The real Africa

I can't pretend to know the real Africa - it's a big place, and I've only seen a few parts of it. Plus, I don't interact meaningfully with a lot of the people who have it the hardest (though I am starting Swahili lessons in March). But, it is true that the images we see in the West are not very representative of what goes on day-to-day. This article in the LA Times by William Easterly is very interesting...

What Bono doesn't say about Africa

Celebrities like to portray it as a basket case, but they ignore very real progress.
By William Easterly, July 6, 2007

JUST WHEN IT SEEMED that Western images of Africa could not get any weirder, the July 2007 special Africa issue of Vanity Fair was published, complete with a feature article on "Madonna's Malawi." At the same time, the memoirs of an African child soldier are on sale at your local Starbucks, and celebrity activist Bob Geldof is touring Africa yet again, followed by TV cameras, to document that "War, Famine, Plague & Death are the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and these days they're riding hard through the back roads of Africa."

It's a dark and scary picture of a helpless, backward continent that's being offered up to TV watchers and coffee drinkers. But in fact, the real Africa is quite a bit different. And the problem with all this Western stereotyping is that it manages to snatch defeat from the jaws of some current victories, fueling support for patronizing Western policies designed to rescue the allegedly helpless African people while often discouraging those policies that might actually help.

Let's begin with those rampaging Four Horsemen. Do they really explain Africa today? What percentage of the African population would you say dies in war every year? What share of male children, age 10 to 17, are child soldiers? How many Africans are afflicted by famine or died of AIDS last year or are living as refugees?

In each case, the answer is one-half of 1% of the population or less. In some cases it's much less; for example, annual war deaths have averaged 1 out of every 10,800 Africans for the last four decades. That doesn't lessen the tragedy, of course, of those who are such victims, and maybe there are things the West can do to help them. But the typical African is a long way from being a starving, AIDS-stricken refugee at the mercy of child soldiers. The reality is that many more Africans need latrines than need Western peacekeepers — but that doesn't play so well on TV.

Further distortions of Africa emanate from former British Prime Minister Tony Blair's star-studded Africa Progress Panel (which includes the ubiquitous Geldof). The panel laments in its 2007 news release that Africa remains "far short" of its goal of making "substantial inroads into poverty reduction." But this doesn't quite square with the sub-Saharan Africa that in 2006 registered its third straight year of good GDP growth — about 6%, well above historic averages for either today's rich countries or all developing countries. Growth of living standards in the last five years is the highest in Africa's history.

The real Africa also has seen cellphone and Internet use double every year for the last seven years. Foreign private capital inflows into Africa hit $38 billion in 2006 — more than foreign aid. Africans are saving a higher percentage of their incomes than Americans are (so much for the "poverty trap" of being "too poor to save" endlessly repeated in aid reports). I agree that it's too soon to conclude that Africa is on a stable growth track, but why not celebrate what Africans have already achieved?

Instead, the international development establishment is rigging the game to make Africa — which is, of course, still very poor — look even worse than it really is. It announces, for instance, that Africa is the only region that is failing to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs in aid-speak) set out by the United Nations. Well, it takes extraordinary growth to cut extreme poverty rates in half by 2015 (the first goal) when a near-majority of the population is poor, as is the case in Africa. (Latin America, by contrast, requires only modest growth to halve its extreme poverty rate from 10% to 5%.)

This is how Blair's panel managed to call Africa's recent growth successes a failure. But the reality is that virtually all other countries that have escaped extreme poverty did so through the kind of respectable growth that Africa is enjoying — not the kind of extraordinary growth that would have been required to meet the arbitrary Millennium Development Goals.

Africa will also fail to meet the second goal of universal primary education by 2015. But this goal is also rigged against Africa, because Africa started with an unusually low percentage of children enrolled in elementary school. As economist Michael Clemens points out, most African countries have actually expanded enrollments far more rapidly over the last five decades than Western countries did during their development, but Africans still won't reach the arbitrary aid target of universal enrollment by 2015. For example, the World Bank condemned Burkina Faso in 2003 as "seriously off track" to meet the second MDG, yet the country has expanded elementary education at more than twice the rate of Western historical experience, and it is even far above the faster educational expansions of all other developing countries in recent decades.

