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Who Is To Save Africa?
George B.N. Ayittey,
Ph.D.
In recent months, Africa has taken hefty blows on the chin from
a number
of quarters. It is bad enough to take a left hook when standing
but it
is something else when you are lying prostrate on the floor.
The first blow came from newly-elected French President Nicolas
Sarkozy
in a speech in Senegal in late July. He came to lay out his
vision for
African relations. Who can blame him? After all, China has a
5-Point
Agenda for Africa.
“Addressing a joint session of the National Assembly in Abuja,
Nigeria,
Chinese President, Mr. Hu Jintao, unveiled a five-point agenda
for the
African continent, noting that development is a good thing,
which should
not be denied any part of the world. He said he was in Nigeria
to
"increase mutual trust, enhance mutually-beneficial cooperation,
advance
common development, and forge a new type of China-Africa
strategic
partnership." China, Jintao added, will continue to promote
"multilateralism and democracy and rule of law in international
relations, establishing a new international political and
economic order
and safeguarding the legitimate rights and interests of Africa"
(This
Day, Lagos, April 28, 2006).
China to promote democracy and rule of law, while maintaining
cozy
relations with rogue regimes in Africa? Does Sarkozy have a
better
vision for Africa? He came to Senegal in late August to deliver
it but
it was how he said it that has rankled many African leaders and
intellectuals, leaving them fuming and outraged.
"The tragedy of Africa is that the African has not fully entered
into
history ... They have never really launched themselves into the
future,"
Sarkozy said in the address at Dakar's main university, leaving
many
students stunned. "The African peasant only knew the eternal
renewal of
time, marked by the endless repetition of the same gestures and
the same
words . . . In this realm of fancy. . . there is neither room
for human
endeavor nor the idea of progress," he added.
Boubacar Boris Diop, one of Senegal's most prominent
contemporary
writers, was furious. "Maybe he does not realize to what extent
we felt
insulted," he said. Senegalese newspaper Sud Quotidien branded
the
speech the next day as "an insult", echoing the outraged
reaction of
many students as they left the auditorium. Alpha Oumar Konare,
chairman
of the 53-nation African Union Commission, swiftly labeled
Sarkozy's
speech as "declarations of a bygone era". The speech has since
drawn
criticism from politicians and intellectuals across Africa who
denounced
it as unacceptable and based on long-discredited stereotypes.
For many,
it was a throwback to France's murky colonial past.
How dare he come and lecture Africa about the future when can’t
manage
his own marriage? In May, his wife, Cecilia, went missing for
ten days.
In August, barely five months into his presidency a rebellion is
brewing
against his presidency. In September, the town council of Sannat,
a
village of 380 people in the dead center of France, became so
fed up
with Czarkozy, as his critics call him, that it decided not to
hang his
official portrait in the town hall. Calling the act “a bit
rebellious,”
Henri Sauthon, the 81-year-old mayor, explained that the council
disapproved of what he called Mr. Sarkozy’s imperial and
egotistical
style. “Our decision is irrevocable,” he said. “I have nothing
more to
say” (The New York Times, Oct 17, 3007; p. A3). Sarkozy’s
Prime
Minister François Fillon is fed up too. The economy is in such
bad shape
that Mr. Fillon said the French state is “bankrupt” (The New
York Times,
Oct 17, 3007; p. A3). To make matters worse, his wife, Cecilia,
is
seeking a divorce and public sector workers in France have gone
on
strike.
Another left hook was delivered by James Watson, a Nobel Prize
winner
for his part in the unraveling of DNA. He is one of the world's
most
eminent scientists. He shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for medicine
with his
British colleague Francis Crick and New Zealand-born Maurice
Wilkins.
Dr. Watson got embroiled in an extraordinary row in London on
Oct 17,
when he claimed that black people were less intelligent than
white
people and the idea that "equal powers of reason" were shared
across
racial groups was a delusion. He told The Sunday Times that he
was
"inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all
our social
policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the
same as
ours – whereas all the testing says not really". He said there
was a
natural desire that all human beings should be equal but "people
who
have to deal with black employees find this not true". According
to him,
Western policies towards African countries were wrongly based on
an
assumption that black people were as clever as their white
counterparts
when "testing" suggested the contrary.
Dr Watson is no stranger to controversy. In 1997, he told a
British
newspaper that a woman should have the right to abort her unborn
child
if tests could determine it would be homosexual. He has
also suggested
a link between skin color and sex drive, positing the theory
that black
people have higher libidos, and argued in favor of genetic
screening and
engineering on the basis that "stupidity" could one day be
cured.
Perhaps all the controversy is an insidious “publicity stunt” –
to
promote sales of his book. He arrived in Britain on October 17,
for a
speaking tour to publicize his latest book, Avoid Boring People:
Lessons
from a Life in Science. Physician heal thyself. He has already
bored me.
The Science Museum in London where he was to speak cancelled the
event.
Now comes jailbird Paris Hilton on a mission to “help Africa.”
