The Progressive Project: Re-Colonizing Africa

We shall save you from yourselves

The film The Black Panther has been taking Hollywood by storm. Progressives in particular are excited:

The film is set in Wakanda, a fictional technologically advanced country in East Africa which was never colonized. For people of African descent, the kingdom of Wakanda finally brings a searing question—what if the colonists hadn’t arrived and Africa had been allowed to develop unencumbered by international influence?—to the big screen.

Africa unchained

Is it true? Would an un-colonized Africa have given the world an advanced, high-tech utopia?

We at TWCS are not so sure. 

Two generations after colonialism ended, alarmed that Africa seemed to be sinking rather than swimming, Tony Blair gathered a 17-person commission to examine the question:

One more commission for Africa

When former colonies across the globe began in the 1960s to prepare themselves for independence, nobody was that worried about Africa. The anxiety was all for Asia. 

That was barely four decades ago. Today Africa is the poorest region in the world. Half of the population live on less than one dollar a day. Life expectancy is actually falling. People live, on average, to the age of just 46. 

… Africa is the only continent in the world which is stagnating. Why has it fallen so far behind?

Optimism 

African poverty and stagnation is the greatest tragedy of our time. Poverty on such a scale demands a forceful response. … Africa requires a comprehensive ‘big push’ on many fronts at once.  

Investing for economic growth means rebuilding African health and education systems, many of which are now on the point of collapse.

From the World Food Conference in 1974, at which Henry Kissinger declared 'In ten years no child shall go to bed hungry,' to the UN Millennium Summit in 2000, which vowed to end world hunger by 2015, Westerners have long been wringing their hands over this continent.

A Wakandian renaissance?  On the contrary, it seems the further colonialism recedes into the past, the more desperate Africa's situation becomes. 

Fifty years after independence, then, Tony Blair, Bob Geldof et al. have in effect produced a 464-page manifesto calling for...

...the re-colonization of Africa. 

On what do we base this claim?

I. We Shall Run Your Governments

Leftists, Tony Blair in the lead, are saying they don't feel Africans can run their governments without massive outside help.

1) Progressives' Plans for Governance

Blair et. al.'s Africa Commission:

The issue of good governance is what we believe lies at the core of all of Africa’s problems. Until that is in place Africa will be doomed to continue its economic stagnation.

Rich countries must provide assistance in a way that allows African governments to plan over a longer term than at present. Without a long-term predictable flow of funds which can be used for salaries or maintenance, governments will be reluctant to build schools or hire teachers.

We note that Black African governments already depend on foreign aid for half their budgets:

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They need not just money, but also hands-on training to carry out the basic functions of civil society:

African parliamentarians need training and mentoring.  …  Judges from more developed countries could also assist here.  

Africa's journalists need more training, in both journalistic techniques and professional ethics. ... Journalists and editors in other countries could assist here too.

Can't do it without white people

The number of civil society organisations has risen dramatically over the last decade or so, but many of them require help to develop the skills they need. ... Again their counterparts in other developing and developed nations could help. 

One wonders if civic groups in Sri Lanka, Indonesia, or Morocco also needed first worlders to come in and explain basic organizational skills to them fifty years after the end of colonialism?

As for babysitting Africa's politicians:

Equatorial Guinea starves, its leaders buy Malibu mansions

The international community should track down money looted by corrupt African leaders, now sitting in foreign bank accounts, and send that money back to the states from whom it was stolen.  ... Second, rich nations should put in place a series of measures to make theft of national assets more difficult. 

Developed countries must require banks within their jurisdiction to inform on such deposits and to repatriate them to the proper authorities.

Kenya MPs' salaries in the U.S. would equal $3.7 million per Congressman

What our commission seems to be saying here is: Without massive and unending cash injections, training, surveillance (and putting electronic ankle bracelets on its leaders), Africa is incapable of basic self-governance.

So what has led our progressive brethren to such harsh judgments on African rule?

1.1) Why Do Africa's Governments Disappoint?

Kenyan human-rights activist Makau Wa Mutua puts it this way:

'Since independence in Africa, government has been seen as the personal fiefdom a leader uses to accumulate wealth for himself, his family, his clan. He cannot be subjected to criticism by anyone, and everything he says is final.'

Nigerian writer Chigozie Obioma is even more blunt. In Foreign Policy, he argues that 'There Are No Successful Black Nations.'

African governance is poor according to many barometers—democracy index, corruption index, human development index:

Data sources:  Corruption , Democracy, Human Devpt

Africans' major complaint about their leaders is their propensity to steal—especially what is intended for the poor:

The record of Western aid to Africa is one of abysmal failure. More than $500 billion in foreign aid - the equivalent of four Marshall Aid Plans - was pumped into Africa between 1960 and 1997.

Food aid in Ethiopia

Much of the aid received was simply looted. … Indeed, the amount of capital leaving Africa is staggering: the external stock of capital held by Africans overseas could be as much as $700 billion to $800 billion. The World Bank estimated that “nearly 40% of Africa’s aggregate wealth has fled to foreign bank accounts." 

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In July 2005, Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission revealed that a succession of military dictators stole or squandered $500 billion - equivalent to all Western aid to Africa over the past four decades.  Even when the loot is recovered, it is quickly re-looted.

During his 24 years in power in Kenya, Daniel Arap Moi’s government embezzled and stole an estimated $3 billion to $4 billion. 

