ARTICLES
Paths to Genuine Development in Africa
By Oyewamide Ojo*
Blindly raped by its leaders, and majority of its people in the grip of misery, Africa remains the major concern of the western nations. The sight of a good number of suffering Africans is horrible enough to pinch the collective conscience of the developed world. That Africans need assistance is not open question, but the kind of help that can free them from the painful hold of suffering is now a subject of debate.
The rich nations seem to impute the absence of development in Africa to lack of resources. Erroneously, one way they think can help Africa is by doling out money to their governments. Records have shown that lots of aid resources have been transferred to Africa over the years. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) reportedly said roughly $400 billion was disbused to Africa as official development assistance (ODA) between 1960 and 1997. Jennifer Whitaker was quoted as saying almost 20 percent of western countries' development assistance went to Africa in 1968. The continent, Whitaker said, got 22 percent of the total development assistance to the developing world in the 1980s, in spite of the fact that it was just 12 percent of the developing world's population. Twenty-nine Africa countries were said to have received more than $20 billion from the World Bank over the period of 1981 to 1991 to sponsor the Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs).
Tanzania, The New York Times reported in 1990, got about $10 billion from many western aid donors over the period of 20 years. The late Mobutu of Zaire was said to have got nearly $1.5 billion in various form of aid from US since he came to power in 1965. The US alone also gave the late Liberia's President Samuel Doe more than $375 million in aid between 1980 and 1985.1 Malawi was the third largest recipient of British aid as at 2000. Its share of British aid money was increase from 30.8 million pounds to 52 million pounds in 1999.2 Every African country has got its own considerable share of aid assistance from the western countries.
The nasty situation in virtually all African countries, however, undeservedly refutes the records of massive aid assistance. The continent sadly remains one region, which contains the dominant number of the world's poor. The 2002 UNDP Human Development report shows that real development is still far from Africa. In the report, 173 countries were studied, and no Africa country features in the high development class. Twenty-nine African countries are among the 36 countries in the low development class, and the last ten countries on the table are African countries. Only South Africa, Bostwana and Mauritius managed to belong to the middle development class. Scourged by bad leadership, Africa can no longer feed itself. The UN Food Agency recently warned that Africa was being faced with major hunger crisis with 38 million people threatened. The Agency said that nearly 18 million people were at risk of starving in Ethiopia, Eritrea and Sudan. It said further that another 16.4 million in Southern African States and 2.7 million in the Great Lakes Region were also faced with the risk of starvation.3
Wars over control of political power, and consequently mineral wealth have sent (and are still sending) a great number into their early grave. Many have lost their limbs and many others are in the refuge camps. Ogunkelu Nigeria's Minister of Cooperation and Integration in Africa once disclosed that there were about 382,000 refugees and 607,000 displaced persons in the West Africa sub-region alone.4 In short, economic stagnation, unemployment, rampant, crimes, poverty, hopelessness, hunger and corruption are the lots of Africa.
Of recent, the effectiveness of aid assistance has become a subject of intense debate. While those who benefit from it are now interested in how much aid assistance flows in, most people are concerned with how much it has served the people of the continent. Despite the massive aid resources Africa has received, majority of its people still wallows in the blackish pool of poverty. It is now a popular opinion that aid resources and multilateral lending have failed to engender growth in Africa. The United Nations was said to have declared in 1999 that 70 aid recipient countries were poorer than they were in 1980, and that another 43 were worse off than in 1970s.5 Sir William Ryrie, Executive Vice-President of the International Finance Corporation, reportedly said in 1990 that the West's record of aid for Africa in the 1980s could only be characterized as one of failure.6 Several people believe it is western aid that makes economic progress and human capital development impossible in Africa. In the opinion of Ayittey George, foreign aid has done more harms to Africa than good. The Ghanaian erudite scholar believes the huge amounts of economic and disaster relief aid dumped into Somalia have not helped the Somalis. He opines they have rather turned Somalia into a graveyard of aid.7 Ayittey said it was the flood of cheap food aid that destroyed the Africans' indigenous method of coping with droughts and famines which he believes are not new to Africa.
