The Africa Solution
How to save the continent
M. Harrison

"It takes a revolution to make a solution." -- Bob Marley

OK, so what do we do about Africa? Actually, where do we even start? Disease, war, poverty, human rights abuse? Most pundits bring it down to poverty, and thus ask for more money for the continent as the solution. But let's get serious here. Who thinks Africa hasn't been making money?

The continent has been making plenty of money since the slave trade, but history has shown that the acquisition of wealth has no bearing on the quality of life for the African people. Guinea - the location of Africa's first permanent European trading post - exported gold, ivory and their own people, among other things, to the tune of some $7 million dollars per year, all the way back in the 1580s. As early as 1770, the king of modern-day Benin was earning $500,000 a year (over $5 million in today's dollars) in the slave trade. The Good King, in a prelude to the fiscal intelligence of successive African rulers, quickly squandered his blood money on guns and industrial-grade alcohol.

Sadly, few things have changed since the end of the slave trade and colonization. No longer selling their own people into Western bondage, African governments continue to export other lucrative natural resources for a healthy profit. Libya, for example, has been rich in oil since the 1959 discovery of the substance, and recently inked a $900 million gas deal with BP. Through its state-owned wealth of Black Gold, Libya has even provided an impressive welfare state by African standards, one that might even impress Ted Kennedy. But all is not peachy in Al-Jamahiriyyah al-`Arabiyyah al-L?biyyah aš-Š`biyyah al-Ištirakiyyah al-`Udhma - far from it. Libya's wealth is substantially concentrated in the country's elite, the nation is ranked 152 out of 157 countries in the 2006 global Index of Economic Freedom, and it also happens to be run by one Muammar Qaddafi, a serial supporter of Islamic terrorism. It has some of the worst human rights conditions in the world, lacking even a right to free speech and a fair trial, and boasts the most restricted media in the Arab world, which is quite a feat. It also has the least creative flag design in the modern world, or perhaps ever designed by the mind of man, the Green Rectangle. Truly mind-numbing. Want more proof of what money won't buy you in Africa?

As centuries of trade money failed to reach the people of Africa, rich Western ex-imperialists rapidly felt guilty about leaving Africa in such a deprived state, and turned to foreign aid to help the starving huddled masses. But that didn't work, either. African governments (surprise) kept getting in the way. AidAction, an NGO based in South Africa, recently published a study finding that 90% of aid to Africa is lost to waste, internal recycling within donor countries, misdirected spending and high fees for consultants.

ONE still wants more aid, though, asking for another $29 billion to Africa by 2010, calling it the amount necessary to "meet the needs of the world’s poorest by 2015." OK. And then they all starve and die on January 2, 2016? Or perhaps they survive to still face endemic warfare, a lack of public infrastructure, a non-existent job market, and distorted agriculture markets. Or perhaps they'll even survive to have ten kids, expand the population and thus only increase their country's dependence on foreign magnanimity. Sounds great, Angelina.

Seeing these undesirable effects, economists and activists are now recognizing the severe inefficiency of African aid. Kenyan economist James Shiwati told the German magazine Der Spiegel, "If the industrial nations really want to help the Africans, they should finally terminate this awful aid. The countries that have collected the most development aid are also the ones that are in the worst shape." Indeed.

Instead, how about a permanent change, allowing aid money and trade money to finally reach the African people? How about a better world of human rights, education, and growth for the children of the continent?

The true problem

The basic trouble is African politics hasn't changed much since the end of imperialism. Domestic oppression by African dictators has seamlessly replaced imperial oppression, leaving the African people without basic building blocks for progress, development and growth. In the same tradition as the dictators who sold their people into slavery and then squandered the profits, African governments have squandered aid, denied their people the rule of law, and failed to respect basic human rights, including, among many others, the right to choose one's government, to pursue a lawful calling, to trade with the benefit of enforceable contracts, and to own property. The billions of dollars of Western aid to these incompetent and corrupt African governments only reinforces this dire state of affairs, and ends up being far worse for human rights in Africa than any so-called conflict diamond.