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Why
is the African continent poor? -
By Mark Doyle
BBC world affairs correspondent
The desolate, dusty town of Pibor on South Sudan's
border with Ethiopia has no running water, no electricity
and little but mud huts for the population to live
in.
You would be hard put to find a poorer place anywhere
on earth.
I
went there as part of a journey across Africa to ask
the question "Why is Africa poor?" for
a BBC radio documentary series.
I was asked to investigate why it is that the vast majority
of African countries are clustered at or near the bottom
of the United Nations Human Development Index - in other
words they have a pretty appalling standard of living.
In Pibor, the answer to why the place is poor seems
fairly obvious.
The people - most of whom are from the Murle ethnic
group - are crippled by tribal conflicts related to disputes
over cattle, the traditional store of wealth in South
Sudan.
The Murle have recently had fights with the Lol Nuer
group to the north of Pibor and with ethnic Bor Dinkas
to the west.
In a spate of fighting with the Lol Nuer earlier this
year several hundred people, many of them women and children,
were killed in deliberate attacks on villages.
There has been a rash of similar clashes across South
Sudan in the past year (although most were on a smaller
scale than the fights between the Lol Nuer and the Murle).
And so the answer to why South Sudan is poor is surely
a no-brainer: War makes you destitute.
Why is there so much war?
And yet South Sudan is potentially rich.
"It's bigger than Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi
combined," the South Sudan Regional Co-operation
Minister Barnaba Benjamin, enthused.
"Tremendous
land! Very fertile, enormous rainfall, tremendous agricultural
resources.
Minerals! We have
oil and many other minerals - go name it!" The
paradox of rich resources and poor people hints at
another layer of explanation about why Africa is poor.
It
is not just that there is war. The question should,
perhaps be: "Why
is there so much war?"
And the headline question is in fact misleading; Africans
as a people may be poor, but Africa as a place is fantastically
rich - in minerals, land, labour and sunshine.
That is why outsiders have been coming here for hundreds
of years - to invade, occupy, convert, plunder and trade.
The spectres of slavery and colonialism hover in the
background of almost every serious conversation with
Africans about why most of them are poor.
It almost goes without saying that, of course, slavery
impoverished parts of Africa and that colonialism set
up trading patterns which were aimed at benefitting the
coloniser, not the colonised.
But there is a psychological impact too.
Hajia
Amina Az-Zubair, the Nigerian president's senior adviser
on poverty
issues, told
me that colonialism "was
all about take, not build", and that this attitude "transferred
itself into a lot of mindsets".
Even today, Ms Zubair said it was sometimes difficult
to design poverty-reduction programmes that were inclusive:
"You
sit round a table and ask 'What are your needs?' and
you get an
absolute
blank. Because for years, they've
been told what they're going to have. So even the ability
to engage has been difficult for us."
The resources of South Sudan have never been properly
developed.
During colonial rule South Sudan was used as little
more than a reservoir of labour and raw materials.
Then independence was followed by 50 years of on-off
war between the south and north - with northerners in
Khartoum continuing the British tactic of divide and
rule among the southern groups.
Some southerners believe this is still happening today.
Corruption On my journey across the poorest, sub-Saharan swathe
of the continent - that took in Liberia and Nigeria in
the west, Sudan in the centre, and Kenya in the east
- people explored the impact that both non-Africans and
Africans had had on why Africa is poor.
Almost
every African I met, who was not actually in government,
blamed corrupt African leaders for their plight.
"The gap between the rich and the poor in Africa
is still growing," said a fisherman on the shores
of Lake Victoria.
"Our
leaders, they just want to keep on being rich. And
they don't want
to pay taxes."
Even President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf of Liberia came
close to this when she told me she had underestimated
the level of corruption in her country when she took
office.
"Maybe I should have sacked the whole government
when I came to power," she said.
"Africa is not poor," President Johnson-Sirleaf
added, "it is poorly managed."
This theme was echoed by an architect in Kenya and a
senior government official in Nigeria.
Both pointed out that the informal sector of most African
economies is huge and almost completely unharnessed.
Marketplaces,
and a million little lean-to repair shops and small-scale
factories are what most urban Africans rely upon for
a living.
But such is their distrust of government officials that
most businesspeople in the informal sector avoid all
contact with the authorities.
Kenyan architect and town planner Mumo Museva took me
to the bustling Eastleigh area of Nairobi, where traders
have created a booming economy despite the place being
almost completely abandoned by the government.
Eastleigh is a filthy part of the city where rubbish
lies uncollected, the potholes in the roads are the size
of swimming pools, and the drains have collapsed.
But
one indication of the success of the traders, Mr Museva
said, was the high per-square-foot rents there.
"You'll
be surprised to note that Eastleigh is the most expensive
real estate
in
Nairobi."
He
added that if Eastleigh traders trusted the government
they might pay some
taxes in
return for decent services,
so creating a "virtuous circle".
"It would lift people out of poverty," he
said.
"Remember,
poverty is related to quality of life, and the quality
of life
here is
appalling, despite the
huge amount of wealth flowing through these areas."
Then the young Kenyan architect echoed the Liberian
president, some 5,000km (3,000 miles) away on the other
side of the continent.
"Africa is not poor," he
also said.
"Africa
is just poorly managed."
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