President of Gabon's goodies, bought with your aid money 

Elsewhere:

The New York Times reported that aid officials believed that Mengistu’s regime [in Ethiopia] sold some of the food aid on the world market to finance the purchase of arms. …The Congo also sold donated food supplies and used the funds to purchase an arms factory from Italy. The more peaceful Mauritius took donated rice, which it insisted be of high quality, and diverted it to tourist hotels.

Aid and corruption, a vicious cycle

A World Bank study found that as much as 85% of aid flows were used for purposes other than that for which they were initially intended, very often diverted to unproductive, if not grotesque ventures. (1) 

An unseemly record to say the least.

Another aspect of African governance leftists would like to fix is the propensity for endless violent conflict.

2) We Shall Fix Your Conflicts

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Blair's Africa Commission:

The international community must invest more in conflict prevention if Africa is to have a chance of development and prosperity. 

These international pledges should be honoured through support in training and logistics for the African Standby Force, a continental peacekeeping force being created under the African Union. More than that, the international community must increase investment in more effective prevention and non-military means to resolve conflict.

Peacekeeping troops in Mali, 2013

Developed nations should support Africa’s continental and regional organisations in building early warning, mediation and peacekeeping systems. ... For example, paying for half of the African Union’s Peace Fund on a yearly basis would allow such organisations to have ready access to the resources when they are needed.

Congolese trained by U.S. Africa Command forces

The UN should set up a permanent body to monitor the trade in conflict resources, and to ensure that sanctions on these resources are enforced. 

Africans find it difficult to get oil out of the ground without slaughtering each other over it; once again it's up to the UN to spend western money preventing this carnage.

Why do Africans continue to commit so much violence against each other?

2.1) Why Africa's Endless Violence?

Dambisa Moyo:

In the past five decades, an estimated 40 million Africans have died in civil wars scattered across the continent; equivalent to the population of South Africa (and twice the Russian lives lost in the WWII). (1)

Massacred in Rwanda, 1994 

Blair et al.:

Conflict resources: Oil, diamonds, timber and other high-value commodities all fuel Africa’s conflicts. Governments use money from their sale to fund increased military activity, at home and abroad. Rebel groups loot oil fields or mines, or extort cash from the firms who operate them.  

Both sides even sell resources which are still in the ground – pledging advance rights, known as ‘booty futures’, as the security for loans to buy more arms. All this makes wars last longer and more difficult to resolve. 

Conflict roils Africa

Unequal access to political offices, basic services, and economic opportunities has created tensions between communities in many African countries. And, of course, group identities – such as tribalism, ethnicity or religion – often come into play in the competition for power. 

Multiculturalism, then, while a supposed utopia in the West, seems to spur Africans on to ever greater carnage. 

II. We Shall Run Your Infrastructure

Progressives also have big plans to step in and save Africa's crumbling infrastructure.

1) Progressives' Plans for Infrastructure

Built by Italians, maintained by Chinese: Zimbabwe's Kariba Dam

Blair's Africa Commission:

Growth will also require a massive investment in infrastructure to break down the internal barriers that hold Africa back. Donors should fund a doubling of spending on infrastructure – from rural roads and small-scale irrigation to regional highways, railways, larger power projects and Information & Communications Technology.

We'll even teach you how to poop

More than 300 million people – some 42% of Africa’s population – still do not have access to safe water. Around 60% still do not have access to basic sanitation. …  Yet aid to the sector has fallen by a massive 25% since 1996. This is a short-sighted decline that should be reversed immediately. …  The G8 already has a comprehensive water action plan for Africa. It is time these commitments are met.  

We are left to wonder why no one in Africa has come up with a 'comprehensive water action plan for Africa'?

As a first stage developed countries should provide an extra $10 billion a year to improve Africa’s infrastructure. And subject to review, this should be increased again to $20 billion after 2010. …  It should cover maintenance costs for existing infrastructure.

Fifty years of independence, and still reliant on Westerners for basic maintenance?

Kibera slum in Nairobi, Kenya

Africa is well on the way to European levels of urbanisation – but without the economic base to sustain it. There are no industries to provide jobs and many people – around 72% of the total urban population of Africa live in slums. ... The international community should empower African governments in planning for rapid urbanisation.

And for good measure:

Donors should give in the region of $100m, over the next ten years, to improve climate observation, through the Global Climate Observing System, and build capacity in African research institutions.

Whence this disappointment in Africa's infrastructure? Europeans, after all, left behind thousands of railways, roads, ports, bridges, dams, and buildings. What happened?

1.1) Why Does Africa's Infrastructure Disappoint?

For reasons unknown, Africans have let this colonial legacy crumble.  In what ways?

a) Rail

What about Europeans' oldest legacy, the railways?

88% of total rail mileage in sub-Saharan Africa was built before independence. … Railroads fell largely out of use in the 1970s, due to poor management, lack of maintenance, and competition from roads. Goods and passenger traffic collapsed after 1974, and railroads now transport one-third of what they did at independence.

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… And poor maintenance over a long period of time has caused many sections of the track to deteriorate, in some cases almost beyond repair.

British East Africa line, 1919

Concessions [private sector take-overs] began to be introduced in the 1990s. … a limited pool of mainly foreign private and semipublic operators who in most cases have significantly improved labor and asset productivity.