After
spending 23 days in jail this summer for violating her probation
on a
DUI charge, she claims she is a changed woman. "Before, my life
was
about having fun, going to parties—it was a fantasy. But when I
had time
to reflect, I felt empty inside. I want to leave a mark on the
world,"
she offered. So she will be going to Rwanda for five days,
visiting
schools and health-care clinics and staying in decidedly
un-Hilton-like
accommodations. "I'm scared, yeah. I've heard it's really
dangerous . .
. "I've never been on a trip like this before"(Newsweek, Oct 22,
2007;
p. 58). Said James Mukazango, a Zimbabwean exile in the San
Francisco
Bay: “It must now come to this? I give up!” But why not give her
a
chance since every single entity that tried to help Africa in
the past
left a horrible trail of failure?
First, the United Nations which cannot enforce its own 1948
Universal
Declaration of Human Rights and allows grotesque abusers of
human rights
to sit on its own Human Rights Commission. The UN has
never heard of
the apothegm: “Prevention is better than cure.” It waits
patiently like
a vulture for an African country to implode and then appeal to
the
international community for peace keepers. They are parachuted
in, along
with high-protein biscuits and tents, and watch helplessly as
the
slaughter continues. In 1993, unable to stand the carnage, the
UN fled
Somalia and bolted from Rwanda in 1994. Of the nearly 40 civil
wars that
have raged in Africa since 1960, the UN has been able to resolve
and
restore stability to only 4 African countries: Angola, Congo,
Liberia,
Mozambique, and Sierra Leone. Currently, the UN is waiting for
Central
African Republic, Chad, Guinea and Zimbabwe to implode and then
. . .
The next platoon of abysmal failures is embedded in Western aid
programs
failure. More than $500 billion in foreign aid – the equivalent
of six
Marshall Aid Plans – has been pumped into Africa between 1960
and 1997
with little to show for except crumbled infrastructure, show
monuments
and a multitude of “black elephants.” All that aid has failed to
spur
growth and life Africa out of its economic miasma. Instead, it
has
created such an inscrutable dependency on aid. Ghana’s budget is
50
percent aid dependent while Uganda’s is 60 percent. Said
President
Aboulaye Wade of Senegal: “I've never seen a country develop
itself
through aid or credit." Countries that have developed — in
Europe,
America, Japan, Asian countries like Taiwan, Korea and Singapore
— have
all believed in free markets.
More execrable have been World Bank/IMF programs in Africa.
After 50
years of engagement in Africa and after spending more than $40
billion,
the World Bank is yet to draw up a coherent list of just 10
African
economic success stories. Each year, it trots out a phantom list
of such
“economic stars” only to see them implode in a year or so.
Guinea,
Lesotho and Uganda are currently such imploding stars.
African-American civil rights leaders and the Black
Congressional Caucus
constitute the next group that failed Africa. As a group, they
were best
positioned to influence legislation and effect real changes in
Africa.
Indeed, they mobilized world opinion and led the campaign
against
apartheid in South Africa. But beyond South Africa, they
disintegrated.
Afflicted with intellectual astigmatism, they could see with
eagle-eyed
clarity injustices perpetrated by whites against blacks in South
Africa.
But they were hopelessly blind to the equally heinous de facto
tribal
apartheid in Rwanda, Burundi, and Sudan. Nor can the see the
brutal in
Sudan and Zimbabwe, much less the continued enslavement of
blacks by
Arabs in Mauritania and Sudan.
The greatest failures of all, however, have been the leadership
in
Africa. It is always important to draw a distinction between the
leadership and the people. The leaders have been the problem,
not the
people. Since 1960, there has been 204 African heads of
state. Fewer
than 20 can be adjudged to have been “good leaders,” meaning the
overwhelming majority – over 90 percent -- were monumental
failures.
About the only three things the leadership can do with
predictable
efficiency are:
1. Perpetuate themselves in office -- 10, 20 or more years:
Campaore
(Burkina Faso), Biya (Cameroon), Ghaddafi (Libya), Mubarak
(Egypt),
Mugabe (Zimbabwe), Museveni (Uganda), dos Santos (Angola).
2. Squelch all dissent and opposition to their misrule.
3. Pillage and loot their treasury.
According to one UN estimate, "$200 billion or 90 percent of the
sub-Saharan part of the continent's gross domestic product (much
of it
illicitly earned), was shipped to foreign banks in 1991 alone"
(The New
York Times (Feb 4, 1996; p.A4). Former Nigerian President,
Olusegun
Obasanjo, claimed that corrupt African leaders have stolen at
least $140
billion from their people in the decades since independence
(London
Independent, June 14, 2002. Web posted at www. independent.co.uk).
Nor
was foreign aid spared. Said The Economist (Jan 17, 2004): "For
every
dollar that foolish northerners lent Africa between 1970 and
1996, 80
cents flowed out as capital flight in the same year, typically
into
Swiss bank accounts or to buy mansions on the Cote d’Azur”
(Survey;
p.12). In August 2004, an African Union report claimed that
Africa loses
an estimated $148 billion annually to corrupt practices, a
figure which
represents 25 percent of the continent's Gross Domestic Product
(GDP).
