Sunday March 27, 2005
Transplanted solutions too often wither
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia – A bundle of rags and tattered blankets lies in a pile against the curb. It looks as if it might have washed up there during last night\’s torrential downpour.
Then a hand emerges from under the blanket. Palm up. Fingers gesture for a handout.
Closer investigation reveals a woman huddled under the blanket. Her feet stick out into the street, where cars and trucks roar by, oblivious to her presence. Under the blanket draped over her, she has a child with her. No, two children, the second still suckling.
On Friday, March 11, three days before I encountered this woman on the street, British Prime Minister Tony Blair unveiled the report of the commission he had chaired on the future of Africa. The report was called “Our Common Interest.”
It\’s a massive report. If I understand its content correctly, it takes as its starting point the recognition that if Africa suffers, so do we all. If Africa prospers, so will we all.
The report states, at one point, “We find the condition of the lives of Africans to be intolerable and an affront to the dignity of mankind.” (Blair\’s writers have apparently not yet discovered inclusive language.)
The Chairman of Reuters News Agency issued an editorial supporting Blair\’s focus. “If we want to protect our own prosperity,” wrote Niall Fitzgerald, “we had better be part of the attack on poverty – poverty of resource, home, and opportunity.”
Mixed messages
Symbolically, the report was released simultaneously in London and Addis Ababa.
In London, because it will be presented to the G-8 group of richest nations this July.
And in Addis Ababa because increasingly that city is becoming the hub for inter-African organizations. At 7,000 feet elevation, it has a temperate climate. And it is a rarity, an African country that was never part of a colonial empire.
All that most people know of Ethiopia is the 1984-85 famine. TV news assaulted us daily with video of mothers too emaciated to suckle their children, children too weak to blink when flies walked across their open eyeballs. Songs like “We Are The World” and “Tears Are Not Enough” filled the airwaves.
That\’s a distorted view of Ethiopia. The famine and drought affected mainly the northern portions of the country. True, Ethiopia ranks near the bottom of the world\’s countries in per capita income. And about five million people are likely to be affected by food shortages this summer.
But for centuries, Ethiopia\’s fertile valleys and dependable rainfall made it the breadbasket of sub-Saharan Africa. Its churches and monasteries were the most sophisticated south of Egypt. One of its churches still reputedly houses the original Ark of the Covenant, removed from Jerusalem 2500 years ago.
Different approaches
Early summaries of Blair\’s report indicated that his 17-member commission had focused on amendments to trade practices and massive investment in African infrastructure. That\’s an umbrella word for roads, water, schools, hospitals, electricity, communications…
Blair seems to reject the International Monetary Funds\’ one-size-fits-all prescription. The IMF says, in essence, penalize your own people until you get your house in order. Cut spending on education, health, social services, and government projects of all kinds so that you can start repaying your debt to the richer nations. Then you too can become rich.
It has never made sense to me that a nation wishing to hoist itself by its own bootstraps must first harm those who have to do the hoisting.
In contrast, Blair wants the world\’s wealthy nations to invest heavily in Africa\’s infrastructure.
Blair\’s experts know far more about Africa than I do. But I feel sure that they didn\’t talk to the woman huddled on the curb under a filthy blanket. And I\’m certain no one consulted the patient plodding donkeys – Ethiopia\’s equivalent of a pick-up truck.
Ethiopia is already investing in infrastructure. One morning, we drove 160 km along a new highway sponsored by China. Every few kilometers, the new blacktop ended, and we detoured around a bridge that had either not been started, or not been finished. I fear that the construction company may be skimming the cream off the contract by building the easy sections first. If money runs out, the bridges may never be completed.
Not that it will make much difference to the donkeys, either way.
Beside that new highway ran a 160-km trench, dug by hand, by labourers paid about 70 cents U.S. a day. The government plans to lay high-speed Internet lines in that trench. They will open up a new world for those who can afford computers. But I don\’t expect fibre-optic connections will do much to enhance the quality of life of the woman huddled under her blanket.
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The problem is easier to define than the solution. Because all “solutions” involve transplanting a formula that obviously works in an industrial world into a context where peasant farmers still live much as their ancestors did a thousand years ago.
The IMF solution – applied ruthlessly, as various governments have here in Canada – works in countries that already have a functioning infrastructure.
Blair\’s proposals seem to recognize that a modern industrial civilization requires such an infrastructure. But then it assumes that providing one will enable Africa to emulate Europe.
I question that assumption. The industrial world also operates on a different social ethic. It may be just as significant in generating prosperity. But I\’ll leave that discussion to a later column.
A review of Tony Blair\’s “Our Common Interest” report, in an Addis Ababa newspaper, concluded with these words.
“This year is presented as a \’make or break\’ year. Does that mean that any African who wakes up January 1, 2006 has made it? In spite of apocalyptic scenarios, our peoples will still be going about their survival in the best way they can – and it will not be because of Blair\’s commission.”
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Copyright © 2002 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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