Disused railway track, Burkina Faso

The railways that have not been concessioned [excepting South Africa's] have continued to deteriorate over the past decade. In a number of cases these declines will prove to be terminal ... the railways will have crumbled beyond repair.

b) Roads

Road transport in Congo: not for the faint of heart

Despite a large colonial network, African leaders have also had a hard time building or maintaining roads:

By 1960 [independence] about 50% of today’s road network already existed.

Poor roads have a cost:

Because of the extensive length and poor condition of roads across the continent, transportation amounts to 30% of the total cost for exports and imports in African nations. (In comparison, that cost is only 9% in developed nations.) 

Stuck in the muck in Liberia

Things continue to break down:

In much of Africa, newly constructed roads therefore seldom last long: systematic axle overloading of trucks and poor water drainage result in the multiplication of potholes and accidents. The SSATP estimates that, due to poor maintenance, many African countries have lost about half of their road networks over the last 40 years.

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Of existing roads, not many are paved:

Paved road density is typically on the order of 300 meters per thousand inhabitants  … these values are at the extreme lower end of developing cities worldwide.

 

Traffic in Lagos, Nigeria

And for urban driving? In a study of 14 large African cities, researchers found:

Capacity is generally limited, service lanes are absent, pavement is deteriorating, and street lighting is minimal. Because traffic management is limited in scope and extent, accidents are frequent. 

And who is capable of funding the roads that do exist?

Public investment on roads is highly dependent on flows of aid, which can be volatile. …  The limited evidence available indicates the heavy dependence of roads investment on foreign funding, which ranges from just over 50% in Senegal to almost 90% in Rwanda.

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Not only do foreigners fund their roads, they're also the only ones with the expertise to build them:

The road construction industry in Sub-Saharan African countries is presently dominated by large foreign-based firms, some of which operate in joint venture or association with local firms and a few medium size firms from the region.

c) Ports

Port of Abidjan, Ivory Coast

Left to their own devices, Africans have made a hash of their ports:

The international standard dwell time is 7 days or less. But in West Africa, most containers spend more than two weeks in the terminal. The result is terminal congestion and port inefficiencies. 

Ports are also slowed down by corruption:

Bribe payments at ports in southern Africa, while varying by port and product, are generally high and frequent. Bribes can increase total shipping costs by up to 14% for a standard 20-foot container and the monthly salary of a port official by about 600%.

As in other domains, this had led to calls for private sector take-over, i.e. concessions:

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By the early 2000s, ports had degraded infrastructure, inadequate facilities and equipment, inefficient operations and prohibitive tariffs.  … Between 2003 and 2010, concessions for container terminals were signed for all major West African ports. … The West African port landscape has changed substantially since the first concessions came into effect, … resulting in productivity gains and reducing congestion.

80% of West African ports are run by France's Bolloré or Denmark's AP Moller

The example of regional giant Nigeria's dire need for outside take-over:

As a direct impact of investments by [private] terminal operators, the ports have witnessed a 400% rise in container throughput … The investments have also led to the eradication of ship waiting time at the container terminals, as ships now berth on arrival. Vessel turnaround time has been reduced to from five days to 41 hours while average dwell time for cargo clearance went from over 30 days to just 14 days.

Who runs Africa's ports? Non-Africans

d) Airports

Africa hasn't done much better in aviation:

Africa has at least 2,900 airports. Yet less than 10% of these receive scheduled services.

No runway lights, no radar, no firetrucks: 108 deaths in Nigeria (60 of them children)

The top five airlines—SAA, Air France, British Airways, EgyptAir, and Emirates—hold over 30% of market share of all African intercontinental traffic. The top 20 airlines include 8 African carriers.

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African airlines, although they carried only 4.5% of total air traffic, were responsible for a quarter of all fatal air transport accidents worldwide in 2007. … The IATA identifies poor regulatory oversight as the top threat to air safety in Africa, followed by inadequate safety management systems. Only Cape Verde, Ethiopia, and South Africa meet international standards for safety. 

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The high accident rate in the air sector in Africa has caught the attention of donor countries, ... The ICAO, the U.S. Dept. of Transportation, the Industry Safety Strategy Group (ISSG, formed by Boeing, Airbus, and several associations), AviAssist of the Netherlands, the French Civil Aviation Authority, and the World Bank have all implemented programs to improve air safety in the region.

Again, Africa's direst problems are being solved by those outside the continent.

e) Electricity

Perhaps nothing is more indicative of modern civilization than electrification:

Sub-Saharan Africa, home to more than 950 million people, is the most electricity-poor region in the world. … Most countries in this region have electricity access rates of about 20%. … System losses in sub-Saharan Africa are double the world average. They include technical losses from poorly maintained transmission and distribution networks, and commercial losses from low revenue collection. 

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As with so much of Africa's infrastructure, shoddy management has meant private parties have had to step in:  

The World Bank's Clive Harris explains the move to greater private participation in publicly-owned utilities by pointing out that these entities had largely ‘failed by the 1990s in their attempts to provide critical infrastructure services to  their citizens ... 

Chronic inefficiency, poor pricing policies, and corruption meant that these companies could not provide adequate services to existing consumers.'  …  Between 1990 and 2001, twenty-two countries introduced private participation in electricity.

The results of this foreign intervention have been revolutionary:   

In developing countries, the gains from private sector involvement stem from better asset management and bill collection. ... Over a five-year period, average plant availability in their sample increased 10% to 40%, outage indicators decreased by more than half, ... Where private operators have taken over retail supply, they have drastically reduced payment delays, theft, and unpaid bills.

