To judge how far aid has helped Africa along the road to prosperity, just look down at the pavement -- or the lack of it.
The most important highway in East Africa starts at the Indian Ocean port of Mombasa. Tens of thousands of trucks every year carry food, fuel and other goods to 100 million people in east and central Africa up a bone-jarring two-lane road.
Despite millions of aid dollars spent on roads, the wear and tear is so bad that journeys take weeks. And the cost makes it cheaper to have a container of corn shipped from Iowa than to truck it 800km to western Kenya.
In the 50 years since the first African countries won independence, the world has spent US$568 billion on Africa. Yet Africans are poorer now than a quarter century ago, and much of the money has ended up on the road to nowhere. This dismal record is sparking a vigorous debate on how best to help the world's poorest continent, and to what degree aid is the answer.
A growing chorus of Africans is saying what they need is not handouts, but investment so they can rebuild on their own.
"Africans ... are tired. They are tired of being the subject of everybody's charity and care. And what is happening in many African countries now is the realization that nobody can do it but us," said Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, a World Bank managing director and former finance minister of Nigeria, at a talk on a changing Africa. "We can invite partners who support us, but we have to start."
LIFEBLOOD
Roads are the lifeblood of an economy, the delivery system for agriculture, mining, tourism and other mainstays of African industry. But roads in Africa are few and bad. When foreign companies calculate the price of doing business on the continent, they look at figures like the cost of transportation and decide to go somewhere else.
"No one would ever have 100 million people in the rich world along a broken-down, two-lane, undivided road as we do here," said leading economist Jeffrey Sachs about Nairobi. "If the donors were thinking about what would really provide development, it's a proper, divided highway on which truck traffic could go."
Truth is, they did think of it -- and almost built it -- 40 years ago. But today, the east-west Trans-African Highway exists only on maps. On the ground, it turns into a muddy footpath in the jungles of eastern Congo.
The story of the highway shows why aid to Africa has largely failed in the past, and what can be learned for the future.
Back in 1969, the Japanese government proposed extending the Mombasa Highway to Lagos, Nigeria on the Atlantic Ocean. The four-lane, 7,080km paved highway would be slightly longer than Interstate 90 running from Boston to Seattle across the US. It was to bring modern trade to six African countries.
By 1971, the deal had the support of the six countries, nine other rich countries and six international aid agencies. They hoped to have at least two lanes of all-weather road open by 1978.
It did not take long for problems to emerge. Dictator Idi Amin took control of Uganda and threatened neighboring Kenya, which then closed the highway.
MOBUTU
The fight reflected a constant plague for foreign aid to Africa -- corrupt dictators, and donors who gave them money to protect political and economic interests. Nowhere was this exchange clearer than in Zaire, now known as Congo.
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