus only increase their country's dependence on foreign magnanimity. Sounds great, Angelina.
Seeing these undesirable effects, economists and activists are now recognizing the severe inefficiency of African aid. Kenyan economist James Shiwati told the German magazine Der Spiegel, "If the industrial nations really want to help the Africans, they should finally terminate this awful aid. The countries that have collected the most development aid are also the ones that are in the worst shape." Indeed.
Instead, how about a permanent change, allowing aid money and trade money to finally reach the African people? How about a better world of human rights, education, and growth for the children of the continent?
The true problem
The basic trouble is African politics hasn't changed much since the end of imperialism. Domestic oppression by African dictators has seamlessly replaced imperial oppression, leaving the African people without basic building blocks for progress, development and growth. In the same tradition as the dictators who sold their people into slavery and then squandered the profits, African governments have squandered aid, denied their people the rule of law, and failed to respect basic human rights, including, among many others, the right to choose one's government, to pursue a lawful calling, to trade with the benefit of enforceable contracts, and to own property. The billions of dollars of Western aid to these incompetent and corrupt African governments only reinforces this dire state of affairs, and ends up being far worse for human rights in Africa than any so-called conflict diamond.
African governments: Modern slavery
In countries such as Rwanda, Democracy ends up being little more than a vehicle through which totalitarian despots receive an enthusiastic mandate for the slaughter and/or oppression of the country's political minority. This brutal oppression, of course, tends to inspire dissent, which usually leads to more brutal oppression. The broken record of African governance post-independence has mostly been the establishment of one-party rule, brutal oppression, and socialist nationalism. Sadly, to this day, little has changed.
Many African governments also have economic policies working to stagnate their people's growth and institutionalize bureaucracy and corruption. In a study of Ethiopia, the only African nation never to be colonized by the West, economist Jude Wanninski found some fascinating causes of the country's legendary poverty. For one, the country boasts a 89% marginal tax rate on a farmer's profits above $4,235. Now, $4,235 is undoubtedly a lot of money in Ethiopia, and thus likely seems a natural point for the socialists to demand the "rich" Ethiopians to pay their Fair Share (89%), typical of the dogmatic socialist cant that there exists a such thing as a fixed economic pie. But in the enlightened rest of the world, $4,235 is still considered poverty, and thus poverty is all the Ethiopian tax system serves to reinforce. Other asinine tax policies from Ethiopia's veritable People's Republic include no personal income tax deductions, for any purpose whatsoever, yet strangely imposing a ridiculous glut of miscellaneous excise taxes including an 80% tax on soft drinks, 40% on mineral water, 150% on beer (but only 40% on wine), 100% on gasoline, 80% on dishwashers, 30% on carpets, 20% on dolls and toys, 110% on passenger cars, “whether or not assembled,”, and 40% on televisions and video cameras.
In Africa, the other people making tons of money, aside from the governments, are the multinational corporations who strike a deal to export whatever lucrative state-owned resource the nation sits on. With a system of private property rights, of course, like in the West, multinationals would be contracting with the people - tribes, farming co-ops, families - who owned the land bearing the resources. But in Africa, because the state usually owns almost everything, the profits go straight to multinational CEOs and the African rulers while their people starve. Ethiopia's constitution, typical of African legal systems, explicitly limits private ownership of land to not more than 99 years, before it reverts back to state ownership. As a result, the state is who gets most of the property, and it is the state who strikes the deals with foreign investors. Up until recently, the French even gave its entrepreneurs a tax-deduction for bribing foreign governments. That's, sadly, how it gets done. Recently, the Financial Times offered its readers a friendly Doing Business in Africa guide. The first tip? "Be prepared to devote considerable time to lobbying government ministers to get what you need."
The West: Contemporary colonization
Clearly, out-of-touch and paternalistic Western governments do little to help these institutional problems, and often end up entrenching them. The problem is not simply that existing aid funds oppressive African despots; it is that existing aid reinforces an oppressive status quo.
The existing African political arrangement itself is mostly the result of borders originally drawn up by the colonial powers, from the Berlin conference all the way to African independence. For example, in the region now known as Ghana, more than twenty independent kingdom-states existed, before the West sagaciously decided they should all be one nation under one government. Nigeria, another Western construction, (the name Nigeria came from a dream a colonial general's wife had) is similarly diverse, and constantly has violence flaring among its many ethnic and religious groups. But like Iraqi Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis, and the Chinese and Taiwanese, perhaps these groups may best find peace by dividing themselves into separate states. Tell me, does Bono really know whether the Ijaw and the Jukun should live united under one common flag?