One cogent reason for the failure of aid assistance to Africa has been offered by Julian Morris:
"The reason transfers of financial resources from the governments of rich countries to the governments of poor countries have been largely unsuccessful in stimulating economic development is that lack of resources is not the primary problem in poor countries."8
Africa is a potential great continent blessed with stupendous mineral resources. It is safe to say Africa is the richest continent in the world in terms of the possession of mineral resources. Investigations have shown that Africa has the highest percentages of world's gold, cobalt manganese, phosphates, platinum, cocoa, coffee and palm oil. It also has considerable percentages of the world's potential of hydroelectric power supply, diamonds, chromium, coal, petroleum reserves, natural gas, iron ore, copper, bauxite, nickel and lead resources.9
Let us consider the specific case of Nigeria. The country is rich in both human and natural resources that it should not be on the dole. Rated number seven among the world's oil producing countries, records have shown that the countries have earned over $300 billion from oil since 1973.10 It is believed to have had several trillion standard cubic of natural gas buried in its soil. It is also believed to have had over 450 solid minerals, many of which serious attention has not been paid to, and each of which exists in commercial quantity. The country is blessed with large expanse of arable land, numerous coaster water resources, and is rich in forestry. Furthermore, Nigeria is the Africa's largest market with over 120 million people. The country has a large pool of highly skilled manpower, and Nigerians are said to have accounted for 30 percent of highly skilled Africans in Europe and North America.11 Yet, the country still begs for aid money from the developed countries.
If harnessed for development, mineral wealth in Africa is enough that the continent should not rely on dole. Unfortunately, enormous as the resources are, they are not enough to satiate the greed of African leaders. Instead of exploiting the mineral wealth for the alleviation of misery, the wealth is being controlled by those who have the levers of government and they only employ them for their own benefit. While squalor remains an unbearable company of most Africans, their leaders continue to swim in undeserved affluence.
The wealth of Africa and most of the aid resources and loans are never used for any meaningful development purpose, but instead have ended in the overseas private accounts of the political leaders. The greed and insensitivity of African leaders continue to deny their people the fruit of the enormous wealth and the compassion of foreign donors. No African government is able to show that it has spent billions of founds and dollars received from foreign donors on the projects for which the money was intended. The money meant for the amelioration of human misery is being spent on either white elephant projects or used to dispense patronage. Malawi in 2000 reportedly brought 39 new Mercedes Benzes for its ministers after receiving 52 million pounds from Britain.12 Part of funding was intended to improve the country's education system. A Kenya opposition MP, Joseph Munyao, in 2000 pleaded with donors not to channel funds through the office of the president which he described as "a bottomless pit that swallows any money that comes."13
Writing in The Sunday Telegraph in 2000, Christian Lamp lamented over irrelevant projects aid money was being spent on. He described the projects as hydroelectric plant in the desert, the nuclear power plant built on an earthquake faultline, the fishing project in the lake that run dry, the salt factory that never produced a grain of salt or gleaning international airport built amid a village of mud huts in African bush.14 Lawson Omolehodion in one of his articles in the Guardian said how Nigeria wasted $3 billion ADB loans.15 Various projects to be executed with the loan were made to fail, and the people did not benefit from them.
Africa does not need aid money from the developed nations, because corruption but not lack of resources is the major problem of the continent. Africans will benefit more from a fierce international attack on the greed of their leaders. What is the essence of aid money that will end up in the private foreign accounts of the African elite. It will serve Africans more than aid money if the developed world can help tame the monster of corruption. Research has unearthed corruption as the root of Africa's underdevelopment. Low investment, huge foreign debts, capital flight and deliberate wastage are some of the cost of corruption in Africa. Mr. Ibrahim Pam, assistance chief legal officer of the Nigeria Anti-corruption Commission said at a national workshop in November 2002 that evidence had shown that a large proportion of Nigeria's foreign debt, estimated at somewhere between $28 billion and $32 billion might have been salted away by corrupt leaders.
Why the Western countries are critical to the fight against the beast of corruption in Africa is the odious role played by their banks in encouraging the crime. Looted monies are kept in banks in Europe and America. Most of the billion of dollars in aid meant for projects were looted and kept in the banks of developed nations where they originated. Africa reportedly lost $140 billion through corruption. Nigeria's former High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, Prince Bola Ajibola , once noted that no less than $4 billion loot from Nigeria alone was stashed in the United Kingdom.16 Investigations have revealed that 30 European banks17 aided the late General Sani Abacha and his family in stealing over $5 billions from the coffers of Nigeria.18 The late Mobutu Sese Seko, Kamizu Banda and Jean Bendel Bokassa are some other African leaders aided by foreign banks to loot their countries.
