save africa?
An interesting take on the Wests' obsession with 'Saving Africa' from itself.
from the Washington Post
Monday, July 16, 2007
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An interesting take on the Wests' obsession with 'Saving Africa' from itself.
from the Washington Post
4 comments:
mr. iweala has very valid points and conclusions that i've come to as well, especially in light of well-publicized developments like the self-aggrandizing brangelina adoptions.
but, he is very idealistic. how long has africa been "poised" to come into league with developed nations? chomsky wrote in 1966 that it may be time to forget the notion that africa can become a 'first world' country. they don't have the resources, they don't have the capital, and they are generations behind in terms of development, sustainable or otherwise. these points were as valid forty years ago as they are today.
just yesterday, the economist had a piece on the unforgiving political conditions across much of africa, which seems to refute many of mr. iweala's points. Economist article
on top of everything, the environmental prospects for africa are horrible, frankly. nearly every report forecasting the effects of global warming portray the african continent as experiencing higher temperatures and less rainfall in the coming decades. even if africa improved its political/humanitarian situation by its own hands, it will have little ability to mitigate the effects of environmental degradation brought on by global warming. this situation is all the worse since africa, of course, has had a virtually non-existant role in causing global warming through greenhouse gas emissions.
agreed that global warming will very likely catastrophically affect africa and yes it is generations behind 'the developed' world, but i think that what iweala is saying about self reliance and fixing their own problems is the crux of his argument. which, ultimately, is going to be the only meaningful way to change africa's fate.
perhaps chomsker is right. there is a real possibility that africa will never emerge as a developed continent. what can be affected is the quality of life of its citizens. just throwing financial bandaid at the problem will not solve it.
the economist article points out that the countries who are scoring well on governance issues are the most sustainable on the 'long term' and the ones who are least sustainable are the ones who are the lowest scoring in the governance metric. meaningful change will have to be incremental and will have to include a mix of both self reliance through good governance, and likely debt forgiveness combined with food aid during the inevitable environmental disaster.
I think its weird that we pour aid into Africa but refuse to lower the ridiculously high tariffs on imports of African goods. And these tariffs are not on everything-only on the few things that Africa can actually produce, such as textiles and agriculture. Of course on tech products and things that they have no hope of producing competitively, we are more than generous with our trade policy.
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