The right to choose one's government is a fundamental human right, and the denial of this right is at the root of nearly all of the violence in Africa. Incredibly, during the past 50 years, there have been onlytwo wars between different African nations -- all of the other bloody warfare comes from civil war, attempted coups, and other forms of armed rebellion against the "recognized" State. Those governments lucky enough to be internationally recognized often provoke massive political resistance among the diverse ethnic groups they attempt to govern. As a result, those dissenters are only considered by the West to be "opposition movements" against the recognized governments who continue to have their repression funded with foreign aid.
There is an old saying in Washington politics, "If you're not at the table, you're on the menu," and it's even more true in Africa. Thousands of tribal groups are disenfranchised and alienated by the existing political structure. Where independent African tribes once traded freely with other tribes, they are now resigned to the confiscatory Big Brother and his obligatory Afro-Marxist oppression. Hannah Arendt, in the Origins of Totalitarianism, brilliantly argued that this lack of a social contract between the people of Africa and their governments has prevent any meaningful, positive form of national cohesion from forming on the continent.
Furthermore, Western governments also continuously prove that they know nothing about intervention into African markets, just like they knew nothing about effectively colonizing Africans. A great example is with DDT, the proven insecticide that had eradicated malaria in the rich world by 1960. Thanks to the myopic tree-huggers who decided DDT was too earth-unfriendly for the developing continent, malaria is now the biggest killer of all African children in 2007. (Save the spots in my apples, says Joni, kill African babies instead!) Kenya's Mr. Shiwati even noted that mass donations of clothing to Africa can be ineffective, as most of the clothes end up getting sold at local markets at high prices, which ends up harming Africa's local textiles markets. Africa's markets are even further repressed by Western protectionist trade policies, which subsidize Western farmers' production of goods that are actually produced more cheaply and more efficiently in developing nations.
Even recent innovations like George Bush's "Millennium Challenge Account" continue to fail in their admittedly noble humanitarian goals. The MCA attempts to channel assistance to countries with a record of "good governance." Good governance, says who? The U.S. amazingly still bestowed that title upon Rwanda’s Paul Kagame and Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni, among others, both responsible for the slaughter of four million in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The solution
There are, admittedly, many forces conspiring to keep Africans poor and repressed. A solution is not easy, but the existing status quo will continue to make every dollar of aid a wasted endeavor until we do something to change it. The solution to Africa's problems is correspondingly complicated. Africa needs better government, in the form of a legitimate social contract between governments and their people, peaceful and universally-respected borders, the established rule of law, improved infrastructure, and the well-regulated access to open markets. But the continent also needs less government in the form of socialist meddling, social oppression, and Western paternalism. It should develop human rights before more democracy, and economic growth before more aid. Most importantly, however, it requires independence.
1. Revolution | Debt cancellation upon regime change
In many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, popular revolution is the only possible solution to the myriad problems facing the people. Whether this revolution occurs in order to redraw national borders, have groups secede to avoid civil war, establish a new constitutional system of rights and law, remove totalitarian dictators, or remove the bonds of socialism, a profound change in the way these countries are organized and governed is the first necessity for the achievement of basic human rights. Before the laws change, no meaningful progress will ever be made in Africa.
Revolution, however, need not be violent. Nonviolent revolution, in the modern era, is becoming increasingly effective at bringing about political change. Georgia's authoritarian government fell in 2003 in a “rose” revolution brought about by protests with tens of thousands on the streets, and Ukraine in an “orange” revolution involving thousands of Ukrainians camped in the December snow. Various African countries, such as Benin, Cape Verde, Ethiopia, Ghana, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Senegal, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia, have already taken steps to rid of dictators, improve their voting system or otherwise improve their government with mostly peaceful protests. A Freedom House analysis of 67 overthrown dictatorships argued that “broad-based, non-violent civic resistance—which employs tactics such as boycotts, mass protests, blockades, strikes and civil disobedience" can "delegitimize authoritarian rulers and erode their sources of support, including the loyalty of armed defenders.” The Economist adds that, to be most effective, the revolution must be "indigenous, broad-based and, ideally, non-violent." Non-governmental organizations around the world are currently working to provide support for popular, non-violent regime change around the world, helping the African people stand on their own. This organization joins them in their noble cause.
Western governments should further encourage popular revolution in Africa by canceling a country's debt only upon regime change or other profound reform. Otherwise, African governments will continue to waste the people's money, and thus continually have their regressive corruption subsidized by the West. The buck should stop here, and the profligate tyrants must go. The more reforms required for debt relief, the more there is an incentive to actually do something, finally.
2. Free trade | The road to a prosperous and independent Africa
After the African people enjoy secured property and other human rights, global trade will do much to bring them prosperity and growth. If Africa were to increase its share of world exports by one percent, the resulting economic gains would generate $70 billion for the continent – several times what the continent currently receives in aid.
