I am not talking about digging the whole thing out and plopping it in front of the shores of Angola, of course. I mean what would happen if we put all the effort that is being pumped into Iraq and diverted it to Africa.
Let’s set some clearer boundaries. Low-balling Iraq, let’s say we dispose of 100 billion dollars and 100,000 skilled men doing 50-hour weeks, per year for four years (how is that for low-balling, huh?). What could we do with those resources to improve the situation in Africa?
Absolutely nothing. What “situation in Africa” are you referring to, by the way? There is a large number of problem spots in Africa. I doubt anything the U.S. could do in any area would do much to help anything.
Really, in much of Africa the fundamental problem is not lack of resources but weak institutions and bad management. Nigeria and Congo-Kinshasha have immense wealth in natural resources; the fact that they remain poor countries is because they have been horrendously misgoverned over the years.
The causes of these weak institutions and bad government is another debate. But no matter how much money and effort you put in, not much will change unless these things can be improved.
You can attack any problem area you want. From military intervention to AIDS clinics to water supply. Your pick.
As for the mismanagement issue, that’s why I am including 100K skilled workers in the mix. It is not about pumping money, it is about actually implementing whatever solution you care to think.
Unless the vast majority of African governments are replaced with governments that respect the rule of law, the free market, and human rights, no amount of money or skilled workers or anything else the U.S. can do to “help” Africa will actually accomplish anything.
What I’m saying is that it’s a governmental problem. It can’t be attacked effectively from outside. Military intervention isn’t going to work unless you want to re-impose a colonial system, and that’s not going to fly.
You can bring in 100 skilled workers to build roads, factories, hospitals, or whatever, but unless you develop some system for maintaining them there will be no long term result. Many of these countries had fairly well developed infrastructure at the end of colonial rule. But this was not maintained, and it has fallen into disrepair.
I traveled in eastern Congo-Kinshasha (then Zaire) in 1993, in the Ituri region. Even small towns had large buildings, roads, and infrastructure built by the Belgians that were then in utter ruins. Zaire could have had the economic resources to maintain these if it hadn’t have been for Mobutu’s kleptocracy.
More recently I’ve worked in Gabon, which has considerable oil and a relatively low population. While Gabon has had a quite stable government, little of the oil wealth has been invested in education, infrastructure, or other development. Poverty remains in many areas, and once the oil runs out (as it is beginning to) it will be just another poor underdeveloped country.
Note that I am not blaming all of the problems of Africa on Africans themselves. Some of this is due to the legacy of colonialism and to outside support of corrupt rulers. But until internal reforms take place, nothing will really change.
For a view of development problems in sub-Saharan Africa, I would highly recommend Tropical Gangsters by Robert Klitgaard, regarding his experiences in Equatorial Guinea.
**Sapo, ** I believe you are Latin American. Do you think you could solve the problems of Ecuador or Bolivia by pouring money into them, given their present governments? Ecuador has lots of oil, and is still mired in poverty. Contrast Ecuador and Gabon with Malaysia, which also has oil but was not much better off economically than the others when it achieved independence. Malaysia is much better off now. Why?
I have no doubt that Africa has a next to incorregible corruption problem. That said, I refuse to believe that if we had 100 billion dollars and 100 thousand skilled workers a year for four years, the best thing to do would be sending them home and blowing the money in Vegas because them Africans SOBs are beyond helping.
I bet Bono or Oprah would have a stab at it.
I have no idea what these resources would get me in the African welfare market, but I bet that just providing clean water to as many people as you can, would make a difference, not only in the quality of life of these people for the four years you can provide it, but in the way these people think about themselves and in how they will act once you are gone.
No doubt you could do some good temporarily. But what do you do when the money runs out and the corruption is still there? Money isn’t the answer, although it could be part of an overall answer.
It’s a terrible dilemma because you do want to help the desperately poor people there, but the best way to help them longterm is to not prop up the corrupt governments.
With 100 billion dollars per year, you could easily bribe the top 1000 officials of every african country and send them to retirement in the Bahamas, if you wanted. Or you could make enough of an improvement in people’s lives that they would simply refuse to go back to their oppression. You could fund an insurgence. You could flat out have them murdered. You could make improvements of the type that the corrupt government will allow and encourage.
We are talking about a lot of money and manpower for a very long time here.
I wanted to start a similar thread to this one for Latin America, but since I was already asked, yes, I think you could make a difference. You could do enough good that people will think twice about voting for whatever populist thug they elected the last time. I strongly believe that if we had bombed Afghanistan with Nike shoes, coke cans and Lexus, we would have Osama at the end of a rope. I believe in carrots.
A variety of nations, NGOs, and the like have poured billions of dollars and probably millions of man hours into Africa since the end of the colonial era. Most countries have only gone downhill since then. Why would increasing these things have any different effect?
