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5 Minute Tute: Sub-Saharan Africa

What are the biggest challenges currently facing sub-Saharan Africa?

Africa has is biggest ever opportunity, which is to harness the commodity booms and new resource discoveries for sustained development. Historically, natural resource booms have often been a curse, giving rise to the politics of plunder: the few expropriating what should benefit the many, and the present generation burning up what should also benefit future generations. The challenge is to avoid repeating that sad history. The repeat of history is the default option, but it is not inevitable. For example, Germany is the best-managed economy in Europe because it used to be the worst, but learnt from its mistakes. Africa needs to do what Germany did: legislate the key decision rules; build dedicated institutions that implement the rules; and most important, build a critical mass of citizens who understand the issues and defend the rules and institutions. As the strikes in Nigeria demonstrate, Africa’s citizens are not yet up to speed in their true interests.

What is the evidence that aid to sub-Saharan Africa works?

Aid has got a lot better, but there is still plenty of room for improvement. Its future is in the small, impoverished, fragile states which without aid would simply fall apart. But to date in these societies aid has often merely kept the country on life support. What is needed is to use aid more strategically in developing the economy. In particular, this means supporting decent international firms to come into the country: without them such countries will probably remain impoverished. So aid needs to become both more focused on the plight of the least successful societies, and at the same time, more commercial.

Is recent Chinese investment helping the region’s development?

On balance, yes. The Chinese are not saints: they are primarily interested in helping China. But they are motivated by the notion of ‘win-win’, or projects which generate mutual benefits. This is not charity, but as a result it is less patronising, and it gives the Chinese a genuine motivation to stick with projects until they are successful. That said, at its worst, Chinese investment is indeed helping crooked regimes to remain in power.

What should outsiders who want to help sub-Saharan Africa do?

Both social enterprise and private enterprise now offer outsiders ways of being really useful to Africa. At its best, social enterprise brings the practices of effective organizations to environments which lack them; enabling poor people to gain access to services and products that would otherwise be the preserve of the privileged. After years of neglect, private enterprise is at last interested in African opportunities. Of course, some private enterprise is part of the plunder machine that has looted Africa. Reputable companies have until recently shied away from being tainted by what they perceive as corrupt environments.  Because young people are not willing to tolerate corrupt practices, they are the ideal workforce to enable decent companies to do business in Africa without damage to their reputations. As with social enterprises, Africa sorely needs what effective modern organizations can bring.   

 

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