Sun, Jul 02, 2000 page9

• Zimbabwe's vote shows optimism for Africa's future

  • By Jonathan Power
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  It sometimes takes a lot of faith to believe it, but most of Africa is going slowly in the right direction. Once again the pessimists have been confounded. The run up to last weekend's parliamentary election in Zimbabwe seemed to be African despotism at its worst with President Robert Mugabe blatantly calling on his supporters to "axe" opposition activists. But the heroism of the opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, and his supporters paid off. Although they did not win, they secured a handsome vote that gives them a great deal of leverage in the new parliament to argue not just for political reform but for economic change, too. Tsvangirai is now well placed to topple Mugabe in the presidential election in two years.

  There may not be the political "renaissance" that presidents Bill Clinton and Thabo Mbeki once spoke of. There are too many wars tearing up large swathes of the continent for that but there is a definite sense of forward momentum both on the economic and the political level.

  The International Monetary Fund now expects an average growth rate in Africa of over 4 percent this year. Economic activity is rebounding in three of the largest economies, Nigeria, South Africa and Algeria. A slew of smaller countries are all expected to turn in strong performances, just as they have in recent years: Ghana, Tanzania, Tunisia, Senegal, Malawi, Botswana, Mauritania, Mauritius, Sudan, Benin, Cote D'Ivoire and Uganda. The biggest pacesetter of them all, Mozambique, which had regular annual growth rates of 10 percent or over is still recovering from last year's terrible floods, but it is already showing signs of renewed growth. Call them the African lions!

  Africa is being helped along by the fair wind blowing from Europe, the major market for African countries. The general drift of the world toward increasing prosperity is also helping lift the African economies as the prices of many, but by no means all, commodities begin to rise and export opportunities open up. Oil-producing states such as Algeria and Nigeria have benefited from unusually high oil prices.

  bearing fruit

  Years of macroeconomic stabilization, structural adjustment and political reforms are bearing fruit. Inflation is expected to be around 6 percent or less in many countries. In South Africa the deficit has declined rapidly and interest rates have fallen.

  The political map is better too than the war headlines suggest. Eight countries in Africa meet Freedom House's rigorous criteria for being totally "free" and another 24 are "partly free." But 21 remain closed dictatorships.

  Nevertheless, Africa's underlying deep-rooted poverty and misery will not begin to disappear until these trends are more firmly and widely established. In Africa generally, the level of real per capita incomes is lower than it was 30 years ago. Although economists now accept there is no single formula for kick-starting growth, it is both common sense and the common consensus of economic research to conclude that there will be no progress as long as there is poor education and poor health, ineffective governance, weak rule of law and war. One should also add, that as long as the albatross of debt incurred under previous years of maladministration and short-sighted lending hangs around Africa's neck, it will sap the economic incentive to reform and grow. Progress will also not come about until the AIDS pandemic is brought under control. The one redeeming feature of the poverty statistics used to be that even in countries where income was not rising health levels and longevity were, thanks to vaccinations, improvements in water supply and hygiene. But the toll from AIDS is upsetting these gains in a number of African countries, an historical reversal no one foresaw.

  repeating mistakes

  This is why, belatedly -- it should have happened 20 years ago -- poverty reduction is now placed at the center of the International Monetary Fund's facility for concessional lending. Yet, foreign aid to countries with bad policies is money down a rat hole. Despite 30 years of investigation, debate and conclusion the same old mistakes are still being made. Aid to recipients who are not capable of making the investment produce a return, donor countries that favor projects that benefit their own exporters of goods and services more than the needs of the recipients and still too much spending on prestigious "white elephant" projects and military purchases.

  Moreover, there is the real question: What is the point of giving aid when the industrialized countries still block the channels of trading opportunity? Agricultural subsidies to farmers in industrialized countries amount to US$360 billion a year, equal to Africa's entire national income. Europe in particular needs to reform its trade policies in areas that discriminate against Africa. There are still serious import restrictions on things that Africa could do cheaper: agricultural produce and textiles.

  Moreover, these subsidies add to the downward pressure on world food prices, eroding the competitiveness of many farmers in Africa. It should not be beyond the wit of the EU to introduce new ways of supporting poorer farmers at home without exacting a cost in the global fight against poverty.

  The prize-winning Nigerian novelist Ben Okri describes Africa's condition with the sharpest of words: "Everywhere there was the crudity of wounds, the stark huts, the rusted zinc abodes, the rubbish in the streets, children in rags, the little girls naked on the sand playing with crushed tin cans, the little boys jumping about uncircumcised, making machine-gun noises. The air vibrating with poisonous heat and evaporating water from filthy gutters. The sun barred the reality of our lives and everything was so harsh it was a mystery that we could understand and care for one another or anything at all."

  But it doesn't have to be. Africa can progress out of its poverty. There is a way forward and, given a quarter of a chance, African men and women will fight for it, as the voters of Zimbabwe have bravely shown.
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