To show just how much Afros have struggled, the only white-created country in S.S. Africa has a grid capacity higher than the rest of the continent combined:

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f) Transport in general

African transport disappoints because it is still, 50 years after independence, largely funded by foreigners:

But in total, external finance contributes roughly half of Africa’s total capital spending on transport infrastructure. External sources include official aid from the OECD countries, official finance from non-OECD countries (such as China, India, and the Arab states), and private [largely foreign] partnerships.

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The African transport sector has the worst safety record of all world regions. … Few countries have established effective oversight; instead, there seems to be a pervasive resignation to transport accidents as an unavoidable peril of life.

III. We Shall Run Your Economies

In addition to governments and infrastructure, Tony Blair's progressives are also very keen to finance Africa's stumbling economies.

1) Progressives' Plan for Business

The Africa Commission:

In Africa, the informal economy covers most agricultural activities and the greater part of urban commercial activities,... The subsistence farmer, the street trader, the taxi driver, the shoeshine boy – the vast majority of people – all remain excluded from information, business services and access to credit. 

Market in Accra 

Larger foreign and domestic companies can nurture African business skills by ... providing access to business training, helping with access to finance. Donor governments should fund initiatives to broker such partnerships.

To assist all this, developed countries should set up a $100 million Africa Enterprise Challenge Fund to increase the access small enterprises have to finance and their ability to make links with other businesses. … To complement this, developed countries should give $20 million to the UN’s Growing Sustainable Business Initiative in Africa.

Another example of a western progressive with big plans to 'fix' Africa is Jeffrey Sachs, creator of the famous Millennium Villages. 

For those unfamiliar, Sachs is a superstar economist who, like Tony Blair, decided he could be Africa's savior:

Sachs is best known for his obsession with the noble idea of ending global poverty “once and for all.” In his 2005 best seller, The End of Poverty, he argued that with proper planning and funding, extreme poverty could be wiped off the Earth by 2025.

The Millennium Villages Project was formally launched in June 2006, with support from the  the U.N. Development Program, and donors like George Soros. By the end of 2006, it included 12 villages in 10 sub-Saharan countries; the goal was to put each on a path toward economic growth by investing heavily for five years in food production, health care, education, and infrastructure.

Journalist Nina Munk followed Sachs around Africa for years for this 'Millennium Village' experiment; we cannot recommend highly enough The Idealist, her exposé on how it all really went down.

In a nutshell, Sachs thinks massive cash injections plus micro-managing every aspect of their lives--leftist neo-colonialism--is the way to a prosperous Africa.

So why are progressives so disappointed by the state of Africa's economy?

1.1) Why Does Africa's Economy Disappoint?

Digging for Africa's wealth

With its immense natural riches, why is Africa's economy floundering?

Africa is a continent with immense untapped mineral wealth. Africa has "40% of the world's potential hydroelectric power supply; the bulk of the world's diamonds and chromium; 30% of the uranium in the non-communist world; 50 % of the world's gold; 90% of its cobalt; 50% of its phosphates;   … and millions upon millions of acres of untilled farmland. There is not another continent blessed with such abundance and diversity" (Lamb, 1983). 

… The tourism potential of Africa is enormous. Unrivaled wildlife, scenic grandeur, and pristine ecology constitute Africa's third great natural resource after agriculture and mineral wealth.

Breathtaking wealth

Thus says Blair et al.:

One of the key failures of this [post-independence] period was not beginning to diversify African economies away from reliance on their key primary commodities. Today most African countries still rely on a very narrow range of exports. This leaves them highly vulnerable to long-term decline in the price of what they sell and to wild fluctuations in the world price of such commodities.  

Map, commodity dependance

They also refuse to invest their money in Africa:

Around 40% of African savings are kept outside the continent, compared with just 6% for East Asia and 3% for South Asia. What is true of money is also true of people. Many educated Africans have over the years quit their homelands because they are frustrated at not being able to put their skills to good use.

Black Africa's patent haul has been non-existent:

In 2009, 0.3% of patents in the world were deposed by Africans. Of these, 80% of them came from South Africans (90% Whites and 10% Indians). The remaining all came from Morocco and Egypt. Total patents for Black Africa that year--zero. (2)

Jeff Sachs' Millennium Villages, mentioned above, give us some micro insight into this conundrum. His experimental village in Uganda, Ruhiira, was struggling to make money:

[His team] imagined other business possibilities: banana cake mix, cocoa, palm oil, shea butter, chicken eggs, goat meat, sunflower seeds, fruit juice, myrrh, ecotourism. Sold under the brand name “Millennium Farms,” the products could be marketed like Fair Trade coffee and Max Havelaar bananas and roses.

Jeff Sachs' economic vision for Africa

But things are not always as simple as they seem:

“In Uganda, business is seen as a last resort; it is for people who have no other option,” said Richard Happy, a Ugandan accountant hired by Siriri to be Ruhiira’s enterprise facilitator. “Having a government job or being a farmer has far more status, so we have to work hard to change attitudes.” (3) 

In Sachs' Kenyan village, Dertu, the team tried to spur the economy by setting up a livestock market:

Despite Ahmed’s efforts, however, Dertu’s livestock market was formally abandoned a few months after it opened. … The core assumption behind the livestock market was a simple, rational cost-benefit analysis that it is better all around to sell livestock in Dertu rather than in [further away] Garissa. After all, time is money.

