Western protectionism is not the principal reason why
Africa is poor. Nor is Africa poor because of latent colonialism. After all,
many former colonies have prospered (e.g. Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand,
Australia and Canada). Meanwhile, Ethiopia, one of the poorest countries in the
world (except for six years) has been independent for forty CENTURIES. I'll
tell you why Africa is poor - but first, some gratuitous background
info:
How bad is it? It's really bad -
Africa is the poorest part of the world by a
long shot.
It is in
Africa that we find countries like Zaire, Ethiopia, Chad, and the Sudan, where
gross national product per person is less than $200 a year. The 41 nations of
sub-Saharan Africa produce no more wealth than the tiny country of Belgium,
which has only one FIFTIETH as many people.
Numbers like these mean that
Africans live in misery so desperate that Americans can scarcely imagine it.
Every year, thousands of Africans die of starvation. In bad years, hundreds of
thousands starve. Even in tropical parts of Africa untouched by famine, as many
as one third of all children die before the age of five. One in a hundred births
kills the mother. Malaria, sleeping sickness, hepatitis, leprosy, and AIDS are
rampant.
Nevertheless, the population of Africa grows faster than
that of any other region of the world. The total number of children, grand
children, and great-grand children that the average American woman will have is
14. The equivalent figure for the average African woman is 258! Despite the ravages of disease, starvation, and
inter-tribal warfare, Africa’s population increases by more than three percent a
year. At that rate, populations can double in 20 years.
Africa is
poor because of these three main reasons:
1.
Africa is poor because of bad
government.
Tribal
politics prevents the best from succeeding in life. Corruption and bureaucracy
literally robs the poorest in Africa. Land reform – whether in Ethiopia in the
1970s or in Zimbabwe more recently – has caused starvation. Wars kill off a
valuable economic input – labor – and create massive
instability.
But that
doesn’t mean that Africans are bad people. Not even all African politicians are
bad people. Case in point:
Botswana.
Through good
governance over the past 35 years Botswana has grown faster than any other
country in the world. “Yet,” says Robert Guest of The Economist, “cabinet
ministers have not awarded themselves mansions and helicopters, and even the
President has been seen doing his own shopping. Exchange controls were abolished
in 1999, the budget has usually been in surplus (even though this has slipped
recently), and GDP per head tops $3,000.”
That is not bad for a country that was one of the world’s
poorest when granted independence in 1966.
2.
Africa is poor because of lack of
investment caused by lack of property
rights
A key is
that fact that Africa is undercapitalized and
there is little investment occurring. This is because most people do not have
legal title over their own property. Thus, in many African countries it is
impossible to mortgage a home to gain the capital to create a business. For markets to operate, legal
structures are necessary and many African countries are lacking these. Call it
bad government, call it tribal politics the effect is still the same. Without
the notion of “ownership” and “rights to possess” by ordinary people, nothing
can improve. Sorry socialists and communists – capitalism works from the bottom
up - primordial ooze of society where socialism, collectivism and communism
never can. Hillary, it doesn’t “take a
village”.
It takes
a frigging fence.
3.
Africa is poor because we enable
their governments
Because we
are polite, and because we want to be seen as altruistic, we pander to the local
and national African politicians, we give aid to the countries where it is
promptly embezzled and we provide arms and support for their
regimes.
Since 1957, there have been 150 African heads of state,
but only SIX gave up power voluntarily. All the rest died in office, were
murdered, or were thrown out in military coups. In virtually every African
country, the people who rule are the people who own the weapons. This explains
why African countries spent $2.2 billion on imported weapons in 2003 while they
spent only $1.7 billion on medical care. Until it was overthrown in 1991, the
Ethiopian government was spending 60 percent of its revenue on the
military.
Zaire has not built a hospital in 20 years. In the ones
that still remain, nurses and doctors must be bribed to do their work. Road
maintenance is so primitive that the 1,100-mile drive from the Atlantic to
Zaire’s eastern border that used to take two days now takes three weeks. In the
rainy season, the trip may be impossible. Reliable electricity and plumbing are
hazy memories from the colonial past.
Rarely do African leaders show
the slightest evidence that they have any concern for their people. Consider
Madagascar. When the French controlled the island, they nearly succeeded in
wiping out the malaria mosquito. When the Malagasies were given independence,
they let public health programs fall into decay. By 1988, when 100,000
people had died of the disease in just six months, the national malaria-control
laboratory owned one Bunsen burner and two old microscopes. The Swiss
government, under World Bank auspices, has offered to donate 300 million tablets
of anti-malarial drugs — enough to treat the entire population for two years —
but the Madagascar government insisted on selling them rather than handing them
out free.
This ensures that most people won’t get them and that a few
government officials will get even richer than they already
are.
Zambia’s president, Kenneth Kaunda, has stolen so much of
the state budget that he is estimated to be worth as much as $6 billion. In the
capital, Lusaka, only an estimated one half of city employees actually
work.
The
government of the Ivory Coast has overstayed its legal welcome by 5 years, and
we do nothing.
There you
have it. Stark in its application and cold in reality. If we want to help Africa
we have only one choice and it is overthrow their corrupt governments by force
if necessary and create an international tribunal to run each country.
Sorry – colonialism got shit done. Time to go back to the
future.
"When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion - when
you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men
who produce nothing - when you see that money is flowing to those who
deal, not in goods, but in favors - when you see that men get richer by
graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against
them, but protect them against you - when you see corruption being
rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice - you may know that your
society is doomed."