Africa Gets Limited Hope for Recovery

Hopes for real recovery in Africa were given a substantial lift at the special session of the United Nations last week. Still, tough times lie ahead before the “rapid and full implementation” of the objectives that were called for in the communique can be realized.

The conference marked the first time that the entire U.N. membership met to address a single regional economic crisis. In addition to 22 foreign ministers, including U.S. Secretary of State George P. Shultz, the African nations were led by Senegal President Abdou Diouf. Using the past two years of famine needs as a base-line, the conference projected a framework for governments, international institutions and private agencies to work together for the next five years.

Donor governments resisted making specific commitments toward meeting what the African delegations say they need-- $80 billion to $100 billion over the next five years, with one-quarter of that going toward debt forgiveness. It’s questionable whether such sums are attainable over that period or, indeed, in any foreseeable one.

“Let’s be candid,” Shultz told his counterparts: The United States accepts that Africa needs resources. We are under severe budgetary restraints. If we are to continue even at present levels, the American people will insist that they be well used.

With a pitifully small American constituency for foreign economic aid, Shultz is doubtless right. Last year’s expenditures for all African countries, excluding emergency food assistance, totaled $1.2 billion, with much of that going to military or related programs. Genuine development assistance suffered and, in view of congressionally imposed cuts, faces a worst-case scenario this year.

The deeper economic and social crisis in Africa has been dramatized by the continuing drought and famine. The U.N. agreement pointed out the need for African governments to reorder policies that contribute to great disparities in urban and rural development. There must be greater emphasis on committing resources to the agricultural sector to guarantee that development grows from the bottom up. Too much has been squandered on urban and industrial schemes that have aspired to a higher order of growth in the hope that it would trickle down to the poor. White elephants have arisen all over Africa. There has been, as Prof. Gordon Hydan of the Ford Foundation remarked, “a blind pursuit of strategies aimed at making Africans more effective Westerners rather than encouraging them to find their own solutions.” Meanwhile, populations have increased and poverty has expanded; the outside world has witnessed the consequences.

Clearly now, Africans recognize their own failures. Donor governments and private institutions admit that development cannot be imposed from the top down, and not at the expense of agriculture.

Traditionally, in Africa long-term development programs have been the province of governments and international institutions. Emergency relief programs have been operated by private humanitarian agencies. This distinction is no longer valid. Development now embraces community-level agricultural production and distribution.

The international private agencies have brought a special perspective and method of operations to the development process that makes their activities as effective as the larger projects of government-to-government aid. Being small, with highly motivated staffs, the agencies operate at low cost and free of the compromises and pressures that politics and patronage bring at government levels. They operate at the community level, where the ability of people in need to define their own aspirations can be realized.

Catholic Relief Services has brought together five other religiously affiliated groups, Protestant and Jewish, all with proven technical skills and strong links to Africa. They believe that African solutions will have to come on African terms, and are committed to providing local ownership of medium- and long-term initiatives. This may prove the best guarantee that a more coherent relationship between aid and economic growth is assured.

Historically, Africa has offered an exquisite harmony between human beings and their environment. The family was secure in the knowledge that food, the fundamental necessity, was available. That equilibrium between families and land has been disastrously upset, and needs restoration.

The U.N. conference did much to reconstruct the dialogue among governments and to clear the path ahead for private agencies. But will the funds be available? Almost certainly not in the amounts requested by the Africans. They will have to scale down their expectations. Their honesty and self-criticism should encourage donors to increase their assistance. Meanwhile, the private agencies must demonstrate that they remain worthy of continuing private support now that the misery and dying are not the daily business of newspapers and television.