'Time is not a factor'

But what if, for the people of Dertu, time was not money? “These pastoralists, they will travel even four hundred kilometers to get an extra hundred shillings,” said Ahmed, who was trying hard to understand why his people were resisting change. “Time is not a factor.” 

 There’s something else, a cultural fact that had long confused outsiders in the Horn of Africa: Somalis hoard camels, even when it makes no good economic sense to do so.  … “What can we do?” asked Ahmed, rhetorically. “No one can come and change them if they do not want to change themselves.” (3)

Africans continue to confound and disappoint Westerners by refusing to behave in the ways we believe fitting of 'Economic Man.'

2) Progressives' Plan for Agriculture

What plans have they laid for Africa's biggest industry, agriculture?

Africa Commission:

Food processing in Kenya

Getting crops to market: As much as 50% of the harvest is lost in many parts of Africa because farmers are unable to get their goods to market. This is double the average in other developing countries. Developed countries should fund the creation of storage facilities, roads and energy infrastructure in Africa’s rural areas. An investment of just $30-$50 million over a 10-year period could save $480 million each year for maize alone. 

G8 and EU countries should also help Africa develop the capacity to process agricultural products and improve the productivity and quality of raw materials. They should fund the development of organisations to help small farmers market their produce. 

Mesopotamians figured out irrigation 5000 years ago

The international community should increase funding for irrigation, in support of doubling the area of land under irrigation by 2015, initially focusing on funding a 50% increase by 2010, with an emphasis on small scale irrigation. 

To sum up: The West should pay for all of Africa's non-existent agro-infrastructure, non-existent food processing factories, non-existent irrigation systems and farm equipment, as well as non-existent marketing associations. African countries are to remain in a state of perpetual receivership to the West.

2.2) Why Does Africa's Agriculture Disappoint?

Farming in South Sudan

Like the rest of its economy, Africa has disappointed by its agriculture:

Agriculture, which employs the bulk of Africa's population, has performed abysmally. Since 1970 agricultural output has been growing at less than 1.5%--less than the rate of population growth. … Over the postcolonial period 1961 to 1995, "per capita food production in Africa dropped by 12%, whereas it advanced by leaps and bounds in developing countries in Asia". 

Africa expert Bernard Lugan: 

In 1960 [when Europeans left], Africa was able to feed itself. In 1980, the continent was importing 11 million tons of food per year. By 2002, out of 52 African countries, 30 were in a permanent state of food shortage. By 2013, more than 25% of Africans, that is 250 million people, were malnourished. (2)

Working on a cocoa plantation, Ivory Coast

Blair's Africa Commission:

While South Asia was busy expanding the area of land under irrigation, Africa’s proportion of irrigated land hardly changed; over the last 20 years it has remained at around 4% whilst South Asia’s has risen to 40%. Asia invested in rural roads and power, new crops, and science and technology. Africa fell behind there too.

Bernard Lugan, on the example of Madagascar:

French agronomists had set up plantations for coffee, vanilla, cloves, sugar cane, and tobacco, as well as cotton, potatoes, vineyards, and orchards. They battled erosion by re-planting trees on the high plateaus. They built irrigation dams, as well as processing plants for oil, leather, meat, and fish.

Rice farming in Madagascar

At independence, Madagascar not only fed itself but exported rice every year.  Since then, many roads have crumbled, the country is ruined by corruption, the people are often at risk of famine and, in 2014, the plague made a comeback. (2)

Jeff Sachs' 'Millenium Villages' again give an interesting micro view of the question:

A “kitchen gardening” program, meant to encourage the women of Dertu [in Kenya] to grow kale and tomatoes in burlap sacks, hadn’t worked either. The high saline content of Dertu’s groundwater was to blame, someone said. The women had received no proper training, someone else explained. Somalis didn’t like kale, another person told me. One way or another, Dertu’s agricultural experiments were not a success. 

“Dertu should be green by now,” observed Ahmed. “We’ve given away five thousand seedlings, but people don’t understand the importance of trees. There is not a culture of tree planting.” (3)

Teaching Africans how to compost

In its annual reports for 2008 and 2009, the Millennium Villages Project neglected to disclose details of its failed agricultural credit program. … In Sauri, the Millennium village in western Kenya, around two-thirds defaulted. In Mbola, Tanzania, default rates were even higher, somewhere in the range of 99%. 

At the same time, many farmers felt under no particular obligation to pay back the Millennium project. Cleverly, a number of them arbitraged the loans, taking fertilizer on credit, then reselling it elsewhere at market prices. Or else they used the fertilizer themselves, then quietly sold their surplus crops, while assuring the Millennium project’s loan officers that their crops had failed. 

There were stories of men using Millennium’s money to pay for funerals and school fees. Some farmers spent the money at local bars. (3)

Building wells

Millions have been spent trying to push Africans to farm productively, often for naught:

Just a few years ago a World Bank report admitted that 75% of their African agricultural projects were failures. … In another aid fiasco, $10 million was spent in Tanzania to build a cashew-processing plant. The plant had a capacity three times greater than the country’s entire cashew production, and the costs were so high that it was cheaper to process the cashews in India instead. 

