Letter from Britain: Lack of African Dream Lets a Nightmare Prevail

LONDON Remember Africa? A year ago, just as the Group of 8 summit meeting in Gleneagles, Scotland, prepared to devote its deliberations to Africa's revival, the London bombings drew the headlines back into the dark world of Islamic terrorism.

This month, in St. Petersburg, the G-8 leaders gathered again, offering an opportunity to assess whether Africa had begun to rewrite its grim résumé of AIDS, poverty, corruption and conflict. Again, though, the moment of concern was brief, all too quickly muted by the howl of missiles across the Lebanon-Israel border.

Make Poverty History, as last year's campaign was called, rapidly became history itself. And, as so often, Africa's moment in the world spotlight proved brief indeed.

That is as it should be, some Africa-watchers maintain, since the continent has not helped itself sufficiently to merit a claim on greater attention. And in any event, as the argument goes, the rich will never help Africa's poor build the economic muscle to pull themselves up by their bootstraps (bare feet, in any case, have no straps).

There is, though, a debate, not nearly so mercilessly hyped as the public campaigning last year of aging rockers such as Bob Geldof and Bono, but audible nonetheless across a surprisingly broad spectrum of billionaire philanthropists, governments, international financial institutions, celebrities, aid agencies, nongovernmental organizations and Africa itself.

There is plenty to talk about. South Africa's Brenthurst Foundation, created by the diamond-rich Oppenheimer dynasty, has calculated that, in the post-colonial era, donors have contributed a staggering $580 billion to sub-Saharan Africa. Alongside poverty, disease, hunger and bullets, Africa has oil, gold, diamonds, golden beaches, game reserves.

But the question is always the same: why does Africa so often fall short of its dreams?

Some of the arguments are well-rehearsed but should never be forgotten. Slavery, colonialism, the Cold War and frail nationhood, usually within artificial frontiers, impose a heavy legacy. Malignant governments have stripped schools of pencils (let alone computers) and clinics of aspirin (let alone the sophisticated anti-retroviral cocktails needed to help sub-Saharan Africa's 25 million AIDS sufferers.) Teenage warriors strut the villages. Corrupt ministers pocket national wealth. The continent's barometer may sometimes turn toward a better future but sometimes seems doomed to swing back to the default catastrophes of Darfur or Rwanda or Zimbabwe.

That is not, of course, the only image.

"Africa is too big for sound bites and too complex for generalizations," Ferial Haffajee, editor of South Africa's Mail & Guardian newspaper, said in a recent address to an audience in Edinburgh. Elections are about to be held, for instance, in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The New Partnership for Africa's Development seeks to offer a countervision of economic self-propulsion. Over the past year, Nigeria scored kudos in the West by refusing President Olusegun Obasanjo a third term in office. (Other lands - Ethiopia, Kenya, Chad - did the opposite, reverting to reflexes of authoritarianism and corruption.)

So the question is really whether or not 21st-century Africa has made any kind of fresh start with the debt relief provided to some countries since last year's G-8 in Gleneagles and other promises of increased aid and help by the rich nations.

The aim is to create economic growth, not just in those countries where oil income or newly resurgent prices of minerals such as copper offer short-term benefit. Yet, as the collapse of negotiations on a new global trade agreement showed yet again this week, Africa's dependence on the benevolence of the world's wealthy trading blocs - the European Union and the United States in particular - makes it hostage to their disputes. Not surprisingly, in a time of shifting economic balances, some African nations are already looking to China for a new protector.

But, for most commentators, the issue that consumes the public debate is not economic but political. The woes that many see besetting the continent relate primarily to its own ability to run its own affairs in an open way that gives hope not just to those possessed of power and privilege, but to the contenders, too. An African Dream must somehow replace the nightmare.

The compact sought by Western donors with African beneficiaries is that they break with old corrupt habits and build what former President Bill Clinton calls the systems to permit help to reach those it is intended for. That is not the case right now, according to experts such as the British novelist and journalist Michael Holman.

"There is no formal, authoritative and comprehensive African-driven review of how the region is measuring up to its side of that bargain struck in Gleneagles: better governance in return for more aid," he wrote recently.

Or, as Larry Elliott said in The Guardian, while Western shortcomings toward Africa have been "gleefully exposed," "when it comes to the failings of African leaders there has been an embarrassed shuffling of feet. This needs to change."

To some Africans, that smacks of punishing the victims for their own victimhood. In southern Africa, in particular, African leaders have devised a system of what they call "peer review" to ensure some scrutiny of their own failings. But it is a feeble mechanism, bereft of the power - or even the readiness - to enforce sanctions on offenders such as Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe.

Indeed, if there is one collective response to pressure from the wealthy northern countries, it is to fall back on a notion of African solidarity rather than be perceived as kowtowing to the former colonial masters.

So where do all the donors and philanthropists fit in? There is a case, certainly, for the efforts of benefactors such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to focus vast efforts and amounts on the eradication of diseases such as malaria. There is a need, in crises created by nature or rulers, to feed hungry people from international emergency relief funds. But, to escape Africa's contradictions, its people must have a chance to see a hope for self-betterment beyond the closed circles of family, clan and tribe that are blamed for so much corruption.

Then, when there are visible and safe gains to be made back home, the tide of Africa's diaspora - nurses in Britain, doctors in the United States - might perhaps begin to turn, repatriating the human talent that, currently, benefits those same rich nations as some Africans blame for their woes.

But don't bank on it. As Britain's Commission for Africa put it, "If Africa does not create the right conditions for development, then any amount of outside help will fail."