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We live at a time of mounting Afro-pessimism. Its companion -- official Western disengagement from Africa -- increasingly is in evidence. These trends are hardly surprising: Africa is the region bad news comes from. A one-dimensional picture of "the situation in Africa" flows naturally from the combination of facts and images available in the West. While some editors and writers make efforts to convey Africa's variety, nuance and historical context, most manage to paint a regional portrait of failure, destitution, brutality and hopelessness. Christopher Hitchens recently summed up the African landscape in a searing article in Vanity Fair by referring to the "abattoir conditions in Somalia, Rwanda, Liberia, Angola, Burundi, and elsewhere." The implication that these places represent the new African norm -- and that there are lots more like them waiting to happen -- is hard to escape.
Afro-pessimism feeds off Africa's horrors like vultures on a fresh kill. The horrors of Africa are very real. So, too, are their external political consequences: Elected leaders in both branches of our government -- and from both parties -- have approved reductions in the official U.S. presence in Africa. However sympathetic its African rhetoric, the Clinton administration cut and ran from Somalia and then glossed over genocide in Rwanda. Meanwhile, Senator Mitch McConnell (the new Republican chairman of the appropriations subcommittee on foreign operations) reveals that he has a "hard time justifying expenditures in most of the African continent ... a hard time finding a national interest." U.S. assistance efforts in the region are viewed in significant Republican circles as the foreign-policy equivalent of Aid to Families with Dependent Children.
In an age when even our top national leaders openly search for a "bumper sticker" to define the U.S. strategy toward important places like Russia, it would be coldly convenient simply to accept the Afro-pessimist case. But we cannot. It is not a fair or complete portrait, and the policy implications that appear to flow from it are foolish. It would be reckless to base our conduct toward an entire continent on selective snapshots. And it would be counter to every humanitarian impulse to write off Africa, encouraging doomsdays that do not need to happen.
Our assessment of a region three times the size of the U.S. comprising some 53 distinct political entities and one eighth of the human race cannot be reduced to a recitation of its well-known liabilities, without taking into account its quiet successes, exciting changes or the very diversity that is one of Africa's most striking features.
Former colonial affiliations (e.g., ex-British or ex-Portuguese territories) capture one set of African realities, but these imported, administrative cultures are better for describing African forms than explaining African substance. Ethnolinguistic categories may be of help in the hands of a veteran development specialist or a trained anthropologist and they can be indispensable in describing what goes on within a given society or state bureaucracy. But they are of little help in analyzing the continent as a whole or major hunks of it (e.g., West Africa); and they can be downright dangerous in the wrong hands.
The standard, three-part North Africa/South Africa/sub-Saharan Africa breakdown does not take us very far: The Republic of South Africa is the hub and hegemon for a subregion of some dozen states stretching into Africa's center in Zaire, while Sudan, Chad, Niger, Mali and Mauritania are vast bridges between Black and Arab Africa, where populations and cultures mingle in endlessly varied admixtures.
When we talk of Africa we are talking of vast distances and scales. The U.S. would fit inside the Sahara Desert; Sudan is larger than Western Europe. Southern Africa is larger than China. This massive continent comprises huge differences of climate, culture, topography, resources and population density. Generalizations quickly get you into trouble: An arid place with fragile ecosystems and poor soils, Africa is the site of 25 percent of the world's potential hydropower! The raw numbers would suggest that Africa, with a total population of around 700 million, does not have serious demographic pressures. But much of Africa is already burdened by human and animal pressures that exceed the land's carrying capacity, using current levels of technology and capital.
The map tells us that Africa is highly balkanized, consisting of many ministates (37 boast populations of 10 million or less) and some 15 landlocked independent states (40 percent of the world's total). The continent boasts few mono-ethnic "nation states." (Swaziland, Botswana, Eritrea and Somalia are exceptions.) Ironically, that is probably a good thing: If ethnicity were the basis of African statehood, there could be somewhere between 800 and 2,000 political entities.
