The African Century (Foreign Policy)
Senior Fellow and Vice President for Programs Todd Moss is quoted in a Foreign Affaris article on the importance of governance on the road towards growth.
Call me a cynic, but I've been skeptical of the African economic miracle story. We keep hearing that "six of the world's ten fastest growing economies" over the last decade are in sub-Saharan Africa, but rarely that three of those six -- Angola, Chad, and Nigeria -- depend on oil, and thus could fall to earth as prices decline. But the Economist has convinced me that growth is broader and deeper than I thought. Its recent special report, "A Hopeful Continent," notes that across Africa income per capita has grown 30 percent over the last decade, after having shrunk 10 percent over the previous 20 years. Projected growth over the next decade is 6 percent annually.
That leaves me with a few questions: What does that tell us about development policy? Is this a story about aid? Democracy? Economic policy? The commodities markets?
First of all, is the the boom even real? Is Africa itself hopeful, or just little bits of it? Todd Moss, head of the Emerging Africa Project at the Center for Global Development, says that he views the changes in Africa as "big and important and historically different from the past," but he adds that "the dominant trend is divergence among countries." For every Ghana or Ethiopia that is making durable progress, there is a Chad that is "stuck in the past and free-riding on the commodities boom." Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa, is somewhere in the middle, its banking sector set to dominate the continent while the mighty torrent of oil money corrupts politics and barely reaches the poor.
But there's no question about what distinguishes the success stories from the failures -- governance. Moss points out that about half of African contrives have improved on indicators of good governance, and half haven't. Oliver August, author of the Economist report (yes, the famously anonymous "newspaper" now seems to award bylines for its most ambitious efforts), noted that he traveled 15,800 miles over Africa's roads without once being asked for a bribe.
The moral of the story is not, "There's nothing the West can do," but rather, "It's not what we thought." Virtually all African countries still need aid for both targeted social investments and infrastructure, where in general it lags far behind Asia. But more than aid, they need trade and investment. Bob Geldof, Bono's mentor in the aid-for-Africa line, is now a partner in 8 Miles, a private equity firm which invests in Africa. But states will attract foreign investors only if they improve the investment climate, strengthen the rule of law and reduce corruption -- where the West can help with policy advice, training, and technology. It's not very heroic. "We" -- the West -- cannot make poverty history; only "they" can do that. The good news is that they're doing it.