Why do aid organizations and their celebrity backers want to make African successes look like failures? One can only speculate, but it certainly helps aid agencies get more publicity and more money if problems seem greater than they are. As for the stars — well, could Africa be saving celebrity careers more than celebrities are saving Africa?

In truth, Africans are and will be escaping poverty the same way everybody else did: through the efforts of resourceful entrepreneurs, democratic reformers and ordinary citizens at home, not through PR extravaganzas of ill-informed outsiders.

The real Africa needs increased trade from the West more than it needs more aid handouts. A respected Ugandan journalist, Andrew Mwenda, made this point at a recent African conference despite the fact that the world's most famous celebrity activist — Bono — was attempting to shout him down. Mwenda was suffering from too much reality for Bono's taste: "What man or nation has ever become rich by holding out a begging bowl?" asked Mwenda.

Perhaps Bono was grouchy because his celebrity-laden "Red" campaign to promote Western brands to finance begging bowls for Africa has spent $100 million on marketing and generated sales of only $18 million, according to a recent report. But the fact remains that the West shows a lot more interest in begging bowls than in, say, letting African cotton growers compete fairly in Western markets (see the recent collapse of world trade talks).

Today, as I sip my Rwandan gourmet coffee and wear my Nigerian shirt here in New York, and as European men eat fresh Ghanaian pineapple for breakfast and bring Kenyan flowers home to their wives, I wonder what it will take for Western consumers to learn even more about the products of self-sufficient, hardworking, dignified Africans. Perhaps they should spend less time consuming Africa disaster stereotypes from television and Vanity Fair.

I Felt the Earth Move

Many thanks to everyone who has written or called – yes, I’m perfectly safe. If you haven’t heard, there was an earthquake in Rwanda this weekend. Unfortunately, 38 people were killed, most in a collapse of a church where services were being held. And hundreds were killed in Congo. The quake was centered near Cyangugu, which is in the SW corner of the country – but it’s a small enough country that the vibrations were felt all the way in Kigali.

I was actually in Ghana when it struck, but tonight I was in the office late, when my officemate said, “That’s weird” and I said – “What’s weird?” As soon as I’d finished closing my mouth, I felt all wobbly, and thought my chair was shaking. I stood up and realized the floor and indeed the whole building were shaking too. I don’t mean to overdramatize – I mean, nothing was falling off the shelves, but it was definitely too much for comfort. My officemate and I ran into the doorway to be safe, and the other coworker still in the building came running in to see if we’d felt it too – but it was obvious that we had when she found us huddled under the door frame. We briefly considered going outside – we are a few floors up, and the buildings here certainly aren’t constructed with earthquakes in mind and thus collapses pose the biggest threats in situations like this. However, it was pouring outside, and the shaking was soon over. But we didn’t stick around very long, that’s for sure.

Now, I don’t have an internal Richter scale, but I’m guessing it was only a small aftershock. Can’t say I wasn’t shaken up though!

Ghana! Or, Country Comes to Town

Friday was a holiday in Rwanda, so we decided to take advantage by lengthening an already long weekend and leaving for Ghana on Wednesday afternoon, returning Monday morning. Why Ghana? Because a friend from UVA and his wife are doing PhD research there, and are leaving in March – so our window of time was limited. But I was also really interested in seeing Ghana because it was W. Africa that first intrigued me in college through my French/politics coursework, and I’d only ever seen Senegal, and wanted to get a firsthand glimpse of an Anglophone W. African culture.

Africa is a BIG continent. Bigger than N. America and Europe combined (I believe). And with the way maps distort the countries at the Northern and Southern ends, Africa tens to look a lot smaller than it is. So, to get from Kigali to Accra, you basically can’t get there in any kind of direct fashion. Our route took us to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where we spent the night, and then left Thursday morning for Accra – an eight-hour flight with a quick stop in Lome, Togo to discharge and pick up more passengers.