The list of failed agricultural aid projects in Africa seems endless, among them a fish-processing plant in Kenya ($22 million), cotton-growing in Mali ($300 million), or the massive failed Bura Irrigation Project in eastern Kenya ($215 million).

African agriculture post-colonialism has in fact so disappointed the world, that foreigners are begging to be allowed to come in and farm productively:

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One-third of the Gambela area in western Ethiopia is being leased for the next 50 years by the Bangalore food company Karuturi Global. 

Half of the Democratic Republic of the Congo's agricultural lands are being leased to grow crops, including palm oil for the production of biofuels. In northern Mozambique, an area roughly the size of Switzerland and Austria combined has been leased by Brazilian and Japanese companies to produce soybeans and maize for export.

It is perhaps not surprising, then, that Blair and his supporters can't seem to resist stepping in.

IV) We Shall Run Your Education and Health

In addition to their governments, their infrastructure, and their economies, progressives would very much like a hand in running Africa's school systems.

1) Progressives' Plan for Education

Blair's Africa Commission:

White man's burden?

At the World Education Forum at Dakar, Senegal, in 2000 the assembled nations committed themselves to providing free primary education for every child in the world by 2015.

Despite the bold rhetoric of Education for All, the international community is not coming up with the money to match its promises. Donors need now to deliver an estimated $7-8 billion a year extra to fulfil what they have pledged and to ensure that the whole sector is properly funded – from primary education to secondary and higher, including adult learning and vocational training. This would allow primary school fees to be abolished throughout Africa. 

Two generations after independence, basic education for Africa's children must be paid for by… the ex-colonizers.

Canadians building a school in rural Liberia

Donor countries and international financial institutions must change their policies to allow recurrent expenditure – including teachers’ salaries – to be paid for from aid. … Donors must support this until countries can afford to pay for this themselves. 

Again, if after 50 years of self-rule they still can't pay their own teachers… when will they?

So why do progressives have so little faith in Africa's school systems?

1.1) Why Does Africa's Education Disappoint?

Unlike the rest of the world, Africa's education record remains abysmal:

Primary school enrollment has increased from 58% to 76%. … Meanwhile, Africa has the world’s lowest secondary school enrollment rates. Just 28% of youth are enrolled in secondary school [high school].

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Not only the quantity, but the quality:

Just how much are Africa’s children learning in school? Over one-third of pupils covered in the survey fall below the minimum learning threshold. More than half of students in Grades 4 and 5 in countries such as Ethiopia, Nigeria and Zambia are below the minimum learning bar. Consider the case of Malawi. Almost half of the children sitting in Grade 5 classrooms are unable to perform basic literacy and numeracy tasks.

Schoolkids in Tanzania

If you want to know why so many kids learn so little, reflect for a moment on what their teachers know. Studies in countries such as Lesotho, Mozambique and Uganda have found that fewer than half of teachers could score in the top band on a test designed for 12-year-olds. Meanwhile, many countries have epidemic levels of teacher absenteeism.

An anecdote about 1990s Nigeria:

[By the mid 1990s] Empty bookstore shelves greeted visitors to university campuses. Many school buildings showed obvious signs of decay and disintegration. Most buildings had not even seen a coat of paint since the colonialists departed.

In need of Whites' help in Ghana

When the vice-chancellor of a major Nigerian university wanted to resign, he called a press conference: "His reasons for abandoning the job are a pathetic commentary on the putrid demise of a once-promising nation: admission and grades were being sold openly; dormitories for adolescent females had become brothels; threats of death and mayhem by gangs were rife on a campus that had gone without electricity or running water for years".

Voluntourism with a smile: School-building in Tanzania

Progressives are also keen to step in and keep Africa's crumbling health system afloat.

2) Progressives' Plan for Health Systems

Blair's Africa Commission:

The elimination of preventable diseases in Africa depends above all on rebuilding systems to deliver public health services … This will involve major investment in staff, training, the development of new medicines, better sexual and reproductive health services and the removal of fees paid by patients, which should be paid for by donors until countries can afford it.

Around half of the extra aid we are recommending should be spent on health, education and HIV and AIDS.

A helping hand in Ghana

Donors should immediately make legally-binding commitments to buy these treatments for use in Africa so drug companies are given the incentive.  …  Donor governments should also directly fund research, led by Africa, to boost the continent’s science, engineering and technology capacity.

Image source

Africans will 'lead;' we'll pay.

Hospital fees paid by poor Africans bring in, on average, only 5% of health care budgets. For this to be paid by rich nations would cost comparatively little.  … Rich nations should support the removal of fees for basic healthcare, until African governments can afford to take on these costs themselves. Basic healthcare should be free for poor people. 

Africa's clinics need help

I.e., the West should fund Africa's health care--even more than it's doing now.

Funding [for the AIDS pandemic] should rise to at least $10 billion a year within five years. Responding to the HIV and AIDS pandemic must be a top priority for the world community.

Sanitation was also a major part of Jeffrey Sachs' $120 million aid push. Here a village celebrates a water pump provided by his largesse which, if Munk's book is anything to go by, will flow until the first time it breaks down, at which point no one will ever fix it again: 

If Jeff Sachs builds it, they will come

Why are Western progressives so keen to run Africa's health systems for them?

2.2) Why Does Africa's Health System Disappoint?

