Global Policy Forum

Africa’s Losing Battle

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Guardian
November 18, 2002

Africa's plight is not as bad as the world thought, it is worse. More than 30 million people on the continent could be facing famine within months. Cameras will, no doubt, bear witness to this terror, filling screens with fly-specked sacks of bones, skin and bulging eyes. Most will be dead by the time the pictures arrive in the west's living rooms. There are a depressing variety of ways that Africa's masses have become wretched and weak. In Ethiopia, the lengthening of dry spells and the shortening of rainy seasons have cast a long shadow of hunger. In southern Africa food shortages are compounded by pandemic levels of Aids. In Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe's misguided policies were designed to kill off the opposition, but have ended up starving a region. Meanwhile Congo, Angola, Sudan and the Ivory Coast are all caught between war and peace.


At the moment, Africa's future engenders little hope and much despair. The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation reckons half of sub-Saharan Africa goes hungry and, in nutritional terms, its countries are worse off now than 30 years ago. In the 1990s, Africa's lost decade, aid to the region dropped by a third. More than 300 million people live in extreme poverty in sub-Saharan Africa. Unplugged from the global economy, the second largest continent's share of exports is about half of Belgium's.

To stop the slide into poverty and anarchy an ambitious deal was struck between rich nations and poor ones in Africa. The wealthy world would back economic and political reforms on the continent with cash. The New Partnership for Africa's Development, or Nepad, hoped to end wars, encourage better governments and facilitate a surge of foreign and local investment. More aid was promised, as was money to write off the debts of Africa's poorest nations - allowing governments to spend taxes on hospitals and schools, instead of repaying foreign creditors. International institutions set up a global fund to slow, and ultimately reverse, the spread of the continent's biggest killers: Aids, tuberculosis and malaria. Perhaps most important, the aim was to reduce iniquities in the world's trading system that strangled growth in Africa. The plan was to move the landmass from the periphery of international debate to the centre.

Yet in Africa the clocks are going backwards. Despite the fine promises, efforts to raise literacy and improve people's lives are faltering. Only five of sub-Saharan Africa's 47 countries are expected to meet the global goal of halving the number of people living in poverty by 2015. The reason is that the west's money and resolve to open markets to African goods have not materialised. No change means no chance for African nations to grow, which means no cash for social development. Africa's poor, those who survive on a dollar a day, are predominately found in rural areas. The economies of America and European remain fortresses - built on the foundations of $1bn-a-day subsidies to farmers, a tiny proportion of their workforce - designed to keep out agricultural goods. The cash fed to farmers in the west leads to an overproduction of goods - Europe offers sweeteners for sugar and the US cultivates cotton growers. This in turn helps to depress prices on the world's markets.

Not only can poor countries not export into rich nations, but the income they gain from selling goods has dropped precipitously. So world cotton prices - which support the livelihoods of 10 million people in central and west Africa - are lower than at any time since the depression of the 1930s. Africa's cotton belt, Oxfam estimates, lost $301m last year, about a quarter of what it receives in US aid. Although world trade talks in Doha last year ended with an agreement to end agricultural subsidies, both the US and the EU, via CAP, are upping welfare payments to farmers. While the load is lightened for agribusiness in the west, the burden on Africans' back gets bigger. African nations owe about $300bn in external debt. Almost half of this is owed by the 34 African states eligible for debt relief. And even one of the most successful African reformers - Uganda - is finding sustaining its debt almost impossible because of the dramatic drop in coffee prices.

African health spending, at $13 a person a year, will remain the lowest in the world unless economies grow. Without healthy populations there is no point in generating jobs. In countries ravaged by Aids, like Botswana and Malawi, most people do not live to see their 41st birthday. Yet only 10% of the annual global health research budget, worth $70bn, goes to tackle diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis and HIV-Aids that constitute 90% of the world's health problems. It is a little bewildering that a deal, although close, has not been signed to supply cheap treatments to Africa.

Many donors, especially the US, justify inaction by saying that poverty is best alleviated by a combination of democracy and market liberalisation. Democracy is not a precondition of development. The rise of China, whose economic success has lifted hundreds of millions out of misery, was accomplished under one-party rule. The answer of how rich countries became rich might be found in our own history. Britain's industrial revolution was forged in a land where governments were elected by elites and corruption and patronage was rife. Protectionism fuelled Britain's economic growth. Similar circumstances occurred in Germany and the United States. Africa is different. It has a history of oppression, poor education and often malign government. Africa may not achieve in decades what took centuries in Europe.

There are good reasons to be cautious as one country's solution is another's problem. What worked in east Asia may not have the same effect in Africa. But in the world post-September 11, there has been an overall acceptance that we have to be tough on terrorism and tough on the causes of terrorism, of which penury and subsequent disillusionment and disenfranchisement are undoubtedly part. It is in the interest of rich countries that they be patient and make sacrifices to ensure fairer trade, more aid and more generous debt relief. The west might have to wait and watch African nations struggle to adopt better, more open governance and let democracies grow at a slower, more organic pace.

The problem can be localised in one continent, but the solution has to come from the developed world. Given $200bn to spend, what is a better option: a Marshall plan for Africa or a martial plan for Iraq? The answer is that the only just war to launch is the fight against poverty.


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FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Global Policy Forum distributes this material without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. We believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in 17 U.S.C § 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.