I was a bit wary of the Ethiopian experience – not the country, but the airline. I’ve flown it to Burundi a couple of times, but that is a 30 min, barely get up into the clouds kind of flight. Dg spite it being generally considered one of, if not the best African airline, I’d heard recently stories of delays, bad foods, boring airport, etc. However, it was fine. Because our stopover was forced by their itinerary, they covered the visa and hotel, and shuttled us around Addis Ababa for a night. And, the food was good! The airport was all decked out in red, yellow, and green lights – colors of the Ethiopian flag, celebrating the millennium. Now, before you think that they must be so backwards as to be a full 8 years behind on the news, it turns out they have their own calendar, which is related to ours and actually precedes it, and when the rest of the world starting using the Gregorian calendar by consensus, colonial imposition, etc, they resisted the tide. So, in Sept 2007 (on our calendar), they rolled over to 2000, and are in the midst of a year long celebration!

After all the stops, time changes, etc, we arrived in Ghana Thursday afternoon, and had one last delay in the immigration office. Apparently our fax for the visa on arrival hadn’t gotten through, so we were taken into a little waiting room and had to let 4 people take about 2 hours to decide what to do with us. I think what finally tipped the balance in our favor was my French skills – a woman from the Ivory Coast was also waiting to get a visa, but didn’t have the 100 dollar fee in actual dollars, only African francs, so they were trying to tell her to leave her passport and come back with the money to claim her passport. Until I explained to her what was going on she was refusing to hand over her passport, so once it was all cleared up the immigration staff was very friendly, and we had our visas (they weren’t so grateful as to waive the fee though!)
Thankfully our friends had withstood the long hot wait outside – it was so great to see them! And it was a hot one – I’d say 90 and humid the entire time we were there. Significantly warmer than KGL.

Accra is a city! Lots of people, lots of traffic, lots of choice. Terry and Erin (who blog about life in Ghana at http://bewisedonturinate.blogspot.com had casually mentioned some things they’d made for dinner, and some things they’d picked up at the mall. Well, when they said mall, they weren’t talking about a Rwandan style, 12 stores plus a bank but effectively only 2 stores that have any interest strip mall or even our new indoor mall, they meant a MALL. So we had them take us, and it was a big one, with department stores from S. Africa with electronics, linens, cookware, a food court with chain restaurants, a mega grocery store that had things like Roquefort Cheese, tortillas, international cuisine etc etc etc. We were beside ourselves – it was like country had come to town. And its funny, I am not a big shopper, I don’t generally feel deprived in Rwanda (other than an occasional craving for a Chipotle burrito), but I did go a bit nuts, and wonder what reverse culture shock in the US will be like.

Highlights of the trip, besides just hanging out with our friends, include: a trip an hour or so outside of Accra, on the way to Cape Coast – we took the local tro-tros (18 person buses/minivans) to a nice house on the beach. One of the nicest beaches I’ve ever been too – long, sandy stretches, lined with Palm trees, no one around – and the waves! Great surf…we spent half a day just riding the waves – the undertow was a bit strong, and the Lonely Planet I read (after swimming, thankfully) said that that part of the coast is pretty rough, and that several people drown each year.

Finally, the African Cup of Nations! For you non-soccer fans, or those outside of Africa, word probably hasn’t reached you that its football fever here! It’s a mini-World Cup – the African countries have qualifying tournaments and send 16 teams to battle it out for the title of African football supremacy. Ghana is a perennial favorite, 4 time champion, and this time, the host nation. So the national team jerseys were all over the streets, everyone decked out in the national colors, faces painted, people shouting, Go Black Stars, etc. A very exciting atmosphere, especially when Ghana won their quarterfinal match 2-1, even being down a man due to a red card – mayhem. So now as I follow the rest of the tournament from home, I have a favorite! (Don’t worry, I am not being a traitor, Rwanda didn’t qualify this time…hopefully that’ll change, as we plan on attending the 2010 Angola African Cup qualifying matches here in the spring/summer, which also double as the World Cup South Africa 2010 qualifying matches as well.

Overall, a fantastic time. And of course its so much nicer to see a country with people who know it – thanks T and E for being great hosts!