One of these days...
From
Byker@21:1/5 to
All on Mon May 6 08:29:09 2019
XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, soc.culture.african.american, alt.politics.immigration
XPost: alt.society.liberalism
Is it that the rule that reads nature must compensate for a pea-sized brain?
How does the negro rule its own continent? Here's how:
Africa's problems:
Roads: only 16% paved
Telephones: 10 per 1000
Electricity: 80% lack access
AIDS: 35m infected
Sanitation: inadequate for 75% of rural population
Source: Can Africa Claim the 21st Century
The bank says the total combined income of 48 countries in Africa is little more than that of Belgium.
In the last 40 years, average incomes per person in Africa have stagnated
while they have grown in most of the rest of the world.
Africa now accounts for only 1% of the total world economic output and 2% of world trade.
On average, African countries have economies smaller than a town of 60,000 people in a rich country.
With only 10m telephone lines, half of them in South Africa, there is little chance of most Africans gaining access to the internet.
Africa has fewer roads than Poland, only 16% of which are paved, and only
one in five households has access to electricity.
Two-thirds of rural Africans lack adequate water supplies, while three
quarters lack adequate sanitation.
Despite gains in the second half of the 1990s, sub-Saharan Africa enters
the 21st Century with many of the world's poorest countries. Averageincome
per capita is lower than at the end of the 1960s. Incomes, assets,and access
to essential services are unequally distributed. And the region contains a growing share of the world's absolute poor, who have little power to
influence the allocation of resources.
Moreover, many development problems have become largely confined to Africa. They include lagging primary school enrollments, high child mortality, and endemic diseases - including malaria and HIV/AIDS - that impose costs on
Africa at least twice those in any other developing region. One African in
five lives in countries severely disrupted by conflict. Making matters
worse, Africa's place in the global economy has been eroded, with declining export shares in traditional primary products, little diversification into
new lines of business, and massive capital flight and loss of skills to
other regions. Now the region stands in danger of being excluded from the information revolution.
Many countries have made important economic reforms, improving macroeconomic management, liberalizing markets and trade, and widening the space for
private sector activity. Where these reforms have been sustained - and underpinned by civil peace - they have raised growth and incomes and reduced poverty. Even as parts of the region are making headlines with wars and
natural disasters, other parts are making headway with rising interest from domestic and foreign businesses and higher investment.
But the response has not been sufficient to overcome years of falling income
or to reverse other adverse legacies from the long period of economic
decline - including deteriorated capacity, weakened institutions, and inadequate infrastructure. Major changes are needed if Africans - and their children - are to claim the 21 st century. With the region's rapidly growing population, 5 percent annual growth is needed simply to keep the number of
poor from rising. Halving severe poverty by 2015 will require annual growth
of more than 7 percent, along
with a more equitable distribution of income.
Moreover, Africa will not be able to sustain rapid growth without investing
in its people. Many lack the health, education, and access to inputs needed
to contribute to - and benefit from - high growth. Women are one of Africa's hidden growth reserves, providing most of the region's labor, but their productivity is hampered by widespread inequality in education and access.
Thus gender equality can be a potent force for accelerated poverty
reduction. And HIV/AIDS looms as a new menace, threatening to cut life expectancy by 20 years and undermine savings, growth, and the social fabric
in many countries.
Africa thus faces an immense, multifaceted development challenge. But the
new century offers a window of opportunity to reverse the marginalization of Africa's people - and of Africa's governments, relative to donors, in the development agenda. Political participationhas increased sharply in the past decade, paving the way for more accountable government, and there is greater consensus on the need to move away from the failed models of the past. With
the end of the Cold War, Africa is no longer an ideological and strategic battleground where ``trusted allies'' receive foreign assistance regardless
of their record on governance and development. Globalization and new technology, especially information technology, offer great potential for Africa, historically a sparsely populated, isolated region. Though these factors also pose risks, including that of being left further behind, these
are far outweighed by the potential benefits.
Making these benefits materialize will require a ``business plan'' conceived and owned by Africans, and supported by donors through coordinated,
longterm partnerships. African countries differ widely, so there is no universal formula for success. But many countries face similar issues, and
can draw on positive African examples of how to address them.
Improving governance and resolving conflict is perhaps the most basic requirement for faster development. Widespread civil conflicts impose
enormous costs, including on neighboring countries. Contrary to popular
belief, Africa's conflicts do not stem from ethnic diversity. Rather, in a pattern found around the world, conflicts are driven by poverty, underdevelopment, and lack of economic diversification, as well as by
political systems that marginalize large parts of the population. But
conflicts perpetuate poverty, creating a vicious circle that can be reversed only through special development efforts - including longrun peacebuilding
and political reforms. With success in these areas, countries can grow
rapidly, and flight capital can return.
Countries that have made the greatest gains in political participation are
also those with better economic management. Again, this conforms to a global pattern that suggests multiethnic states can grow as fast as homogeneous
ones - if they sustain participatory political systems. Many countries need
to develop political models that facilitate consensus building and include marginalized groups.
