[Mb-civic] The West Can't Save Africa - William Easterly - Washington Post Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

The West Can't Save Africa
Locals Must Take the Lead

By William Easterly
Monday, February 13, 2006; A21

It was the year that the West tried harder than ever to save Africa -- 
2005. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last January, 
British Prime Minister Tony Blair called for "a big, big push forward" 
to end poverty -- to be financed by an increase in traditional foreign 
aid. He put that cause at the top of the agenda of the Group of Eight 
summit in Scotland in July. The G-8 agreed to double foreign aid to 
Africa, from $25 billion a year to $50 billion, and to forgive the 
African aid debt incurred in previous years to fund previous 
(unsuccessful) "big pushes." Rock celebrity Bob Geldof assembled 
well-known bands -- virtually none from Africa -- for "Live 8" concerts 
in nine countries around the world to urge G-8 leaders to "Make Poverty 
History."

Jeffrey Sachs and Angelina Jolie toured the continent on behalf of MTV, 
with Jolie asking how we can stand by and let it be destroyed. The 
world's leaders gathered at the United Nations in September to further 
discuss ending poverty in Africa, apparently unfazed by yet another 
voluminous U.N. report highlighting the failure of the grand plans (the 
"Millennium Development Goals") to make any progress. They repeated a 
familiar refrain: If aid efforts aren't producing the desired results, 
then redouble those efforts. The year closed with the rock star Bono 
being named Time magazine's person of the year (along with the rather 
more constructive Bill and Melinda Gates) for his efforts to save Africa.

Meanwhile, for a Ghanaian man named Patrick Awuah, 2005 was the fourth 
year of running a successful private university that he started with his 
own money: Ashesi University, the "Swarthmore of Ghana." The university 
reserves half the spaces in its entering class for poor students on 
scholarship. "We want to train people as critical thinkers," Awuah says. 
One of his most satisfying moments came when a student sent him an 
e-mail: "Mr. Awuah, I am thinking now."

Awuah says that he could do more, but like some other enterprising 
individuals in Africa I know of, he has been turned away by official aid 
agencies. Everyone, it seems, was invited to the "Save Africa" campaign 
of 2005 except for Africans. They starred only as victims: genocide 
casualties, child soldiers, AIDS patients and famine deaths on our 
43-inch plasma screens.

Yes, these tragedies deserve attention, but the obsessive and almost 
exclusive Western focus on them is less relevant to the vast majority of 
Africans -- the hundreds of millions not fleeing from homicidal minors, 
not HIV-positive, not starving to death, and not helpless wards waiting 
for actors and rock stars to rescue them. Angelina, the continent has 
problems but it is not being destroyed.

Kenyan Robert Keter, a former world-class runner, is busy investing the 
proceeds of the telecom venture CDR, which he co-founded in 2000 and ran 
profitably until the Kenyan government abruptly shut him down for no 
apparent reason. Keter was recruited into business by Monique Maddy, a 
Liberian entrepreneur with a Harvard MBA (who is now offering advice to 
Google on global anti-poverty programs). CDR was offering customers 
voice over Internet protocol long before the service was made mainstream 
by Skype and Vonage. The company did so well during its brief operation 
that Keter and his U.S.-based partners decided to raise money to help 
rebuild a school in his home village of Kericho, located in the 
tea-growing region of the Kenyan highlands. Keter also used part of his 
earnings to purchase a tea farm, where he employs more than 400 workers.

The West's focus on sensational tragedies obscures the achievements of 
people such as Patrick Awuah and Robert Keter, who are succeeding even 
against tremendous odds. Economic development in Africa will depend -- 
as it has elsewhere and throughout the history of the modern world -- on 
the success of private-sector entrepreneurs, social entrepreneurs and 
African political reformers. It will not depend on the activities of 
patronizing, bureaucratic, unaccountable and poorly informed outsiders.

Development everywhere is homegrown. As G-8 ministers and rock stars 
fussed about a few billion dollars here or there for African 
governments, the citizens of India and China (where foreign aid is a 
microscopic share of income) were busy increasing their own incomes by 
$715 billion in 2005.

This is not to say that all Western aid efforts in Africa are condemned 
to fail. Aid groups could search for achievable tasks with high 
potential for poor individuals to help themselves. To do so, they would 
have to subject themselves to independent evaluation and be accountable 
to the intended beneficiaries for the results. Such an approach would 
contrast with the prevailing norm of never holding anyone individually 
accountable for the results of traditional government-to-government aid 
programs aimed at feeding the hubristic fantasies of outside 
transformation of whole societies.

An example of such achievable and accountable programs can be found in 
western Kenya, where work by nongovernmental aid organizations to get 
meals and textbooks to schoolchildren raised attendance and test scores, 
according to careful subsequent evaluation. Perhaps these well-nourished 
and well-educated children will be tomorrow's leaders and entrepreneurs. 
Aid could also be used to support the efforts of promising local social 
and business entrepreneurs who already have a successful track record, 
people like Awuah, Keter and Maddy -- letting locals take the lead with 
their superior motivation and inside knowledge.

Dare one hope that in 2006, it will finally be understood that Africa's 
true saviors are the people of Africa, and that those who would help 
them in their task must also be accountable to them?

The writer is a professor of economics (a joint appointment with Africa 
House) at New York University and author of "The White Man's Burden: Why 
the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little 
Good," to be published next month.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/12/AR2006021201150.html?nav=hcmodule
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