Via Rod, I came across this rather extraordinary article by one Kevin Myers in the Irish Independent, in which he proclaimed Africa worthless:

They are now — one way or another — virtually all giving aid to or investing in Africa, whereas Africa, with its vast savannahs and its lush pastures, is giving almost nothing to anyone, apart from AIDS.

Far be it from me to tell anyone to be more optimistic, but if this statement is true of some parts of Africa (and I think you can fairly say that it is) it is manifestly untrue or at least grossly exaggerated concerning other parts.  There is also a matter of when we are talking about: fifteen years ago, you would have listed Zimbabwe and Ivory Coast as success stories of post-colonial independence, and at that time they were doing reasonably well, but today you would list them as tragic cases of disaster to varying degrees.  My inclinations towards pessimism should make me conclude that this shows that even the seemingly successful states in Africa are going to collapse into chaos and disorder eventually, but I’m not sure that this shows that at all.  I think those two cases in particular do show that the politicisation of ethnicity through elements of mass democracy and the division of a country along ethnic lines tend towards the creation of ruinous, exploitative and oppressive policies that destroy previously flourishing states.  The case of Zimbabwe does point to the inherent difficulties in transitioning from an old, entrenched anti-colonialist political class to a new political leadership, but it does not necessarily mean that Zimbabwe will be doomed to this cycle forever.     

One of the perennial justifications offered for intervention in various African countries is the assumption, often unstated, that Africa as a whole is a hopeless disaster that will collapse in on itself if no one else does anything.  We, and by “we” I mean mainly Westerners, do not take this view of any other part of the world, except perhaps when it comes to Arab states (more on that in a moment), and this is very curious.  Crucial to developmentalist ideology is the idea that Africa is thrashing about impotently and needs still more aid, when surely the thing that Myers’ article tells us is that it has been the habit of development “aid” and the desire to “do something” to save immiserated Africans that have compounded the problems many African nation-states face.  One essential thing that I think should be taken from Myers’ article is the recognition that it would help African states to provide them with fewer crutches of aid and loans and integrate them more fully into the world’s economy.  If, as James has wisely observed, growing corruption worldwide is the great story of the decade and one of the great threats to political life in many “developing” countries, the role of development aid in fostering corruption cannot be ignored. 

As William Easterly has said in one of his many salvoes against the destructive ideology of developmentalism:

But in fact, the real Africa is quite a bit different. And the problem with all this Western stereotyping is that it manages to snatch defeat from the jaws of some current victories, fueling support for patronizing Western policies designed to rescue the allegedly helpless African people while often discouraging those policies that might actually help.

As Prof. Easterly laid out last year, fatalities caused by war account for an extremely small percentage of deaths in Africa, and economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa has been considerable:

But this doesn’t quite square with the sub-Saharan Africa that in 2006 registered its third straight year of good GDP growth — about 6%, well above historic averages for either today’s rich countries or all developing countries. Growth of living standards in the last five years is the highest in Africa’s history.

The real Africa also has seen cellphone and Internet use double every year for the last seven years. Foreign private capital inflows into Africa hit $38 billion in 2006 — more than foreign aid. Africans are saving a higher percentage of their incomes than Americans are (so much for the “poverty trap” of being “too poor to save” endlessly repeated in aid reports). I agree that it’s too soon to conclude that Africa is on a stable growth track, but why not celebrate what Africans have already achieved?
 

Easterly makes the vital point that the standards by which African progress is often being measured demand incredible improvements in very short spans of time, and so naturally African states keep falling short despite making reasonably good progress.  Easterly quoted an Ugandan journalist who asked the obvious question: “What man or nation has ever become rich by holding out a begging bowl?”  This is the basic conservative understanding that dependence created by aid can be positively harmful.  Whatever their intentions, humanitarians and developmentalists are working to distort and stunt the development of African nations.

Myers’ attitude towards Africa is no doubt influenced by experiences in some of the worse, more conflict-ridden states (or, in Somalia’s case, pseudo-states) and his appropriate horror at the irresponsible attitudes of many southern African governments, not merely that of Mbeki, about the region’s public health crises.  Myers makes many legitimate points, and I’m sure the sweeping generalisations he ends up making are the product of frustration with the stigma against saying such things publicly.  Still, it occurs to me that this overly broad view of Africa is very much like the American view of “the Middle East,” which people in this country will commonly refer to as exceedingly violent or unstable, when it has been–outside of a very narrow strip of the Levant–relatively quiet, peaceful and stable until recent years.  Americans believe this because they are frequently shown only those parts of the region that make international news, and those tend to be the parts where there are intractable conflicts, and they are now often told that America’s role in the region is to provide stability in a region that supposedly would otherwise lack it.  That almost exactly the opposite might be true is not really considered a serious view.  The idea that Africans can make their own way in the world without ongoing assistance and support also seems to be quite unusual and controversial.  Developmentalists and interventionists have many incentives to propagate the idea that outside aid and meddling are essential for the well-being of the regions in question, but this not credible.  The most important thing to take away from Myers’ complaint is that these are the people who have exacerbated many of the problems that they then use to justify continued interference.