Canada and Africa: The opportunity to make history

While underlining Canadian people’s best intentions for the African continent, Gerald Caplan argues that his country and the rest of the Western world should understand that many existing practices around trade, aid, lending, investment, and recruiting in relation to Africa cause far more harm than good. Without an approach that goes beyond mere compassionate humanitarianism, the author stresses that the efforts of millions of courageous African social activists will be in vain.PART II Take corruption, an ugly phenomenon that has almost become synonymous with Africa itself. It’s quite true that corruption is a deep-seated crisis for much of the continent. But there’s corruption and then there’s corruption. Cops demand bribes from drivers to ratchet up their miserable salaries. But the big guys, the ones who steal millions of dollars and more, can only succeed with the aid of a sophisticated network of Western banks, lawyers, accountants, middlemen and tax havens. We never hear of this half of the dance, yet it takes two to tango. Let’s have a Transparency International for rich countries that creates a dishonour roll for those that facilitate and profit from the hundreds of millions, even billions, they help steal from Africa. Take the crises in education and healthcare. Believe it or not, policies imposed by the World bank and International Monetary Fund, on which so many African states depend for loans and legitimacy, actually put a ceiling on the number of teachers and health workers that government can employ, in order to keep the cost of government low. Questions of need were irrelevant. In fact, the West demanded that fees be imposed on both schooling and health care, which, to the apparent astonishment of the horde of PhDs who work for these institutions, led to a serious decline in school attendance and the use of health clinics. This is only one example of how western policies and practices have contrived to worsen the burdens for many Africans. There are countless others. Many of them stem from the same ideology that led to school and health fees for the poorest people in the world. Nobel Prize-winner Joseph Stiglitz calls it ‘market fundamentalism’, the dogma that whatever the question, market nostrums are the answer: small government, privatization, the conviction that the private sector will bring growth that will trickle down and benefit all. As report after report has documented, in Africa as in the much of the poor world these dogmas have palpably failed to create sustained growth while dramatically increasing inequality, in short a perfect failure. Onerous conditions for receiving a loan - privatizing water supplies, for example, or grossly under funding higher education - were actually destructive of African economies. So were the loans themselves. Often provided to the most egregious of African leaders at exorbitant rates, many desperately poor countries have spent more repaying the interest on their loans to the affluent West than on their health and education budgets combined. Instead of trade being profitable for Africa, the West has forced the continent to open its markets to western goods, all in the name of free trade, at least for the weak and poor. At the same time, European and North American farmers are subsidised to the tune of $1 billion a day or more. Incredibly enough, it costs Ghanaians more to buy a local chicken than one shipped from Europe. No country has developed without protecting its markets and industries until they were strong enough to be competitive. But we insist Africa, with all its burdens, be the first to try. It can’t be done. We promote more Western investment for Africa, but in reality most of it goes to a small number of oil-producing states. China is always blamed, half fairly, for its obsession with Africa’s resources. But they’ve learned everything they know from us. Few western resource-extracting industries pay appropriate taxes, royalties or wages. Many pollute the environment and use bribes to get contracts. Western investors are in fact the source of much of Africa’s corruption. Finally, foreign aid is far from the generous contribution to Africa that we like to think it is. Not only isn’t there enough of it, it often doesn’t do the job intended. Under Canada’s current Prime Minister Stephen Harper, aid - already at record lows - has actually declined in the past two years. And a great deal of so-called aid rarely gets to where it’s needed in any case. Much is tied to buying Canadian products, and large amounts end up going to Canadian consultants. What actually goes to alleviating poverty or helping development is never quite clear, but it’s only a fraction of whatever amounts you hear. The truth about the West’s relationship with Africa is exactly the opposite of what most of us believe. The West exploits Africa far more than we help develop it. The reality is that over six centuries, from the slave trade to the brutal decades of colonialism right through to today, year after year the West drains off far more of Africa’s resources than we invest or donate. What should Canadians do? First, understand that we are not compassionate humanitarians or modern missionaries, but that in the name of justice we owe Africa an enormous debt for the way it’s been looted and plundered. Second, we need to make the rest of the Western world understand that many of our trade, aid, lending, investment, recruiting and other practices are causing far more harm than good. Otherwise, despite the best efforts of millions of courageous African social activists, their continent will remain a mess. * Gerald Caplan, who has a PhD in African history, recently published The Betrayal of Africa.