Bukavu Provincial Hospital, D.R. Congo

Keith Richburg, Afro-American journalist for the Washington Post, spent years zig-zagging the dark continent. He reports:

I walked through hospitals in almost every country I visited because I found them a fairly good gauge of how well a government invested in its own people. In almost every place, conditions were, to put it mildly, disgusting. Stiflingly hot, windowless rooms, with flies swarming through fetid air. Patients stacked up almost on top of one another in crowded wards. Blood everywhere. 

Most African hospitals are desperately short of medicine. But on the streets outside, any type and variety of medicine is readily for sale, most of it pilfered from the hospital pharmacies or diverted before it even makes it that far. Those with money can afford to buy medicines privately; those without--and that means the vast majority of Africans--simply suffer until they die. (4)

Bernard Lugan points out:

Europeans rid Africa of leprosy, measles, sleeping sickness, cholera, smallpox, and typhoid, and introduced quinine, the only defense against malaria. All these colonial doctors' accomplishments seem to be forgotten.

French in Madagascar invent plague vaccine; 80 years later it's back

Who still remembers Georges Girard and Jean Robic? French Navy doctors, they were sent to Madagascar while the plague raged in the early 1900s. By sheer tenacity, they invented a vaccine against the very plague which had long ago devastated Europe. Thanks to their ingenuity, in the 1930s, the plague was stopped in its tracks. [Though it has made a reappearance in the 2010s.] (2)

Why do Africa's resource-rich countries have such poor health?  

Gedeliah Braun, who taught for many years in South Africa, on conditions at Johannesburg General Hospital after switching from white to black rule:

What has happened under the “new dispensation?” Conditions have deteriorated dramatically. Patient infection rates have skyrocketed and theft of supplies is rampant. Discipline among the nearly all-black nursing and maintenance staff is virtually nonexistent — they simply will not work. Patients sometimes go without clean sheets. A rabbi friend, a chaplain at Jo’burg Gen, says it is not uncommon now for patients to die because of nurses’ incompetence and indifference.

Cameroonian nursing students.  Up to half of Africa's medical personnel work overseas,

one of the worst brain drains on the planet.

African doctors hate practicing on their continent so much that they are fleeing it en masse:

In East Africa, Uganda has less than 5,000 doctors and 30,000 nurses for a population topping 35 million people, according to WHO data.  

Professor Magoha, former Vice Chancellor for University of Nairobi, recently told AMCOA’s conference between 30-40% of the estimated 600 doctors who graduate in Kenya annually leave the country after completing their internship.

Data source

Africa is exporting medical personnel, while there are only 15 doctors per 100,000 inhabitants there, versus 380 per 100,000 in France.  This is a kind of slow murder of the continent .... (2)

For a micro view on disappointing health and hygiene, from Jeff Sachs' Millennium Villages (Dertu in Kenya):

Why won't anyone clean out the pit latrines in the Millennium Villages?

The community latrines paid for by the Millennium Villages Project were clogged or overflowing, or else they had caved in; no one could agree on whose job it was to maintain them. In a ditch piled high with rotting garbage, a frenzied flock of Marabou storks ripped apart the carcass of some beast. Flimsy polyurethane bags, officially banned by the Millennium project, clung to every brake and thornbush. 

The Garbage Committee had ceased to function, if it ever did function. No one knew what had happened to the 60,000 shillings that Ahmed had given the committee to buy rakes and wheelbarrows. (3)

V) We Shall Colonize You by Bringing You Here

The final way in which progressives are trying to re-colonize Africa? Providing them with the white governance they crave—by allowing them to immigrate to our countries en masse.

For example, a 'heroic' Frenchman, Cédric Herrou, was recently profiled in the New York Times:

Saving Africans from themselves    

A local hero to some, a scofflaw to others, Mr. Herrou, who was arrested in August, had helped his guests — all [economic] migrants from Africa — to cross the border into France illegally. He planned to sneak them to a train station so they could continue their journey. Some might stay in France, but most wanted to get to Britain or Germany.  

Early the next morning, cool and foggy in the mountains, Mr. Herrou and some volunteers in his underground railroad traded tips on which Riviera train station would be best to slip through.

Escaping from  modern African governance  = Escaping from slavery

A powerful comparison—and strongly reminiscent of 19^th century colonialists, who believed (even the leftists) that colored peoples were so incapable of ruling themselves that the only way to truly help them was to let them be governed by white people.

And here we are, coming full circle. The modern leftist believes that forcing, say, a Gabonese to live in a country ruled by other Gabonese is akin to a crime against humanity. Thus any denizens of the third world who wish to enter ethnic-Euro countries and be governered by Whites must be allowed to do so.

1960: Demanding Europeans leave Africa...  2014: Africans demanding to be let into Europe

*    *     *

We have thus seen that after 50 years of independence, unlike every other colonized place on Earth, Sub-Saharan Africa is in direr straits than ever. So dire, in fact, that its doctors would rather practice in France or America than at home, and its young men are taking to dangerous dinghies by the millions in order to reach the European Eldorado.

And the solution, leftists seem to be saying, is to pour endless rivers of money into the continent and to send in endless floods of 'experts' to gently counsel its people in how to dig wells, grow bananas, and pass laws. 

Blair et al. sum up:

Change requires a quantum leap. That is why we are suggesting a doubling of aid to Africa within the next three to five years.

That is a lot of money. But this is not a time for timidity. Get it right and in two decades we should be looking at a strong and growing Africa, for which aid is needed in ever decreasing amounts, as has happened in Asia.