Most African states acquired independence in the late 1950s and 1960s, during the height of the Cold War. This historical coincidence has profoundly shaped their experience. It gave African rulers a substantial base of external support to offset their striking internal weaknesses, and a fleeting illusion of importance and leverage. The early African nationalist elites acquired their position largely as a result of European decisions to cut the costs of empire and disengage. And they maintained themselves in power through the cultivation and manipulation of symbiotic ties to the former colonial powers, the two superpowers and the world financial agencies.
Today, this mating game is largely over. The international system no longer provides consistent and predictable support to the African state system or the incumbents who run it. By the same token, the legitimacy of the African state apparatus and even of inherited boundaries has been severely undercut by the loss of semiautomatic support from the international system. Generally speaking, states and governments which became most dependent upon outsiders during the Cold War era emerged with the weakest basis of domestic political legitimacy.
These trends were epitomized in the Horn of Africa in 1991-94: When the Somali state collapsed, foreign governments stood by. Seizing their chance, the northern (former British) region effectively seceded from the previously dominant southern part -- an action few noticed even after the Bush administration mounted its high profile Operation Restore Hope to create secure conditions for distributing food relief. Next door in Ethiopia, as the Soviets abandoned their brutal client Mengistu Haile Mariam, northern ethnic rebels cooperated to rout the regime in May l99l; one ethnic group seized power in the capital and another pressed successfully for independence as the new state of Eritrea.
The international system's primary impact on these events was to soften up the Somali and Ethiopian autocrats and ease their departure. What replaced them -- for good or ill -- was primarily determined by the local actors. Even the intervention of nearly 30,000 U.S. troops was narrowly circumscribed in time and ultimate scope: The Clinton administration's brief fling with grandiose ideas of "nation-building" quickly collapsed. In the end, we succeeded in saving hundreds of thousands of Somali lives and opening up a window for political reconciliation. When Somali leaders appeared to blow this opportunity, we left.
Having ended their global contest, the U.S. and Russia disengaged in the strategic sense, removing quite suddenly an important element of the African status quo. Cold War pawns have collapsed or been obliged to redefine their policies in response to Western conditions relating to governance, structural adjustment, economic liberalization, accountability and democratization. This process of post-Cold-War disengagement comes a mere 30 years after Europe's departure from its former colonies.
Many African societies today are worse off in material terms and under far more severe strain than they were in the final colonial phase 35 to 40 years ago. African economies are in de facto World Bank/IMF receivership and Africa's wars, and political transitions under the sway of U.N. peacekeepers and international observers. But there are no credible foreign volunteers lining up to police or govern Africa. Equally important, even the most traumatized societies show little sign of wishing to go back to colonial or white minority rule.
The starting place in considering Africa is to recognize the opportunities squandered, the time lost, the lessons learned and the new situation created by Western diplomacy and the global political changes of 1989-94. Let's start with the positive side of the ledger. The status quo has been decisively weakened, which has opened up new vistas of hope for freedom and democratization and new chances for the unleashing of Africa's potential through a shift toward market economics. Compared to previous decades, the balance of power within African societies has shifted against incumbent rulers and their privileged urban constituents and in favor of farmers and embryonic civil society -- media, churches, opposition politicians, professionals, communities and women's organizations. Incumbents have been put on the defensive internally and externally.
Recent years have witnessed an unprecedented flowering of experiments in democracy. Some 27 multiparty elections have been held in sub-Saharan Africa since the Berlin Wall came down. Significant and heartening political change has resulted from some of these exercises. The end of apartheid and the emergence of a democratically oriented culture of reconciliation in South Africa are by no means the only good political news from Africa. Democratic change in varying degrees and shapes has come to Cape Verde, Zambia, Malawi, the Central African Republic, Niger, Mali, Benin, Congo, Sao Tome & Principe, Lesotho and Madagascar. Namibia achieved its independence in 1990 after one of the most democratic transitions in modern African history, achieved under U.N. supervision supported by long-standing U.S. diplomatic leadership. Senegal, Mauritius, Seychelles and Botswana have operated for some years under democratic norms, most with a clearly dominant party. Mozambique has emerged from an October 1994 U.N.-supervised democratic transition. Potentially important constitutional and electoral exercises have been mounted in Uganda, Eritrea and Ethiopia.
