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Monday, Nov 23, 2009
Well-meaning activists like Bono have pressured the West into giving billions more to Africa. But is all that money doing more harm than good?
Jul 6, 2005 | The aid workers are thirsty and the beer is flowing: There is a party mood in Rumbak, the city of tents that at one time almost became the capital of Southern Sudan. It's a bit like the end of the day atmosphere at a trade fair: The stands have closed down and people have knocked off work.
All over the place people in sandals and washed-out T-shirts emblazoned with meaningful slogans ("no cattle plague -- more milk") and where they are stationed ("Somalia, Uganda, Sudan") dart down side streets. The aid organizations' colored pennants flutter in the hot evening wind.
Several times a day local people heave heavy crates out of the rickety old planes that have just landed. Obscure airlines use these planes, before they are sent to the scrap yard, to turn a fast buck. Rumbak, which until recently was a Godforsaken hole, is now booming.
After over 20 years of civil war between the North and the South in Sudan, a peace agreement has now been reached. In April it was decided in Oslo that Sudan would be granted $4.5 billion in reconstruction aid -- a decision that, although greeted joyfully by many people, is viewed with skepticism by Norway's minister for development aid, Hilde Frafjord Johnson: "Much more aid has been agreed on than I think we actually need."
This sudden wealth is a cause for concern even among the aid workers themselves. "If we carry on like this," says Lammart Zwaagstra, who comes from the Netherlands and works for the EU's department for humanitarian aid, "then people will never stand on their own two feet."
Creating more "need" with generous aid
Rumbak threatens to become a bitter example of how development aid doesn't really help. Again and again finance is hurriedly provided for one project after another, without any evidence of a convincing overall concept. The money is just thrown at projects as quickly as possible. In this case, Norway has made $500,000 available for just 500 refugees in the camps. The windfall immediately sparked off further need, and a second camp, this time home to 345 people, has sprung up. It is the Italians who are footing the bill for the new camp.
Money is, for the Europeans, the solution to all of Africa's problems. But despite yearly payments of, at last count, some $26 billion, the majority of the continent resembles something approaching one big emergency military hospital.
Already today there are increasing numbers of Africans who call for an end to this sort of support. They believe that it simply benefits a paternalistic economy, supports corruption, weakens trade and places Africans in the degrading position of having to accept charity. "Just stop this terrible aid," says the Kenyan economic expert James Shikwati.
The suffering is overwhelming: More than 300 million people south of the Sahara have to survive on less than a dollar a day. This figure has gone up by around 100 million over the last 10 years alone. Two-thirds of the poorest countries in the world are in Africa, as are 34 of the 35 states with the lowest life expectancy. The U.N.'s development expert Jeffrey D. Sachs has written that sickness plagues Africa like a "silent tsunami" surging over the continent every day.
It is impossible to develop prosperity in states that are falling apart. Only 1 percent of the world's wealth is created in the region between the Sahara and the Cape of Good Hope, despite the fact that this area is home to 11 percent of the globe's population. And without the gold and diamond mines of South Africa and the oil and gas reserves of Nigeria, this figure would be less than half a percent. Forty-two of the 52 states in Africa have either slim, or even no, recognizable opportunities for development. According to Jean Ziegler, a developmental sociologist from Geneva, Africa is like a "raft at sea at night." It is drifting away and is slowly vanishing off the Western world's radar.
Rock music for the world's poor
Now a rather unusual band of rescuers has decided to help the shipwrecked continent. The aging rock star Bob Geldof has woken the world up with his Live 8 concerts in a series of cities, including Rome, Paris, Berlin, London and Philadelphia. By listening live to Elton John, Paul McCartney, Eric Clapton and a reunited Pink Floyd, hundreds of thousands of people, as well as the tens of millions who watch the concert on television, are demanding that their politicians stick to their promises and save Africa. The motto of the music festival, which has been embraced by millions of people, is "the long march to justice."
The timing for the worldwide mobilization to combat the African tragedy has been well chosen. Four days after the concerts, the leaders of the world's most important industrialized nations will meet in the Scottish golf resort of Gleneagles, near Edinburgh, in order to make a decision on new aid for Africa. Geldof wants to send them an army of demonstrators.
Even before the summit has begun, the G8 nations have already decided to alleviate the debts that 18 of the world's poorest countries -- 14 of which are in Africa -- have accumulated with the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the African Development Bank. Instead of having to pay the interest on the debt, $40 billion will be now be available for education, health and support for local businesses.
Tony Blair, the summit's host, has the ambitious aim of doubling, even tripling, development aid for Africa south of the Sahara. Yet even the debt relief is an admission of how much traditional development policy has failed. It shows that despite the massive sums of money that have flowed into Africa, it has not been possible to make much progress in the fight against poverty.
Between 1970 and 2002 the countries south of the Sahara received a total of $294 billion in loans. In the same period of time they paid back $268 billion, and accumulated, after interest, a mountain of debt amounting to $210 billion. Why is it that the billions, which both the West and the East poured into Africa during the Cold War, have been so useless? The suspicion is hard to avoid that aid, sometimes, paralyzes.
