The Pirates of Africa

Mary Achuil, 23, lives in Bar El Ghazal, a region of Southern Sudan. Her husband was killed two years ago while fighting on the front line. Mary cannot afford to get food for her children. The civil war in this area is devastating and has resulted in the loss of millions of innocent lives, properties and a vast amount of local resources.

Dorothy Kyule, 34, lives in a village not very far from Machakos in Kenya. She farms just over less than one hectare of land, ploughing the soil with a hoe. Last year, she says, the rain did not come and our crops were completely burnt by the sun. We struggle to stay alive and life seems to be a curse!

Harare: Frank Chiredze is 23 and jobless. For a low class youth, he says, there are very few chances of finding a job. As far as studies are concerned he had to give up very early on. When I was eleven, I started helping my parents selling newspapers. Frank’s future is dark and his faith very shaky.

Yes, the monstrous poverty comes to Africa in many colours. Indeed, the very word: ‘poverty’ conjures up sad images of that continent. The overall situation offers little hope and the eradication of poverty merely seems to be a sort of utopia. Yet, to overcome poverty, it is indispensable to change the rules of the game. Exploitation and suffering are caused by national and international forces. And knowing them is the first step to freedom.

Military spending

Probably, not everybody knows that African governments were able to find 8 billion U.S. dollars for military spending in 1991, despite the pressing social needs of their peoples. Just to hit the nail on the head, it was equivalent to three-quarters of the total aid received by the region. Arms kill indiscriminately in Africa. Many innocent people have lost their lives in recent years in countries such as Burundi, Congo, Liberia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somalia... Furthermore, the money spent on this business thwarts the economic and social development of many countries. Meanwhile, Western countries repeatedly endorse U.N. appeals for reduced military spending in Africa, rightly pointing to its corrosive effect on development. And the U.N. Security Council issues heaps and heaps of appeals for peace. Yet, its permanent members account for over four-fifths of the weapons exported to developing countries. African governments may stress the need of granting security to their fellow citizens by military means. But whose security are they talking about?

Tell me of any army in Africa which has saved their country from external aggression says the Archbishop Desmond Tutu who charges that the armies in the continent are used by the ruling elite to suppress their populations. After all, people in Africa are 33 times more likely to die because they lack a supply of clean water and sanitation, than as a result of conflict. And yet, if you go to certain countries like Sierra Leone or Burundi you realise that weapons are mushrooming everywhere. In Somalia, says Mr. Harrington, a lay-volunteer working in Mogadishu, it’s cheaper to buy a kilo of bullets than one of food.

Impoverishing Africa

Last September, while the world mourned the death of Mother Teresa, Africa shed few tears at the loss of a man who lived like a Roman Emperor, an infamous despot whose passing closes a sad chapter in Africa’s history. Buried with scant ceremony in exile in Morocco, Mobutu Sese Seko, unassailable President of Zaire for 32 years, was the most important of Africa’s post-colonial dictators. He owned possessions which went beyond any human imagination: between 5 and 6 billion US dollars. With such an amount of wealth he could easily have solved all Zaire’s financial debts.

May we really believe that dictatorship and corruption in Africa died with Mobutu Sese Seko? According to some observers, Mobutu’s death might signal the final gust of what British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan described in 1960 as a historic ‘wind of change’ that heralded the march to independence of almost a score of African states. Today it feels good to be an African says South African Deputy President Thabo Mbeki as other states confront the legacies of their own Mobutus.

The paradox in all this is that the ‘person on the street’ in the western world sincerely believed that by sending ‘aid’, western governments and organisations like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund were actually trying to help solve the Third World food crisis. The opposite would appear closer to the truth. In most African nations, very little aid has been used to develop industry, fundamental if the poverty cycle is to be reversed. Food aid only really appeared in times of high-profile crises. With the best will in the world, only a small percentage of the money collected by Band Aid, the group of singers organised by Bob Geldof in 1984 to raise money for Ethiopian famine victims, and the subsequent Live Aid performance in 1985 was ever used for concrete aid. The money which reached the victims was mainly spent on food aid, with very little at all being used for long-term development.

