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Africa, Saved!
I am on my way back from a conference on Africa and how to improve things over there through development aid and private investment.
I would never have thought private businesses and development agencies managing ODA (official development aid) being so opposed in their understandings of what precisely constitutes successful approaches to get the continent���s development up to par.
Some government officials who, in their opinions on how things are going in Africa, seemed more high than my friends from 10th grade for most of the time of our class trips, topped it off by claiming victory. Already. "Africa is saved!", was the tagline for most of the keynotes. "We've made it with the help of the private businesses. The worst is over. It's uphill from here." I must have missed something on my last trip through Southern Congo.
Except for one guest from a Germany-based African consultancy who wore a woolen hat for most of time at 30° inside the hall and seemed fully drunk and close to falling over whenever he tried to state a point, most of the guests ��� and their points ��� seemed rather sober. Mostly, that is.
While there are plenty of indicators that Africa is indeed making progress - sometimes even quite substantially so - there isn't something like "Africa" in the first place. While cell phone penetration has reached more than 20% in SSA (Sub-Saharan Africa), for example, contributing to significant economic growth in many countries, children still are dying in the RDC - an extremely fertile country.
It doesn't quite speak for the analytical quality of the reasoning of at least some of the private investors in Africa, however, if one workgroup participant considers the fact that he can spot "more cars than ever before" on his way from Nairobi airport to his hotel, thus making him 30 minutes late along the way, a valid and "important indicator" of development in Kenya.
Africa certainly isn't quite saved yet. Much too disparate are developments in the 52 countries of the continent. However, the last years have shown that modern technologies aren't just a fad to rip off the poor but can indeed serve well-defined needs in helping them. The mobile phone business has lead to positive economic development in the region putting many people in good work in Ghana and elsewhere. As one Worldbank commentator put it: A rise in mobile phone subscribers of 10 out of 100 adds 0.6% to net export. And 10% more internet subscribers add 3.6% to GDP. Picture this.
The mobile phone business has, however, also put 3.6 billion dollars in the hands of Mr. Ibrahim, the founder of Celtel, the largest central African mobile phone operator.
Posted by Bijan at 23.05.07 9:46
TrackBack:http://www.bijankafi.de/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/355
By evi-en-route on 24.05.07 11:20
I appreciate your critical questions on which countries actually are constituted under the concept of Africa and how certain indicators can be understood as appropriate to "prove development".
However, I am still wondering about the expertise of Western or Northern decision-makers and/or businessmen of knowing which - let's say - activities exactly are needed to "save" Africa. How do they know in which fields the African people need "Western help". And moreover, what actually is the original reason for "helping Africa"?
To stabilise or even enlarge the power Western people have through their technical knowledge and money by establishing Western economic values within the African business market(s)? To help African people to become more independent from Western development aid - an aid that is mainly determined by the colonial behaviour of Western countries during a time in which the African people were treated as disposable goods with solely labour value and no rights, neither Human Right nor rights of property which could for instance - as in Western countries - have been the natural resources the colonists came for.
African people weren't treated as equal to Western people and still they aren't. Or doesn't the notion of "saving" imply that a weaker part (Africa) needs assistance of a stronger part (the West). And of course, the assistance mainly is defined by Western values as "You'll get 'our' money but you need to show some investment and improvement in democracy" - an act which is not democratic at all. So, how can those two parts become equal?
Being self-critical, equality itself is a supposed to be a Western value, too, which I'd like to see promoted and enlarged. But unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be one of the strong ones to become established in "development help and private investment" business.