Sunday, December 1, 2002

Africa’s Sad Present And Grim Future

With communism dead, democracy spreading and living standards on the rise, theng of the 21st century is a time of optimism about the future of humanity. Until you consider Africa.

For years, the continent has been a bleak landscape of chaos, bloodshed, failure and stagnation. Unhappy as the colonial era was for Africans living under foreign rule, the post-colonial era has been far worse.

But this is not how things were supposed to go after Africans threw off the imperialist yoke. In the 1960s, as the World Bank points out in a new report on Africa, Nobel Prize-winning Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal predicted that Asia would remain stuck in poverty for decades to come, while Africa would prosper. The only prediction less accurate than the first one was the second.

Consider: A generation ago, Ghana, while miserably poor, had a higher per capita standard of living than South Korea. In the year 2000, the average Korean enjoyed an income of $13,700 a year -- while the typical Ghanaian scraped by on $2,000. What is true of those countries is true of their regions. Asia has produced stunning economic transformations in one country after another, including Japan, China, Indonesia, Thailand and more. In Africa, you're only slightly more likely to find an economic success story than you are to find a polar bear.

Writes Nicholas Eberstadt, a scholar at Harvard's Center for Population Studies and the American Enterprise Institute, "There has been a dreadful uniformity with respect to economic performance in the sub-Sahara over the past generation. For the area as a whole, and for nearly every country within it, the last quarter century has been marked by prolonged -- often severe -- economic decline."

Since 1975, per capita income worldwide has risen by 30 percent. In sub-Saharan Africa, it has plunged by 15 percent. Outside of South Africa, the typical African subsists on less than $1 a day. The World Bank report tries to find a silver lining: "Education has spread, and life expectancy has increased. Many countries have seen gains in civil liberties and political participation. . . . Better economic management has started to pay off in many countries." At the same time, it says that continued international economic aid is essential to reversing Africa's fortunes.

But strong skepticism is warranted, both about the continent's prospects and about the outside world's ability to make things better. Whatever obstacles Africa faced before are dwarfed by the one it now confronts: the AIDS epidemic. Fully 70 percent of all the AIDS victims in the world are in Africa. In some countries, says the World Bank, AIDS orphans now make up 11 percent of the population, a figure projected to rise to 16 percent by 2025.

Due largely to AIDS, though also to war and genocide, Eberstadt notes that 20 countries have lower life expectancies today than they did 10 years ago. Botswana, which has outpaced every other country in economic growth over the last generation, has seen the average life expectancy reduced by some 30 years in the last decade. For a continent trying to climb out of poverty, this health catastrophe is like a ball and chain.

Why does anyone suppose that outside financial contributions can make a positive difference? Even the World Bank concedes that "past aid programs have been disappointing" and that international aid may have contributed to corrupt authoritarian rule, because "aid dependence can make governments less accountable."

That lack of accountability has relieved rulers of the obligation to pursue the sort of sound economic policies now prevalent elsewhere. Free markets andtrade are still alien concepts in Africa. The latest edition of the Index of Economic Freedom published jointly by The Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal says that "sub-Saharan Africa remains the most economically unfree -- and the poorest -- region in the world." Africa was not ordained by nature or fate to be poor. Statist economic policies have made it that way.

It's not as though the West has ignored Africa. Government-to-government assistance, notes Eberstadt, amounted to $400 billion between 1960 and 1997 -- "equivalent to almost six Marshall Plans." But instead of financing economic progress, as the Marshall Plan did, the money has retarded it. Countries have become more dependent on outside aid, not less.

The best thing that could happen to Africa is the spread of policies that expand the role of markets and reduce the size of governments, and that prospect is still dim. Outside aid, in theory, could provide a boost to countries that are pursuing sound policies. But no one can help Africa unless it first helps itself.

© 2002 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.