Development programs need to be winwin, improving the management and distribution of economic resources and contributing to more effective
states. Programs should empower citizens to hold governments accountable, enable governments to respond to new demands, and enforce compliance with
the economic and political rules of the game. Development efforts are
starting to move in this direction, with greater beneficiary involvement in
the delivery of services and more emphasis on results. But far more needs to
be done to strengthen Africa's institutions - including ensuring that representative institutions, such as parliaments, play their proper role in economic and budgetary oversight.
Investing in people is also essential for accelerated poverty reduction.
Many countries are caught in a trap of high fertility and mortality, low education (especially of women - less than onequarter of poor rural girls attend primary school), high dependency ratios, and low savings. In
addition, greater political commitment is urgently needed to fight HIV/AIDS.
While the resources available for education and health are inadequate in
some countries, many need to translate their existing commitment to human development into effective programs for delivering essential services and increasing gender equality. Africa has some of the world's strongest communities, yet services are usually provided through weak, centralized institutions that are seen as remote and ineffective by those they are
supposed to serve. Deconcentrated service delivery through local
communities, supported by capacity building at local levels and effective governance to ensure transparency and empower recipients, could have a major impact. With effective regional cooperation and donor support through coordinated, longterm partnerships - including for international public
goods such as new vaccines - Africa could solve its human development crisis
in one generation.
Increasing competitiveness and diversifying economies must be a third area
of focus if Africa is to claim the new century. Job creation is slow not because of labor market rigidities (though there are exceptions) but because
of the high perceived risks and costs of doing business in Africa. These
need to be lowered by locking in reforms and delivering business services
more efficiently - with less corruption, better infrastructure and financial services, and increased access to the information economy. Africa trails the world on every dimension of these essentials. Lowering these barriers
requires new approaches, including more participation by the private sector
and by local communities, a more regional approach to overcome the problems posed by small African economies, and a central government shift to
regulating and facilitating services rather than providing them.
Though Africa's agriculture has responded to limited reforms, it remains backward and undercapitalized, the result of centuries of extractive
policies. Recapitalizing the sector will require maintaining and improving price incentives (including by encouraging competitive input markets), channeling more public spending and foreign aid to rural communities
(including for local infrastructure), and tapping into the savings potential
of farmers. These changes are also needed to create incentives to reverse severe environmental degradation. Publicprivate partnerships can make a contribution, including in agricultural research and extension, where a regional approach would also help. And wider access to OECD markets for agricultural products would make a big difference - at some $300 billion, subsidies to OECD agriculture are equal to Africa's GDP.
Since the late 1960s Africa's loss of world trade has cost it almost $70 billion a year, reflecting a failure to diversify into new, dynamic products
as well as a falling market share for traditional goods. Africa's trade
reforms have mostly been negotiated with donors as part of adjustment
programs. Reforms still need to be embedded in a development strategy that
is export oriented, anchored on competitive and stable real exchange rates,
and enables exporters to access imported inputs at world prices. Governments need to increase consultations with business, working to develop worldclass service standards. Here again a regional approach is vital, not only to encourage intraAfrican trade flows but perhaps more important, to provide a wider platform to encourage investment. And African countries need to work together to participate in the global negotiations that shape the world
trading system. The capacity requirements for this are too great for small, poor countries.
Reducing aid dependence and strengthening partnerships will have to be a
fourth component of Africa's development strategy. Africa is the world's
most aiddependent and indebted region. Concessional assistance is essential
if Africa is to grow rapidly while also increasing consumption to reduce poverty. Excluding private inflows, the savings gap for a typical country is about 17 percent of GDP, and other regions show that private flows cannot be sustained at more than 5 percent of GDP without risk of crisis. But aid, particularly when delivered in a weak institutional environment by large numbers of donors with fragmented projects and requirements, can weaken institutional capacity and undermine accountability.
High debt and debt service add to the problem, deterring private investment
and absorbing core budget resources, making governments ever more ``cash
poor'' but ``project rich,'' with a development agenda increasingly
perceived as being shaped by donors. Lack of selectivity compounds the
problem, channeling a lot of aid to countries with poor development
policies. And with few exceptions, aid has largely been confined to national boundaries rather than used to stimulate regional and international public goods.
These problems are widely recognized, and a consensus has emerged that the primary goal of aid should be to reduce poverty. But paradoxically, aid transfers are declining just when many of the problems are being addressed. Africa enters the new century in the midst of intense debate on aid,
including what could be a watershed change in its relationship with the
World Bank and International Monetary Fund, as well as important changes in development cooperation with the European Union and an enhanced program of
debt relief. New aid relationships are being implemented in a number of countries - relationships that emphasize a holistic, countrydriven approach supported by donors on the basis of longterm partnerships, and with greater beneficiary participation and empowerment over the use of resources.
The change is in the right direction, but there is a long way to go. In a typical poor country aid transfers might equal 10 percent of GDP, yet the poorest fifth of the population disposes of only about 4 percent of GDP. It remains to be seen how well partnerships can resolve the tensions between
the objectives of recipients and individual donors, and how far the behavior
of donors will change to facilitate African ownership of its development agenda. It also remains to be seen how far partnerships can extend beyond assistance, to include enhanced opening of world markets to African products and services.
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