This is a guest article from our friends at The Mwayi Project, a non-profit organisation that we support.
A seat at the table
Africa is truly the ‘poster-child’ of the world’s problems. Often treated as a single entity, Africa has faced a barrage of headwinds that no other region on the planet has had to endure with such force and consistency. The causes of these headwinds are important to address, but the solutions are even more so. Critically, though, the solutions must come from within Africa, not from without.
That poses an immediate paradox. External entities the world over have been attempting to suggest solutions to Africa’s problems for many years, but if the solutions must come from within Africa, then is there no seat at the table for external entities? Should they stop interfering, abandon their missions and leave Africa to solve its own problems? If they had done so 50 or 60 years ago when the wave of independence swept across Africa, then indeed many such headwinds may have been averted. We’ll discuss that later. But this paper argues that there is still a seat at the table for external organisations in the discussion about how to solve the problem of Africa. That seat, however, is merely an advisory one. An independent directorship. A neighbour with some gardening tips. The true engine of change is, unequivocally, within Africa.
Treating Africa as a single entity is no more incorrect than treating it as 54 entities. Today’s set of ‘modern’ nation states was established by a series of events in history that, by and large, served the interests of external forces as opposed to the African people. The Berlin Conference of 1884-85, for example, formalised the ‘scramble for Africa’ and accelerated it, encouraging European powers to assert the principle of effective occupation in their spheres of influence. For Africans, this chain of events was pivotal in ending the traditional structures of governance that had endured for centuries, in favour of direct colonial rule. Up until the middle of the 19th century, Africa was governed by its own indigenous cultures with subtle and complex leadership structures that were seen by the arriving colonial powers as tribal, backward, and in need of ‘modern civilisation’. Even today, Africa’s micro-national heritages are often ignored or trivialised – by some African leaders themselves as much as by non-African observers and influencers. The countries we see today, therefore, are the product of that historically defining series of events that took Africa from age-old cultures developed within, through colonial exploitation from without, to the neoliberal quasi-democratic states struggling to emerge from the catastrophic results of external interference.
So, our seat at the table in the discussion of Africa is precarious, but we ask the African people directly for a voice. Let us try to understand the causes and consequences of events that have led you here, and let us try to help. We will listen more than we speak, and we’ll be thoughtful in our approach. We won’t treat you as one nation, nor as 54 countries or myriad heritages. We won’t treat you as a set of problems to be solved. We’ll treat you as 1.2 billion individuals with the passion, humour, motivation, skill and entrepreneurialism that we know you have. Let us explain, in this paper, how we intend to help create opportunities so that you can drive change.
The standard model
The current model of giving by rich nations to African nations is patronising at best. At worst, it serves to compound the problems that led Africa to a position of underdevelopment and poverty in the first place. ‘Giving’ comes in many forms, but here we distinguish between two main types: aid transfers by donor governments to African governments (aid), and charitable transfers by private donor parties to African beneficiaries (charity). We have no doubt that the majority of charitable giving has the best intentions and that any patronising tone is probably unintentional. As the (literal) poster-child of world hunger, Africa appears in great need of help from those of us in a more fortunate position. But the effectiveness of such charitable giving in furthering the economic development of Africa is questionable. For example, charitable organisations effectively become competitors to domestic producers of progress. Small local businesses engaged in entrepreneurial activity cannot compete with the vast flows of charitable income that come from abroad and as a result, the sustainable development being subtly pursued by said local businesses is undermined by the not-so-subtle unsustainable development pursued by external organisations.
However, branding charitable giving as unhelpful to the people of Africa is unfair. The debate about whether ‘help’ should come in the form of charity (giving a man a fish) or opportunity (teaching a man to fish) is really a discussion about intergenerational equity. Millions of people in today’s Africa are suffering from malnutrition, disease and displacement, not to mention unhappiness. Many of them feel a sense of worthlessness and that their place in the world is irrelevant and forgotten, contributing to their lack of identity and perpetuating the aggregate loss of cultural significance so important to sustainable development: another topic that we’ll discuss later. They need to eat today, but a hyper-focus on sustainable development prioritises tomorrow’s people at the expense of today’s people. So charitable giving can help. On the other hand, a great moral hazard arises from charitable giving which prioritises today’s people at the expense of tomorrow’ people. The proof is self-evident: charitable giving to Africa is a decades-old pastime, and whilst many people ate during those years, many more remain hungry today. Today’s people were forgotten by yesterday’s failure to recognise the importance of intergenerational equity. Here’s a fact: in 1980, the GDP per capita of Malawi was greater than that of China.