With respect to aid from western governments, the sad fact is that aid agreements were more often intrinsically tied with arms deals, and necessarily so, at least for those in power. A head of state such as Mobutu would fill his pockets and those of his family and friends with a good part of the aid money received, buying arms with the majority of the remainder. The arms were needed to protect his ill-gotten wealth, and to pay the army to keep the rest of the population under the hammer. Repayments would have to be met by an already hard-pressed population, and if not met, then the ‘debt’ problem would worsen. And so the spiral of impoverishment continued in the former Zaire, theoretically one of the richest nations on earth in terms of natural resources. Meanwhile, Mobutu and his benefactors were laughing all the way to the bank.

The free market creed

According to a recent World Bank report, some 25 sub-Saharan states are undertaking fundamental macroeconomic and structural reforms that have resulted in 4% growth over the past two years, 2% higher than over the past decade. Countries that were once listed among the poorest and most badly managed in the world, such as Mozambique and Tanzania, are instituting economic reforms and privatising state assets. This emphasis on trade and development often makes aid agencies more enthusiastic about chipping in. In 1996 the International Monetary Fund, for example, resumed credit facilities to Tanzania and may yet write off three-fourths of Mozambique’s $5.7 billion foreign debt. This is the view of the World Bank.

Yet, if we look at the African grass-root level we realise that for many of the countries there is still a long way to go.

A chronic debt crisis, largely disregarded by Western governments because it does not threaten the global financial system, has continued unabated for several years. In many countries the foreign debt is equal or superior to the Gross National Product, and the total foreign debt of Africa has reached 211 billion U.S. dollars. Creditors are reluctant to reduce the debt burden considering it a moral hazard. According to them it might set a precedent threatening the stability of the international financial system. Must we starve our children to pay our debts? asks former Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere. The question is fair but both the World Bank and International Monetary Fund are deaf. The free-market creed preached by them has forced structural adjustment programmes on the African governments. This implies they must take away price controls, stop meddling in business, reduce budget deficits, sell off state enterprises, keep their exchange rates competitive. Many experts wonder whether Africa’s economies can withstand such demanding reforms. Moreover, even if African countries will put into practice the most radical adjustments, people would have to wait, at least, for another 40 years to regain the income they had in the mid-1970s. How will Africa manage to reverse its dismal trend, to bridge the yawning gap with other world economies?

For sure, the African renaissance will depend on how the Continent performs democratic platforms. For example, Laurent Kabila, president of the Democratic Republic of Congo (former Zaire), must still prove himself capable of rehabilitating a country laid waste by a profligate despot. Kabila’s own human rights record, especially over the fate of thousands of refugees from his military campaign, is still under the scrutiny of the U.N. But elsewhere in Africa, too - in Sierra Leone, in Sudan and in Congo-Brazzaville - there is often more regression than renewal.

Hope for the future

A real effort should be made in transcending divisions by those political leaders who keep their people divided in order to exploit them for their own gains. If they solicit Western support, it is in order to secure their power-base. In this regard the African regimes operate because they get money from donors and financiers. According to their standards, heads of state often hold power on an ‘until-death (or-bullet) do-us-part basis.

Challenges and hopes, problems and burdens are the same for the majority of African countries. It is, indeed, a question of reminding people of the importance of the common good. Nations have to express a clear awareness of the duties which they have vis-à-vis other nations and humanity as a whole. African population is increasing faster than the population of Western countries and in 30 years its number will double. Without better prospects at home, a lot of poor people will be flocking to the door of the industrialised countries. Our world is a ‘global village’ and there is a common destiny from which nobody can escape. This was the main idea stressed during the Copenhagen summit on world poverty, in March 1995. But then, if hunger could be fed by words, the world would be satiated.

Dida: 1. Before being deposed as Zaire’s president, Mobutu had stashed away enough dosh to pay off the country’s national debt

2. At a time when it is easier to buy arms than food, it is clear that natural disasters are not the only cause of famine in Africa