Udjuni.com

AFRICA is commonly referred to as a “troubled continent”, “basket case”, “a continent of opportunity on the verge of renaissance”. By implication of the above terms, there seems to be two extreme perceptions about Africa, one that is associated with extreme poverty and inability to get ourselves out of economic mess; and the other one that Africa is nothing but opportunity.

It is difficult to address the problem on a large scale, so I decided to reduce the scale to a village level, and use a situation that can be magnified to reflect our problem at a large scale. I urge you to just bear with me while I try to make a point.

Over the years, I have come to realise that what happens on a large scale is actually a replica of the things that happens at a micro level. Growing up in the rural village, girls and boys alike had chores in the household. What chores they had depended on what their parents thought they were capable of doing. My parents for example, required everybody to perform household duties from cooking to working in the fields. The premise for this is that you have to be able to help yourself or at least make a good attempt to help yourself out of a difficult situation before you can seek help. Some parents were doing everything by themselves, their children were treated like glass (that could be broken whenever too much pressure was exerted). While we worked hard to earn a living, some of our relatives were drinking homebrew and their children played games.

The funny thing was that year after year, my parents would generously give seeds to our relatives to sow, and every year, they would leave at least half their fields engulfed by weeds. The little that they harvested could not last long and before the season was over, they were back to beg for more and again they would get a generous share of what we had. At some point an idea crossed my mind, “how much control would we have over our village if we were really into dominating, seizing and owning property?”. From my estimates, after two to three years of loaning food and properties to everyone in the village, the value of what they would pay us back would be at least 75% of the total village wealth. A pretty good picture for an investor, but very bad one for village residents.

Now, let us blow this up to a country level or continent level: Year after year billions of dollars are pumped into aid for Africa initiative, yet year after year Africa continues to ask for more help from countries that eager to give us a generous share of their wealth, unfortunately some of this is coming in the form of loans while others are genuine donations.

It is no secret that those giving us their dollars see the opportunity in the continent, otherwise such generous giving would not be called investment.

While there is a short-term benefit to be at the receiving end of such generosity, the long-term impact on Africa’s economic growth is pretty bad, as my “old man” once pointed out: “If you keep doing your children’s homework for them, your children will never know what it takes to pass a test or examination. Sooner or later, they are going to expect you to write the test on their behalf”. If you want your children to succeed, give them room to fail and the courage to get up keep trying until they get it.

I still have to find one country on the planet that has transformed from the so called “third world” to “developed” or achieved long-term economic growth solely on donations from wealthier countries. From what we have seen so far, too much donations to the continent has been more successful at one thing than others and that is creating heavy dependence on such donations, which in my opinion is counter-productive. In addition to this, because we have not really worked for such wealth, we can never appreciate its value and often times such donations/loans are misused.

Ordinary people, who are usually the intended recipients do not understand the value of such donations and loans, even though they are expected to foot the bill when the time to repay the loan comes.
They think it is “government money”, not theirs. This is perhaps among the biggest difference in terms holding people accountable. Ordinary citizens of wealthier nations know where their wealth is coming from, they work very hard for that wealth and thus better appreciate its value. When they see signs of misuse, they are quick to point it out and hold people accountable.

If we remain so dependent on foreign donations and loans, then why would we think that we will at one point be a developed continent, while digging ourselves deeper into debt? Another question is how much of our actual wealth are we prepared to give up to honour our contractual obligations with such investors? At what point do we start looking into ourselves for solutions to our problems? At what point do we put our egos and fight for power and dominance on the line in search of a long-term African solution?

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