According to the World Bank, 40 per cent of wealth created in
Africa is
invested outside the continent.
The pillage in Nigeria has been contumaciously brazen. Between
1970 and
2004, more than $450 billion in oil revenue flowed into Nigerian
government coffers. But according to Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, the
chairman of
the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, set up three
years ago,
£220 billion ($412 billion) was "squandered" between
independence from
Britain in 1960 and the return of civilian rule in 1999. "We
cannot be
accurate down to the last figure but that is our projection,"
Osita
Nwajah, a commission spokesman (Telegraph, June 25, 2005). It
may be
noted that foreign aid to Africa from all sources amounts to $25
billion
a year.
Africa’s politicians, opposition forces and intellectuals have
also been
extremely helpful in dragging their continent down. The
politicians are
more interested in passing legislation to increase their
salaries and
perks (shiny models of Mercedes Benzes) than attending to the
needs of
the people. In 2003, the weekly newspaper Angolese Samanario
published a
list of the wealthiest people in Angola: 12 of the top 20 were
government officials and five were former government officials.
On Oct
16, a Nigerian MP, Aminu Safana, collapsed and then died from an
apparent heart attack during a rowdy confrontation in parliament
over a
high profile corruption scandal. The MPs shouted, scuffled
and traded
punches during a debate over the findings of a House panel that
found
the speaker, Patricia Etteh, “guilty of breaking house rules
when she
awarded contracts worth $5m to refurbish her house, that of her
deputy
and to buy 10 new cars” (BBC News, Oct 17, 2007; web posted:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7049659.stm)
Africa’s opposition forces are scarcely any better -- fragmented
and
given to incessant squabbling and stabbing each other in the
back.
Worse, some of the opposition leaders are themselves "closet
dictators,"
exhibiting the same autocratic tendencies they loudly condemn in
the
leaders they hope to replace. And lastly the intellectuals – an
argumentative lot – have what Africans call a “pull-him-down”
(Ph.D.)
DNA embedded in their genes. Like crabs in a barrel, they are
programmed
to pull down and rip to pieces anyone who attempts to rise to
escape
from the barrel.
So who now is left to save Africa? First came a galaxy of
Hollywood
celebrities: Angelina Joline, Brad Pitt. Then rock stars: Bono,
Madonna.
Then the Chinese, the Russians, Brazilians, and Indians. Now
Paris
Hilton.
To be fair, African leaders made one gallant effort to save
their
continent in June when they held the African Union Summit (AU)
in Accra,
Ghana. Africa is gripped by crises: Central African Republic,
Chad,
Congo, Darfur, Somalia, and Zimbabwe, among others. The grand
emperors
of Africa had gathered and everyone was at their seat’s edge,
biting
their nails and waiting with baited breath – for some real
solutions to
these crises.
“Africa is suffering a crisis of leadership,” said a
disappointed Alpha
Oumar Konare, who chairs the AU Commission. "We shouldn't hide
the fact
that we ended up, after a difficult and sometimes painful
debate, in a
kind of confusion,” he added. Imagine.
Even before the summit, confusion reigned. Speaking in the
Guinean
capital Conakry on 26 June, Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi
Qaddafi
dismissed the AU as a fail. This was the same Qaddafi who pushed
for the
formation of the AU in Sirte, Libya in 2002. Why did he even
bother to
attend the AU Summit? Then Senegalese President Abdoulaye
Wade, one of
the founders of NEPAD (New Economic Partnership for Africa –
Africa’s
own blueprint), weighed in: “NEPAD was a waste of time of money
which
had failed to produce concrete results.” But it gets better.
A report by the international auditing firm Ernst and Young
found that
the AU could not account for almost $3 million it spent on a
conference
for African intellectuals. The firm also said the AU could not
verify
how much it paid members of the Pan-African Parliament, an AU
body.
Another report by AU’s own financial experts, showed that only
seven of
the 53 member states were up-to-date with their payments to the
AU.
At least, the AU managed to send peacekeepers to the Darfur
region. On
September 30, just after the evening meal to break the Ramadan
fast,
about 30 vehicles loaded with Sudanese rebels ripped through the
perimeter of an AU peacekeepers' base on the edge of Haskanita,
a small
town in southern Darfur. The AU unit of about 100 troops fought
off the
attack until they ran out of ammunition. Ten were killed; at
least 40
fled into the bush.
Maybe, Paris Hilton might be the white knight in shining armor
Africa
has been waiting for. She can teach African leaders a thing or
two about
the “rule of law” and wealth creation.” She made her wealth in
the
private sector, not in government. But, alas, they might be
crossing
paths. While Paris Hilton will be visiting villages in Rwanda,
African
leaders will be attending an EU-Africa Summit in Lisbon,
Portugal in
December.
At least, Paris Hilton knows where real African development
begins – in
the villages.
George B.N. Ayittey, Ph.D.
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The writer, a native of Ghana, is Distinguished Economist at
American
University and President of the Free Africa Foundation, both in
Washington, DC. His latest book, Africa Unchained, is published
by
Palgrave/MacMillan.
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