Most of today’s charitable giving is biased towards today’s Africa. Initiatives such as Comic Relief and Children in Need in the UK, and Live Aid more globally, have increased public awareness of suffering in Africa and accelerated the role of celebrity diplomacy in global affairs. None of this is necessarily bad; indeed, heightened public awareness is a good thing, but if increased focus on help in the form of charity means that help in the form of opportunity is neglected, then the intergenerational balance of equity is out of kilter. Since perpetual charity is unsustainable, then strictly speaking such charity ultimately causes more suffering in the future. This is a difficult reality for donors with good intentions to accept, but it is a necessary evolution in the understanding of the donor world and in how they approach Africa. Addressing this need not necessarily mean a reduction in the amount of charitable giving; rather, a recalibration of the balance between current and future generations of African people is required. That involves an increased focus on creating opportunities for Africans to help themselves, even at the expense of today’s people as such an approach necessarily takes time to bear fruit. The need for charity will then naturally subside as economic development becomes self-perpetuating and sustainable.
Absent from the preceding discussion about charity is that about politics, corruption, international relations and the complexities of the global world order. This is where we distinguish between charity and aid, and this is where the discussion becomes cynical. The effectiveness of aid, discussed in more detail in a forthcoming paper, is subject to frictions at multiple levels and by multiple parties as the aid makes its way from donor country coffers to the people of Africa. The first of these frictions is the motive of the donor country itself. Consider these four boybands: the European Civilisers, the Cold War Superheroes, the Chinese Miracle Men, and the Guilty Ex-Partners. The European Civilisers – or the original European imperialists – invested immeasurable resources in Africa during their colonisation of Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries. Their reasons were simple: to extract even more resources to take back to Europe, all the while under the guise of bringing ‘civilisation’ to Africa. The Cold War Superheroes – or the USA and Soviet Union – showered African leaders with promises and riches as part of their political land grab during the Cold War, only to leave the continent with bitter infighting amongst factions whilst the Superheroes sat safely in Washington and Moscow. The Chinese Miracle Men have embarked on massive infrastructure spending in Africa which appears philanthropic but has left African nations in dangerous debt-traps. Finally, the Guilty Ex-Partners continue to send a flood of aid to Africa decades after formally withdrawing their colonial presence, with the hope that it absolves them of past atrocities. It is ok to expect a return on investment, but Africa got a bad deal. Call us cynical. Secondly, since aid is generally transferred through the governing bodies of the African nations, the integrity of the African governments is paramount in ensuring that the aid actually makes its way to the people. If the money flows to the ‘big men’ but no further, the big men’s pockets get bigger and the poor stay hungry. Over the 32 years that he was in power, the president of Zaire (now Democratic Republic of the Congo), Mobutu Sese Seko, stole almost half of the $12bn in IMF aid sent to the country. Call us cynical.
Amongst other lesser frictions, these two frictions alone call into question the effectiveness of aid in driving sustainable development in Africa. At best, these frictions are a natural and forgivable by-product of an attempt at solving a very difficult problem. But more likely than not, they reflect a type of international corruption that is not only massive in scale, but also wholeheartedly sponsored by the international community, difficult or seemingly impossible to reverse, and tragically accepted as the norm by the African people who suffer immeasurably from it.
A recalibration of the international community’s approach to aid is required. The monetary amounts under discussion in the business of charity are miniscule when compared to the flows of international aid to Africa. Put to good use, such capital injections have the power to generate opportunities for genuine economic development in Africa. So, in the discussion about the business of aid, the debate is not just one of intergenerational equity but also one of capital allocation.
The opportunity model
Two concepts take centre stage in the model of opportunity introduced here: intergenerational equity and capital allocation. The opportunity model doesn’t dismiss aid entirely, it just argues for a more intelligent approach to capital allocation. And it certainly doesn’t dismiss charity, which is much smaller, more localised and direct, and it plays a key role in maintaining the intergenerational balance.
The opportunity model requires that every penny, cent, kobo or tambala spent should generate momentum, network effects, positive externalities and knock-on impacts, which we call multiplier effects. Every layer of impact that follows the initial spend is internally generated by the engine of Africa. In this manner, today’s aid helps today’s Africa and today’s Africa helps tomorrow’s Africa. Effective capital allocation becomes a necessity, and the balance of intergenerational equity is restored.
Our seat at the table is to drive an agenda of research that identifies opportunities for Africa to help itself. We take a collective, forum-like, crowd-sourced approach to research and we won’t stop until the potential of Africa is truly unleashed. We’ve started with the warm heart of the continent, Malawi.
This was a guest article from our friends at The Mwayi Project, a non-profit organisation that we support. If you would like to learn more about The Mwayi Project, please comment on this article or visit their website at www.mwayi.org and send them a message directly.
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