Foreign financial institutions are the pipes through which African wealth is salted away. They also serve as safe havens to the loot of African leaders. Some Western nations are still reluctant to return the late Abacha's loot in spite of ample evidence. One form of law or another is always cited to turn down requests for disclosure and recovery of stolen wealth. These are the areas in which the developed world can help fight corruption in Africa.
Another way in which the developed Western countries can assist Africans better than aid is trade. One good example of helping Africa through trade is the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). Finally passed and signed into law in May 2000, the purpose of the Act is to serve as a stimulus for the African exports sector. Thirty-eight sub-Saharan nations are deemed eligible for the duty free and quota free entry of their exports into US market under AGOA. Congress recently amended the Act to extend even more favorable trade to nations reforming their economies.
But what is disturbing is there is a serious impediment for Africans to do business with the US. There is no freedom to travel, and business trips to the US is imperative in other for business representatives to access the US market and identify the US buyers and do all the other necessary things required to ensure some degree of success. There is difficulty in receiving visas from the US embassies in African countries. Granted some fake visa seekers are making things difficult but ways must be evolved to prevent denials of visas to genuine business representatives.
Another disturbing thing is the failure of most of industrialized nations to demonstrate faith in the operations of the free enterprise system. For instance in 2002, the Bush administration imposed tariffs as high as 30 per cent on different kinds of steel import in order to protect its local industries from foreign competition. The E.U, Japan and the US give farm subsidy and massive agricultural support to their farmers. This is worrisome for the developing nations. The E.U's average subsidies to every cow is put at $2.50, an amount which exceed the daily income of 70 per cent of Africans who live below the poverty line ($1 per day).19 The totality of support to US cotton growers in 2002 alone is about $3.9. 20 The negative result of such massive subsidies is the effective prevention of the flow of farm produce from poor agrarian countries to rich nations, therefore perpetuating poverty. Allowing farm produce from African countries to freely enter the markets of the advanced nations will benefit Africans more than aid resources.
We all know what wars have done to the people of the continent. Wars obstruct investment in Africa. Low investment and capital flight are some of the major effects of wars. Given the connection between peace and growth, it is unthinkable if Africa can get out the economic morass it has found it self in the face of the unabating conflicts and disorder. It has sadly been established that some Africa warlords enjoy the support of some people in the developed world. They incite Africans to wage war on another. Recently, President Obasanjo of Nigeria and Paul Biya of Cameroon disclosed that some people in the West piled pressures on them to wage war over Bakassi. This is enough for us to appreciate how much some people in the developed World contribute to conflicts in Africa. If the developed World really wants to assist Africans, it must contribute to the prevention of conflicts in the continent. Ways of discouraging those who incite Africans leaders into wars must be developed. Those who want wars because they want to sell their weapons must be exposed.
Africa is not a destitute continent. It does not deserve to always go on dole. Africans do not need aid money, because there is no essence of aid money that will not meaningfully affect their lives. Aid money rather expands the private purses of the leaders of Africa. What Africans need, and from which they believe they can benefit are a fierce international fight against corruption, free trade with the rich countries, and war prevention. These are the keys to growth and development in Africa.
* Oyewamide Ojo (oyewamide@ippanigeria) is of the Institute of Public Policy Analysis in Lagos, Nigeria.
References:
1 For more information on aid assistance to Africa, see the contribution of George Ayittey, 'Why Africa is Poor' to Sustainable Development: Promoting Progress or Perpetuating Poverty?, edited by Julian Morris.
2 The Sunday Telegraph (2000),National Interest, November 5, 2000, p.7
3 The Comet, December5 2002.
4 The Comet, June 9, 2002.
5 Morris, ed. (2002).
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
10 Saturday Tribune, October 12, (2002).
11 Daily Champion (1995).
12 The Sunday Telegraph (2002), National Interest, November 5, 2000, p.7.
13 Ibid.
14 Ibid.
15 The Guardian, September 12, 1997.
16 Nigeria Tribune, September 25, 2002, p.12.
17 Ibid.
18 Ibid.
19 The Punch December 9, 2002, p.15.
20 Ibid