On the economic side, there are signs of vitality in a number of economies. This point has been clearly recognized in the New York and London financial markets, which have witnessed the debut of some eight Africa-focused mutual funds. Emerging-market volatility in the wake of the Mexican peso crisis will hardly encourage investors to plunge into Africa's generally little-known, tiny and illiquid markets. But the region has become something of a new, high-potential frontier. There are now 13 stock exchanges in operation on the continent. South Africa's Johannesburg Stock Exchange accounts for some 93 percent of total African market capitalization and is among the world's top dozen bourses.
Highly skilled African expatriates are starting to return to their home countries from the West. A growing number of African governments have jettisoned the once-fashionable socialist nonsense that passed for economic policy. African finance and trade ministries are increasingly in the hands of Western-trained technocrats. Many governments have signed onto tough programs of fiscal austerity, deregulation, privatization and currency liberalization.
In regional security issues, some protracted and destructive conflicts have been terminated -- e.g., in Mozambique, Ethiopia-Eritrea, Namibia. A ceasefire and political reconciliation has been signed by the parties to Angola's longstanding civil conflict, and a fresh U.N. peace operation is set to oversee its implementation. And there is inspiration and hope in the pragmatic miracle of South Africa's negotiated transition to democracy, a pathbreaking transition conducted by South Africans themselves.
This brief summary makes clear that it is just plain wrong to throw our hands in the air in an Afro-pessimist frenzy. But positive factors must be viewed against the backdrop of a continent still battling to break out of a prolonged crisis. Most African states are not collapsing like Rwanda, Liberia or Somalia. They are in the early stages of what will likely be a long and difficult transition away from one-party or one-man misrule. The Kenyan scholar Michael Chege observes: "Africa now harbors a large number of rudderless regimes, drifting between success and catastrophe, with pretensions to electoral legitimacy but no real popular backing to speak of." Of the 27 elections mentioned, at least l0 were aborted, manipulated, distorted or sabotaged in one way or another: Wily incumbents are learning how to rig elections, control campaign rules and divide or co-opt opposition figures. In a few cases, the military has simply thwarted electoral results.
African societies entered the post-Cold War era facing ecological and health challenges that are among the world's most severe. Sub-Saharan Africa is estimated to account for 60 percent of the world's adult HIV infections, 67 percent of AIDS cases and 90 percent of pediatric cases. A quarter to a third of persons between the ages of 15 and 49 are believed to be infected in some central and East African cities. The potential impacts are horrifying: Our Census Bureau estimates an average life expectancy of 32 in Uganda in 2010, instead of 59 were there no epidemic. AIDS could reduce GDP by 15 to 25 percent in East African countries during the first decade of the next century.
Population increases too often eat up the bulk of GDP growth. Even with AIDS taking its awful toll, sub-Saharan Africa's population of nearly 600 million could double by 2020. Such scenarios virtually guarantee unchecked migrations to ill-prepared urban centers, burgeoning refugee populations, accelerated destruction of African rainforests and heightened manmade climate changes. Massive dust storms, intermittent dry river basins, vanished lakes and recurrent droughts are ominous warnings that major parts of Africa may not be able to sustain current trends.
Africa is not the only region where corruption flourishes. But, too many African countries have desperately weak governmental institutions leading to the absence of anything resembling public accountability. In the worst cases, the sad result is gross mismanagement or outright theft of everything that is not nailed down. The tragic flight of so much of Africa's financial capital is another reason why sub-Saharan Africa still has too little to show for the external aid it receives -- nearly 40 percent of global aid flows. One veteran observer sums up the record this way: Despite a decade of World Bank-IMF sponsored structural adjustment, net aid flows of $170 billion, a steadily mounting share of global aid, sub-Saharan African economic growth remains well below the 3.2 percent annual rise in population. The World Bank estimates that it could take 40 years before the region returns to its per capita income level of the mid-1970s. Meanwhile, Africa's share of global trade has declined by one half to a mere 2 percent since the mid-1960s. Even the relative economic winners are not growing fast enough yet to turn the corner decisively, and there are not enough of them.