The major programme of reform we have outlined – in governance, public investment and social expenditure – will cost, we estimate, an additional $75 billion a year [additional to regular aid spending]. There is no prospect of Africa paying for this alone.

The Cost of Perpetual Receivership

There may be those who ask whether aid is the right solution at all. Certainly Africa can and should pay for part of the required increase in expenditure. But the bulk will have to come from the rich world. Aid is the only credible source of this.

We remind our progressive brethren that we are nearly as far in time from the end of African colonialism as independence was from its beginning:

(click to enlarge)

How much time is expected to pass before this group of people is finally able to take care of itself?

Five years after its original report, the Africa Commission put out a follow-up, Still Our Common Interest. A few of its chapter titles:

'Little progress on repatriating stolen assets'   … 'Completion rates and the quality of education still poor' … 'Abolishing school fees is often more complicated than anticipated' … 'African governments’ funding to health remains below recommended levels' … 'The amount of land under irrigation in Africa has increased by less than 1%' … 'No obvious improvement in the number of young people in work' …

But Blair, Geldof, Sachs, and their fellow travelers aren't the only ones with big ideas on how to 'fix' the continent. Zambia's own Dambisa Moyo comes at the problem from a very different angle:

Aid to Africa permeates virtually every aspect of the economy. In most poor countries today, aid is in the civil service, aid is in political institutions, aid is in the military, aid is in healthcare and education, aid is in infrastructure, aid is endemic. The more it infiltrates, the more it erodes, the greater the culture of aid-dependency. (1)

 Image source

Africa’s development quandary offers two routes: one in which Africans are viewed as children, unable to develop on their own or grow without being shown how or made to; and another which offers a shot at sustainable economic development – but which requires Africans be treated as adults. The trouble with the aid-dependency model is, of course, that Africa is fundamentally kept in its perpetual childlike state. 

The net result of aid-dependency is that instead of having a functioning Africa, managed by Africans, for Africans, what is left is one where outsiders attempt to map its destiny and call the shots. (1)

Moyo is correct: the Tony Blair approach is to create a continent of perpetual dependents. Her vision, a radical departure, is to cut off aid completely and let her homeland sink or swim on its own.

In a word, Blair believes that Africa is made up of children. Moyo believes that Africa is made up of adults.

Who is right?

What if it is Blair?

What if Africa really is a continent inhabited by those to whom natural selection has bequeathed a different behavioral heritage than the rest of the planet?

What then?

We shall revisit this extremely controversial question next time.  Thank you for reading.

Previously:

Why Re-Colonization? Future Orientation,

Why Re-Colonization? Commonweal Orientation,

The New Face of Colonialism,
Progressives: The New Race Realists?

REFERENCES:

(1) Moyo, Dambisa. Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009.

(2) Lugan, Bernard. Osons dire la vérité à l'Afrique [Let's Dare to Tell Africa the Truth ]. Editions du Rocher, 2015.

(3) Munk, Nina. The Idealist: Jeffrey Sachs and the Quest to End Poverty. Anchor Books, 2014.

(4) Richburg, Keith. Out of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa. Basic Books, 2009.

Studies cited:

-Ayodele, Thompson et al., "African Perspectives on Aid: Foreign Assistance Will Not Pull Africa Out of Poverty," Cato Institute Economic Development Bulletin No. 2, Sept. 2005.
-Blair, Tony et al., "Our Common Interest: Report of the Commission for Africa," Commission for Africa, March 2005.
-Jedwab, Remi and Moradi, Alexander, "Colonial Investments and Long-Term Development in Africa: Evidence from Ghanaian Railroads," NEUDC Conference Working Paper, Oct. 2012.
-Jedwab, Remi and Storeygard, Adam, "Economic and Political Factors in Infrastructure Investment: Evidence from Railroads and Roads in Africa 1960–2015," Institute for International Economic Policy Working Paper Series, G. Washington University, Feb. 2017.
-Bullock, Richard. "Off-Track: Sub-Saharan African Railways." Africa Infrastructure Country Diagnostic, Background Paper 17. November 2009.
-Biau, Carole et.al., "How to increase sound private investment in Africa’s road infrastructure: Building on country successes and OECD policy tools," OECD Expert Roundtable, Dec. 2008.
-Gwilliam, Ken et al., "The Burden of Maintenance: Roads in Sub-SaharanAfrica," The World Bank, June 2008.
-Ocean Shipping Consultants, Ltd., "Beyond the Bottlenecks: Ports in Sub-SaharanAfrica," The World Bank, June 2008.
-Sethi, Kavita et al. "Western Africa Making the Most of Ports in West Africa," The World Bank, April 2016.
-Gwilliam, Ken, "Africa’s Transport Infrastructure Mainstreaming Maintenance and Management," The World Bank, March 2011.
-Avila, Nkiruka et al., "The energy challenge in sub-Saharan Africa: A guide for advocates and policy makers," Oxfam, 2017.
-Farlam, Peter, "Working Together Assessing Public–Private Partnerships in Africa," South African Institute of International Affairs, Feb. 2005.
-Watkins, Kevin, "Too Little Access, not Enough Learning: Africa’s Twin Deficit in Education," This is Africa Special Report, Access+: Towards a post-MDG Development Agenda on Education, 2013.
-Chojniki, Xavier et al., "Is There a Medical Brain Drain?," International Economics, 2010/4.