Pg. 22
Africa’s economic growth had been in a steady decline, poverty levels were on the rise and the stench of rampant corruption was growing ever more pungent. (After his meeting with President Reagan, Zaire’s President Mobutu Sese Seko had asked for easier terms to service the country’s US $5 billion debt; he then promptly leased Concorde to fly his daughter to her wedding in the Ivory Coast.
Pg. 27
Scarcely does one see Africa’s (elected) officials or those African policymakers charged with the development portfolio offer an opinion on what should be done, or what might actually work to save the continent from its regression. This very important responsibility has, for all intents and purposes, and to the bewilderment and chagrin of many an African, been left to musicians who reside outside of Africa.
Pg. 37
Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame put it most simply: ‘The primary reason [that there is little to show for the more than US $300 billion of aid that has gone to Africa since 1970] is that in the context of post-Second World War geopolitical and strategic rivalries and economic interests, much of this aid was spent on creating and sustaining client regimes of one type or another, with minimal regard to developmental outcomes on our continent’.
Pg. 44
A World Bank study found that as much as 85 percent of aid flows were used for purposes other than that for which they were initially intended, very often diverted to unproductive, if not grotesque ventures. Even as far back as the 1940s, international donors were well aware of this diversion risk. In 1947, Paul Rosenstein-Rodin, the Deputy Director of the World Bank Economics Department, remarked that ‘when the World Bank thinks it is financing an electric power station, it is really financing a brothel’.
Pg. 94
There’s a mosquito net maker in Africa. He manufactures around 500 nets a week. He employs ten people, who (as with many African countries) each have to support upwards of fifteen relatives. However hard they work, they can’t make enough nets to combat the malaria-carrying mosquito.
Enter vociferous Hollywood movie star who rallies the masses, and goads Western governments to collect and send 100,000 mosquito nets to the affected region, at a cost of million dollars. The nets arrive, the nets are distributed, and a ‘good’ deed is done. With the market flooded with foreign nets, however, our mosquito net maker is promptly put out of business. His ten workers can no longer support their 150 dependants (who are now forced to depend on handouts), and one mustn’t forget that in a maximum of five years the majority of the imported nets will be torn, damaged and of no further use.
Pg. 94
One is the pooling of risk. Rather than individual countries reaching for the bond markets independently, African countries could form groups or regional coalitions, issue debt as a single entity, and divide the proceeds (and debt service obligations) accordingly. Every county would get the upside benefit of cash from the bond issue but bear the downside risk of one or many of the countries in the pool defaulting (in which case the non-defaulting countries have to repay the borrowings on behalf of the offending country or countries).
Pg. 106
The list of China’s involvement in Africa is endless. All but five African countries now have relations with Beijing: Burkina Faso, The Gambia, Malawi, Sao Tome and Principe, and Swaziland had not yet signed up to the China-Africa Cooperation Forum at the time of writing. China’s African role is wider, more sophisticated and more businesslike than any other country’s at any time in the post-war period.
Pg.117
But perhaps the most egregious examples come form Africa itself. African countries impose an average tariff of 34 percent on agricultural products from other African nations, and 21 percent on their own products. As a result, trade between African countries accounts for only 10 percent of their total exports. By contrast, 40 percent of North American trade is with other North American countries, and 63 percent of trade by countries in Western Europe is with other Western European countries.
Pg. 124
There are numerous policies the African leadership should seriously embrace to boost trade and increase regional cohesiveness and integration. A simple decree to remove inter-country trade barriers, which average more that 30 percent, would be a good start. It is bizarre that shipping a car from Japan to Abidjan, in Ivory Coast, costs US $1,500, whereas moving it from Abidjan to Addis Ababa, in Ethiopia, costs US $5,000.
Pg. 131
How much better would it have been if just half of the million-dollar donation had been invested as micro-lending in the country instead? Within five years, our mosquito net manufacturer could have expanded production to meet growing demand, doubled his workforce (and by default provided support for another 150 of their dependents), and his product would be there to replace the nets as they fell into disrepair.
Would any more millions in Africa die from poverty and hunger? Probably not-the reality is that Africa’s poverty-stricken don’t see the aid flows anyway. Would there be more wars, more coups, more debts? Doubtful-without aid, you are taking away a big incentive for conflict. Would roads, schools and hospitals cease being built? Unlikely.
What do you thing Africans would do if aid were stopped, simply carry on as usual? Too many African countries have already hit rock bottom-ungoverned, poverty-stricken, and lagging further and further behind the rest of the world each day; there is nowhere further down to go.
Pg. 152
The West can choose to ignore all of this, but, like it or not, the Chinese are coming. And it is in Africa that their campaign for global dominance will be solidified. Economics comes first, and when they own the banks, the land and the resources across Africa, their crusade will be over. They will have won.
The mistake the West made was giving something for nothing. The secret of China’s success is that its foray into Africa is all business. The West sent aid to Africa and ultimately did not care about the outcome; this created a coterie of elites and, because the vast majority of people were excluded from wealth, political instability has ensued.
China, on the other hand, sends cash to Africa and demands returns. With returns Africans get jobs, get roads, get food, making more Africans better off, and (at least in the interim) the promise of some semblance of political stability. It is the economy that matters.
THE BEST TIME TO PLANT A TREE IS TWENTY YEARS AGO. THE SECOND-BEST TIME IS NOW.