Another liability on Africa's balance sheet is the belt of war-ravaged and unstable states spreading from Somalia and Sudan down through Rwanda and Burundi, parts of Zaire, and down into Angola. Four major African states -- Algeria, Nigeria, Sudan and Zaire -- are wracked by severe crises of political legitimacy including low-level strife that could spin out of hand. Liberia's four-year-long descent into butchery has infected neighboring Sierra Leone. The chances for sustained progress in more hopeful places like Tunisia, Morocco, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Benin, Niger, Mali, Senegal, Chad, Burkina Faso, Congo, South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Malawi, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya and Ethiopia will depend in some measure on trends next door in the huge nations of Algeria, Nigeria, Angola, Sudan and Zaire. It is a delicate balance.
Back in June 1994, at a two-day White House conference on Africa, President Clinton and Vice President Gore sought to underscore the positive, deploring public ignorance and a one-sidedly negative focus on Africa's grim realities. They called for positive thinking to help spur the development of a constituency to support U.S. engagement in Africa. But it will not work to gild the African lily; we need policies based on Afro-realism.
Presumably, in this age of "virtual" reality, we were supposed to view the White House conference as "action" on behalf of Africa. A presidential visit to Africa would constitute more "action." Most disappointing was President Clinton's failure to make good on his pledge to "explain to the American people of whatever race, region or background why Africa matters to all of us and to our common future."
Africa's transition from crisis to hope matters a great deal, and for many of the same reasons as the transitions underway in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Africa's success will mean a more decent and stable world order where American values and interests can flourish. Failure in Africa is a direct threat to Western humanitarian values as well as our national budgets: Costly peacekeeping operations will drag on, famine emergencies will recur and official assistance will be needed simply to avert disasters. The CIA's annual forecast (leaked last December) of looming humanitarian disasters predicts that the next 12-18 months will see the greatest demands ever for humanitarian aid to Africa; 30 million people (75 percent of the global total) are said to be at risk in 10 nations .
By contrast, Africa's success would mean exports, jobs and investment opportunities for Americans. It is not generally recognized that we have been sustaining a long-term trade deficit with sub-Saharan Africa: an estimated $38 billion imbalance during the 1989-93 period, according to the Department of Commerce. (Oil accounts for some 70 percent of U.S. purchases.) Greater African economic vitality will offer the chance for increased U.S. exports and jobs. Even today, our African trade is growing faster than overall trade. Though Africa accounts for only 1 percent of our global exports, that was 20 percent greater than U.S. exports to the Commonwealth of Independent States in 1993; South Africa was a larger market than all of Eastern Europe combined. U.S. direct investment in the region is a modest $2.2 billion; but that generated 32 percent on book value in 1992. In this time of global markets and industries, Americans cannot afford to write off markets like this.
Failure in Africa has consequences beyond the continent. The beneficiaries are narcotics rings and other mafias; failure creates spawning grounds for state terrorists falsely flying the flag of Islam; it threatens world health in this age of travel and migration; it threatens world environmental security and biodiversity; it creates a growing pool of refugees and migrants, strengthening local strongmen at home while triggering social tensions in new lands of settlement. These high costs cannot be swept under a rug; Africa cannot be redlined like a slum.
What, then, should we be doing? First, let us celebrate and contribute to the natural and growing differentiation among Africa's 53 countries. As the contrast between success stories and basket cases gets clearer, so should the variety and range of our policies. It has never made much sense to apply an "African policy" to places as varied as Morocco and Mozambique. Let's not get tangled up in our own abstractions. Do we conduct an "Asian policy" in the Philippines or Japan?
