Africa
Must Be Left Alone Without Donor Aid
IDEA
Editorial
April
3, 2009
Donor
aid may have been originally intended to sincerely
cushion African countries� efforts to take off
in economic development. But there have always
been unintended consequences in history, and
negative repercussions could be devastating and
debilitating as the donor aid demonstrably proved
in the last four decades.
The
negative impact of donor aid in Africa is
engendered by external (Northern) governments,
institutions, and NGOs as well as internal African
problems triggered by bad governance. For the most
part, northern prescriptions for Africa�s
problems were wrong and ignominious failures.
Adding insult to injury, the majority of African
leaders were corrupt and miserably incapacitated,
and far from implementing sound economic projects
and sustainable development programs, they have
played counterproductive roles in their respective
nations.
What
some historians, economists, political scientists,
and other professional scholars failed to
understand is the nature and characteristics of
Africa�s compounded and seemingly insurmountable
problems vis-�-vis the place of the continent in
the global economy. Moreover, some scholars and
policy makers were unable to fathom the
inextricable linkage of Africa�s current malaise
to its relations with Europe and North America
since the 16th century to present in
terms of slavery and colonization. Failure to
understand this historical linkage is tantamount
to failure in understanding the essence of
political economy and global relations.
An
attempt to diagnose Africa�s problems associated
with development without considering Africa�s
paradoxical location in the global economy
definitely leads to wrong development policies. A
good example of wrong development strategy is the
1981 World Bank Structural Adjustment Program
(SAP) that was tried in Africa and elsewhere in
the Third World and proved to be a failure. After
16 years of trial, and without any success story
surrounding SAP, the World Bank finally conceded
in its 2007 World Report, that the role of the
state in the economy was indeed important.
Furthermore, in its World Development Report
2002, the Bank came up with a relatively
enlightened paradigm of what it calls �building
institutions with markets�. Then, however, it
was too little too late. SAP had irrevocably
damaged African development agendas and economies.
The
donor aid, conceptually designed to uplift Africa,
resulted in mammoth debt burden. By the end of the
1980s, Africa�s debt was close to $150 billion,
but it is not the debt per se that is problematic.
It is the debt service ratio (that jumped from
5.6% in the late 1970s to 24% in the late 1980s)
that virtually forced African nations to
reschedule their debt servicing. Africa, thus, was
trapped in the aid-debt nexus and a vicious cycle
of dependence and poverty, and for this apparent
reason the Continent was unable to formulate and
implement meaningful development strategies.
By
the turn of the 21st century, while
most African nations were still ensnared in the
aid-debt continuum, the Bretton Woods institutions
dropped SAP - was temporarily replaced by Enhanced
Structural Adjustment Facility � from their
lexicon and devised instead what they labeled
Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF),
apparently to deter African leaders from
embezzling aid funds. IMF�s PRGF, however, could
not materialize for obvious reasons: in the
absence of good governance, accountability, and
transparency among African leaders, a Marshall
plan for Africa will not be realized either.
African
leaders who were relatively sincere but na�ve
nonetheless, without understanding the nuances of
the global economy, have made several pilgrimages
to the World Economic Forum at Davos to plead the
Northern donor nations to extend further aid to
Africa. African finance and agriculture ministers
have also pleaded the World Trade Organization
(WTO), time and again, to get a voice and enjoy
equal partnership in trade.
Neither
Davos, nor WTO, nor the G-8 countries, however,
were forthcoming in genuinely supporting Africa to
reassert itself. The same old strategy of �aid
to Africa � may have been considered in the G-20
meeting in London on April 2, 2009. The Group, the
movers and shakers of the global economy, need to
understand that the problem Africa has encountered
is systemic and structural. The problem emanates
from the global system (characterized by
inequality) and from weak African states presided
over by corrupt regimes.
While
the leaders of the major industrialized countries
tackle the current global economic crisis, they
must also seriously consider the aid-trap that has
devastated Africa for so long. Africa, in fact,
must be left alone without donor aid. A toddler
does not need training in how to stand and walk;
it is biologically programmed to do so, because
s/he is a continuation of a long evolutionary
process bequeathed from the Homo Erectus. When a
toddler stands on its feet and makes few steps,
s/he may stagger initially but it will eventually
develop robust legs while at the same time
correlation of growth takes place in its entire
anatomy, including, most notably, in its brain.
The
loving mother or father who witness their toddler
walking for the first time, being oblivious to our
potential of upright stature, could become nervous
and even paranoid. And out of sincere care, they
may either put their child in a supporting wheeled
device or firmly grasp its hands when it attempts
to freely walk. Alas! The latter care will only
delay the biological and psychological development
of the child. By the same token, Africa�s
development and renaissance will be further
delayed unless it is left alone.
On
behalf of IDEA, Inc.
Ghelawdewos
Araia
All
Rights Reserved. Copyright � Institute of
Development and Education for Africa (IDEA), Inc.
2009
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