United Nations Economic Commission for Africa executive secretary K. Y. Amoako recently traveled to Great Britain to tell Tony Blair and others what is obvious to anyone who can read a newspaper — Africa is going nowhere fast.
At the United Nation’s millennium conference in 2000, numerous goals were set for the development of Africa over the first part of this century. Progress in achieving those goals is lackluster at best. Only one country is on track to meet infant mortality targets. Only six are on track to combat poverty. And so on.
The problem with that was at the heart of Amoako’s speech is the same old deadly chicken and egg problem in Africa. On the one hand, Amoako points out that Africans want and need good governance. But at the same time, the abject poverty and other problems create a vicious cycle of bad governance, civil wars, and related problems. Even relatively well-off countries such as South Africa and Zimbabwe have recently shown that bucking the trend in Africa is extremely difficult to do.
Similarly, Amoako calls for an increase in aid to such countries, but many donor countries are rightly weary of repeating the horrible mistakes of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s where aid to developing countries in Africa as often reinforced bad governance as it did reward good governance.
And nobody knows if, much less where, this insanity will end.
Sources:
Africa: Call to Reverse Slide in Aid. December 20, 2001.
UN issues bleak African warning. David Loyn, The BBC, December 18, 2001.