I think there is still a problem here of thinking that this is a problem of individuals, rather than institutions. Sure you could bribe the current corrupt officials, or kill them, but how do you ensure the ones that replace them won’t be equally corrupt? You could take over the government and run it yourself, but that is fraught with many problems. Many African countries were arguably better off economically under colonial rule than they are today, but economic benefits alone aren’t going to keep people from wanting to run their own affairs.
Ok, it’s a lot of money, but you originally specified four years, which isn’t much time to change an institutional culture. If you wanted to recolonize an African country, build up its infrastructure and institutions, and then decolonize it in a way that was better set up to preserve these resources than the way it was done by the European powers 40-50 years ago, it might possibly work but it would take you decades.
This is one of the key problems in Iraq. After many years of tyranny, there was little in the way of functioning institutional culture. IMO, it would take decades of occupation in order to set things right there, if it ever could be done (which is questionable).
How much, how many, when, in what? How does this hypothetical effort stack versus the efforts that have been done? How many billions worth of aid does Africa receive on any given year? I think we are talking orders of magnitude to any effort so far, to the Marshall Plan or to any other aid effort in history.
This Washington Post article mentions that in 2005 the G-8 agreed to double its foreign aid to Africa, and said that the current level was $25 billion a year. So if that is true, then the G-8 alone gives Africa $100 billion in four years. And that is not counting private funds, money from the UN, and foreign aid from other countries.
Your idea that there has been a lack of foreign aid to Africa and that all Africa needs is more money/manpower is not supported by facts.
BTW, the linked article gives some good reasons why any change in Africa must be home-grown and won’t come from Western aid.
We can’t do what you suggest in little Iraq. How could we do it in all of Africa?
If you can answer this question, you will have the solution for Africa’s problems:
Why are companies outsourcing to places like India and China but not Africa?
Too soon to tell. Both countries have new governments. (Well, new administrations, at least.)
I was referring to those governments as institutions, not to the individual administrations. (Although Morales in Bolivia may be doing a particularly good job of scaring off foreign investment.)
Ecuador is a prime case in point. Here’s a relatively small country which has had a great deal of oil wealth. Little of that wealth has been invested in infrastructure, education, development of alternative industries, or other things that will let the country stand on its own once the oil runs out, which it is starting to do. The country has been exceptionally unstable, with a succession of presidents forced out of office by demonstrations, and some 70% of the population lives in poverty. Certainly a country with such resources should have been able to do better than this. Money by itself is clearly not the solution to Ecuador’s problems.
First of all, I am not saying anything about the current level of aid to Africa and the effect they have had. My OP was a what-if question. If the answer is nothing would happen, that’s what it is. Still, without doubting the knowledge of any of the respondents, I find it hard to believe that nothing would really happen.
Also, to be fair to the OP, We should be looking at US aid, only. We should also assume that whatever other help Africa is getting, should remain the same. The OP asks for diverting the Iraq effort to Africa. The Iraq effort is, mostly, a US effort.
This other WP article places the US help at 3-4 billions a year, to be upped to 9 billions. (other sources suggest that this is just a catch up to previously pledged but undelivered aid, but that is besides the point). This makes an additional 100 billion a ten-fold increase in US aid. And if it is world aid we are looking at, This SA paper estimates aid at 6 billion a year (and you would assume that an article wanting to talk about aid being wasted would want to offer the highest possible aid numbers). What would be the ultimate source for these statistics? UN? I am sure the numbers would vary wildly from source to source, depending on whether you count pledged vs. delivered funds; what programs are included and all that.
At any rate, I think that more than the money, which I completely agree is a total waste if it is handed to a corrupt government, the key factor here would be having the personnel to carry out whatever program is devised for those funds. 100 thousand men is quite literally, an army (the UN has 3000 volunteers in Africa, for comparison).
I agree that four years is a very short time to have a significant effect on culture. That would be the job of generations. I am open to other timeframes (and it is not as if Iraq is going to end tomorrow) as long as we don’t exceed the total amount of money and man-hours. Still, it is sufficient time for making a significant effect in the battle against malaria, for example; attacking the water problem; making basic infrastructure improvements; getting educational programs started, among other possible projects.
Excuse this WAG for a minute. I think (without knowing anything about it) that within my constraints, You could go a long way into solving the problem of water supply in Africa. This would in turn have a great effect on hygiene and disease control. It would also free people from a truly time-consuming chore and free their days for other tasks. A very minor change that would have a profound effect on the lives of many, an effect that would outlive the span of the project, that would not be opposed by the ruling thugs. I am sure better, more informed minds can think of better projects.
C’mon guys, an additional 100 billion dollars and 100K men on the ground. You say nothing good can come of this?
Africa’s problems would swallow all of the world’s efforts.
Africa is not one place with one set of problems but a new place and problem every dozen miles.
then why don’t we nuke the whole continent from orbit? It is the only way to be sure.