Economic growth, unlike any other form of aid, is expansive, and creates value-added benefits for future generations. Trade creates jobs, provides funds for necessary public services, and also helps create independence from a subsistence lifestyle. J. Sachs stated it well when he said, "Global capitalism is surely the most promising institutional arrangement for worldwide prosperity that history has ever seen." He also found that open economies grew 1.2 percentage points per year faster than closed or socialist economies, that fast-growing countries tend to have high rates of saving and low spending, and that the rule of law - an absence of corruption, government breach of contract, expropriation of property, and inefficiency in public administration - is indispensable for growth.
The modern globalized economy offers even more advantages in the growth process. Manufacturing can take the place of domestic agriculture in land-locked countries, or others not as rich in natural resources. Southeast Asian countries like Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia, despite lacking natural resources, created profitable conditions for manufacturing exports through pro-growth policies, and all grew their economies at rates several times higher than African countries are currently growing.
Not surprisingly, the policies of Western governments also inhibit the growth of African trade. Rich countries continue to subsidize their own agricultural sectors to the tune of a billion dollars a day, depriving African farmers access to the markets they need, and denying Western consumers the affordable basic goods they demand. For example, Ghana can export raw cocoa duty-free to Europe, but a 25% tariff is imposed if they process that cocoa before exporting it to Europe. The miser starving Africa isn't the person who doesn't give to charity - it's the Western farmer demanding special protection from his government to provide services more efficiently performed in developing nations.
3. Global charity and assistance | The moral obligation
Part of the Africa solution is recognizing that it is not easy. Africa's endemic poverty has no solution but through sustained economic growth, which can temporarily disrupt living situations and cause cyclical unemployment. Africa's terrible governance also has no solution but popular revolution, either by vote or by force, to institute a new system of governance. As these processes are neither comfortable nor immediate, the West has a moral responsibility to help this transition.
This process requires intelligent, directed person-to-person charity and decentralized financial support. Private charity should lead the way. As Hurricane Katrina proved, private compassion is a far more efficient provider of human aid than federal governments. The responsiveness and financial vitality of charitable movements have been demonstrated with the financial philanthropy of Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, as well as the flood of private charitable support after 9/11. Charity can aid in conflicts without creating political complication, such as in the Sudan. Development assistance also reflects the best American tradition of helping others help themselves, compassion and generosity. Such is the province of concerts and bracelets - not public policy. Most importantly, private charity leaves beneficiaries with no debt to repay.
Existing state aid, if it must be preserved, should preferably be channeled through organizations such as the World Bank and IMF who should continue to provide loan support. However, these organizations should refrain from lending directly to governments, instead instituting microlending and other innovative methods of getting money to the people.
4. Technology | The second revolution
Finally, one great advantage Africa will enjoy in its future growth is the facilitation of growth by modern technology. As the industrial revolution aided the unparalleled 19th century growth of America, and 20th century advancements aided the Asian Tigers and other developing economies, the information age will do even more to help Africa develop as the continent grows and technology expands. Facing saturated markets at home, the newest profit opportunity for technology companies is in emerging markets, who the industry calls the "next billion customers." NextBillion.net chronicles many of these market-based technological advances, from land mine detection technology and advancements in health care, to financial services to African entrepreneurs.
The most important advancements are undoubtedly taking place in computer and internet technology. As the internet is perhaps the greatest communications and global trade tool yet designed, its implementation in developing nations is indispensable to their development and progress. When a team of MIT education and technology experts said in 2004 they were going to overcome the digital divide by making a $100 laptop for the poor children of the world, called the "one laptop per child" project, they were ridiculed. Now Quanta has already developed a $200 laptop (saving money, among other things, by using open-source software instead of Microsoft Windows), and Dell is already selling a $336 laptop in China. Now, Quanta has now created a new business unit for "emerging PCs" with the explicit aim of creating a new market for the low-cost machines. Its rival AMD has even pledged to get half the world's population online by 2015.
Cellular telephones, despite my colleague J. Hartfield's colonialist objections, also help Africans farmers to communicate sales and supply lines, find employment, check prices in markets, and communicate with families, all currently impossible thanks to the African lack of roads and other necessary infrastructure. Innovative cell phone technologies abound to soon make access even wider. SharedPhone, a South African company, has developed software that turns SIM cards into payphones, so that entrepreneurs can enter a new business with minimal investment. And as hiring local staff is essential to securing the "next billion" customers , the future progress of technology in Africa will create even more jobs for the people.
Sounds better than paying dictators to slaughter children, doesn't it?
The above work is the opinion of the author, and not necessarily that of the Prometheus Institute
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