CAPE TOWN — Less than four years ago, on the back of Tony Blair’s Africa Commission recommendations, the Group of 8 summit meeting at Gleneagles agreed to write off Africa’s debt and to double aid by 2010. Aid, trumpeted the British prime minister and his fellow celebrity travelers from Bono to Bob Geldof, was the answer to Africa’s development woes.
But this once politically correct view has suddenly become unfashionable.
A key reason is that aid has proved to be an extremely ineffective way of getting a return — in this case, development — on serious money flows. Some put total aid to Africa over the past 50 years as high as $1 trillion.
Another reason is that anti-aid arguments have become popularized, most notably of late by a Zambian-born economist, Dambisa Moyo, in her book, “Dead Aid: Why Aid is Not Working and How There is a Better Way For Africa.” She has toured the world, gaining the same celebrity status that her nemeses, from rock singers to actresses and pop-economists, have used.
Good for her. It’s not that many Africans (and others) haven’t been saying the same thing for a long time, but Moyo has got it into the bright lights at long last.
There is much that is right with her arguments — that aid removes the link of accountability between politicians and their populace; that it distorts market practices, making financing for investment and exports expensive.
And there is much that is correct, too, in the solutions she proposes, from better use of international bond markets, large-scale investment in infrastructure, better trade access and cheaper financing for small- and medium-size entrepreneurs.
But she is also wrong. Though there is an industry behind aid that shovels money to Africa whatever the governance, aid per se is not the problem with African development. It is not the sole or even the core reason why African leaders choose to disregard their constituents, or why the state is often predatory. It does not explain why aid is an effective development tool in other contexts, notably in Asia. It’s not the reason Africa is poor.
Another new, fresh-thinking book, “It’s Our Turn to Eat” by Michela Wrong, points to a different problem. Wrong is unsparing in her criticism of the cynicism of the aid industry in perpetuating the culture of governance impunity. But the politics of plunder largely preceded the advent of large-scale foreign largesse. Wrong’s detailed examination of Kenya identifies the main problem with African development as greed.
Greed is the reason why aid money to Africa is not spent on countries but goes through them, often to offshore bank accounts.
Yet Africans are no more or less greedy than others. So what lies behind such predatory behavior?
Part of the answer resides in the artificiality of the continent’s colonial constructs. Part lies in a combination of African “ethno-nationalism,” so visible in Kenya’s December 2007 election violence, and a culture of entitlement, in which the state, and not business, is the preferred (and sometimes only) route to wealth. Fighting over access to state resources along tribal lines is entirely rational in the circumstances.
Of course Kenya is not the only case. The confusion of party, public and private interests is widespread — even in countries like South Africa, once considered to be above this moral morass.
There is probably too much at stake, for donor states, international financial institutions and nongovernmental organizations to change course now. African leaders know this. As a result, delivery on the African part of the deal — to ensure peace, security and good governance — is much more difficult to enforce. Any alteration in the manner in which donor money is used and development agendas pursued must come from within Africa. Here, both Moyo and Wrong are dead right.
If Africa is to use aid productively, the responsible government — and not the donors — have to set the agenda. One way to do this is for African countries to ensure that only those projects will be considered that focus on the creation of hard (physical) and soft (education and health) infrastructure. And the government alone, not the donors, should identify priority projects, all of which need clear, identifiable and tangible outcomes and benchmarks — and not workshops, seminars and studies.
Two books on Africa by two women: one by an African-born economist who has spent much of her life in the West, the other by a Western-born journalist who has spent much of her time working in Africa. Both are significant steps toward understanding why the continent’s progress has been so poor.
Greg Mills heads the Johannesburg-based Brenthurst Foundation.
nytimes.com/tech
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