If we look closely, we will find that our natural partners in Africa are also becoming clearer. We can help shape a coalition of like-minded African and non-African players including our major allies in Europe and Asia and key financial bodies like the World Bank and the IMF. Special attention must be devoted to bolstering subregions where a critical mass of relatively well-managed countries may exist -- e.g., in southern Africa and, perhaps, the Horn of Africa/East Africa. Africans and their foreign partners need to make common cause, building a coalition with the legitimacy -- as well as the teeth and spine -- to help transform Africa's policy climate by establishing higher standards for economic management.
Second, we need to get the sequence right. There is much loose talk about free markets and democracy -- as if these wonderful items could be obtained by placing African nations on autopilot, preaching our Western sermons and sending over lots of AID-funded contractors. It doesn't work that way. Foreign money and technicians can help at the margins, but the institutions must be African. Neither economic growth nor democracy can take root until government becomes relevant to people and gains the capacity to sustain the minimum functions of a modern state.
The logical implication is that Africa's top priority -- and ours -- is to deal with the problem of collapsing states and civil wars so that they do not infect more promising places. It is not good news if these post-Cold War pressures overwhelm the remnants of African authority, leaving only vicious warlords and ethnic demagogues to fight over what's left. Americans have been engaged in African peacemaking for over two decades and have made decisive contributions. We have no higher calling than to engage across the full spectrum of peacemaking activities ranging from preventive diplomacy through mediation, strengthening African security institutions like the Organization of African Unity and the Southern African Development Community, and supporting U.N. and regional peacekeeping efforts as appropriate.
This is not a call for American military interventionism, which neither Americans nor Africans want to see. Rather, it is an appeal for leadership in specific fields such as conflict-resolution training, military logistics and other specialized support, help for demining and demobilization efforts, and determined and coherent diplomatic backstopping of negotiated settlements so that they get implemented. To be sure, there are many complex choices, and the U.S. cannot take the lead everywhere. But if we wait for a domestic "constituency" to show up and cheer us on, the price of our leadership failures will only go up.
Third, our goal should be to strengthen, not further weaken, African governments so that they become capable of carrying out the basic functions of government anywhere. Asia's economic miracles did not take place amidst imploding government institutions. In fact, the evidence suggests an important governmental role in maintaining internal security and macroeconomic stability, educating and training people to become potentially productive citizens and shaping a societal consensus on economic strategy.
It is not engraved in stone tablets that Africa must follow the Asian pattern. But at a minimum, when new governments gain power professing adherence to all the right things, we and our friends, while insisting on clean and transparent management, should channel timely financial assistance and political support so they have a chance to deliver. When corrupt autocrats stand in the way, our task is to help identify soft landings and negotiated exits and not to cut off ties and impoverish their citizens with sanctions. Tilting against autocrats is easy and photogenic. But, ironically, it may prop them up and prolong the agony -- or even make it worse. Our parallel task is to work through government and nongovernment institutions systemically to strengthen the African civil society. This means assistance, training, networking, exchange programs, and general institution-building across the spectrum of African social settings. There is no real reason for despair: Just look at what the South Africans have managed to do.
Fourth, the time has clearly arrived to get serious about research and monitoring of the interplay between Africa's demographic, climatic, ecological and conflict trends. An Africa increasingly caught up in waves of humanitarian disaster and ecoshock could make today's toll of 6 million refugees and 17 million displaced persons seem mild. The U.S., for its own health and well-being as well as its values and global leadership role, cannot "disengage."
A number of the things described above will require a continued U.S. foreign assistance effort in Africa. Clearly, we will be less credible, less effective and less able to lead if we disarm U.S. diplomacy by taking away its tangible tools and cutting support of effective multilateral agencies. On the other hand, there is every reason for a reassessment of current assistance. Too much flows to assorted U.S. contractors, consultants and insider constituencies. Too little of it goes directly to nurture African capabilities to build the kinds of societies and institutions that can stand on their own.
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