‘African Renaissance’ Hailed by Clinton Now a Distant Memory

Forty years after the first wave of independence sparked great hopes for the continent, Africa faces a bleaker future than at any time in the past century, according to a recent U.S. intelligence assessment, Clinton administration officials and experts on the region.

Just two years ago, during a six-nation tour of the continent, President Clinton hailed what he called an “African renaissance.” But as he prepares for a quick trip to Nigeria and Tanzania this weekend, the sub-Saharan region is backsliding on virtually every front.

“The number of simultaneous, multiple crises that the continent faces right now is unprecedented,” said Stephen Morrison, director of African studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. “Africa is in worse condition than ever before. And it’s only going to get worse over the next generation.”

The dire situation is outlined in a recent U.S. government assessment called a National Intelligence Estimate. Its findings were echoed in interviews with administration officials and other experts.

Politically, only eight of sub-Saharan Africa’s 48 countries fully embrace pluralism. And all eight are still hobbled by corruption, weak leadership and chronic deterioration of basic education and health services.

The problem is not just one-party governments and autocratic regimes; some states are imploding.

“Even if you hold a free election in a collapsed state and elect a Nelson Mandela, he’ll be doomed to failure if there’s no government structure,” said Pauline Baker, president of the Fund for Peace, an independent research and advocacy group here. “One man alone can’t rule without institutions, many of which have eroded since independence.”

The limited good news is that two sub-Saharan giants--Nigeria and South Africa--are gradually making the transition to democracy, U.S. officials say. To varying degrees, so are Senegal, Mali, Malawi, Tanzania, Botswana and Namibia, although none is a strong enough regional power to have much impact.

But two key states with long records of Western-oriented policies and market-based economies have experienced serious setbacks.

Ivory Coast, which boasts sub-Saharan Africa’s third-largest economy and was once considered an island of regional stability, underwent a military coup last Christmas Eve.

Kenya Is a Symbol of Continent’s Failures

Similarly, Kenya was once seen as a potential regional model and engine of change, partly because it has the ports and transportation needed to link African trade with the outside world. But political conditions there have steadily deteriorated, making it a symbol of the continent’s failures. In the capital, Nairobi, there are an estimated 100,000 street children, according to U.S. figures.

Militarily, about half the nations in sub-Saharan Africa are engaged either in open conflict or heated disputes, some with internal factions and some with neighboring states. Ethnic and religious strife is rampant, producing some of the world’s worst cases of genocide, particularly in Central and East Africa.

The government chiefs of Ethiopia and Eritrea, heralded by the Clinton administration in 1998 as leaders of the future, have since dragged their countries into war.

“Even the ‘new’ leaders, hailed by some in the international community for bringing better leadership to places like Uganda, Rwanda and Ethiopia, entrenched their positions through tactics that differed little from their more authoritarian neighbors,” Human Rights Watch, an international monitoring group, concludes in its latest annual report.

The breakdown or deterioration of numerous governments has left vast swaths of Africa without any state presence. Regarded as a continent of promise and adventure in the 1960s and 1970s, it is now considered a dangerous place for both inhabitants and visitors as economic desperation spawns widespread crime, according to the National Intelligence Estimate.

Average per capita income in sub-Saharan Africa is $1,600 a year, the U.N. has reported, making Africa the world’s most impoverished region, even though it has the world’s richest array of natural resources, from oil to diamonds to gold.

When it attained independence in 1957, Ghana had more than $400 million in foreign exchange reserves and a higher per capita income than South Korea. Today, it is one of the world’s most impoverished nations, with a per capita income of only $145 a month by some estimates.

Much of Africa’s most profitable business activity is illicit. About 30% of the heroin intercepted at U.S. ports of entry, for example, is seized from African syndicates, according to the State Department.

Corruption is the most pervasive problem, experts say. “New elites are running the same scams as the colonial powers, only on a broader scale,” said Baker, the Africa specialist at Fund for Peace.

The combination of political deterioration and vast mineral resources has prompted a new competition to divide up the continent’s resources, exacerbating the economic challenges. Many of today’s conflicts, in fact, are not about ideology, but about control of diamonds, oil or minerals.

“The first scramble for Africa was in the late 19th century, when the Europeans carved out colonies in a race for wealth in resources,” Baker said. “This is the second scramble, only this time it’s by the Africans themselves.”

Competition for Zimbabwe’s rich farmland has led to violence and state seizure of white-owned farms. U.S. officials predict that the crisis will lead to critical food shortages within six to nine months and eventually displace 2 million people, including farm workers and their families.

Socially, Africa’s future is jeopardized by demographic changes and substandard education, according to the National Intelligence Estimate and regional experts.

More than half of the continent’s residents are younger than 15. But its school systems, from primary through university level, are rapidly deteriorating. In many countries, average class size has doubled or even tripled during the past decade. The average number of students per room in Ugandan schools, for example, has soared from 35 to 100, according to U.S. figures.

“The degradation of the African education system is one of the major crises as we look to 2015,” said a senior U.S. official who monitors Africa, speaking on condition of anonymity. “No one wants to ‘fess up to the fact that there are fewer [students] in schools, and they’re staying in school fewer years. . . . That’s going to have a major impact on leadership potential.”

Finally, the AIDS pandemic is taking a staggering toll. Recent estimates predict that 25% of the continent’s more than 700 million people will have died of acquired immune deficiency syndrome by 2010, leaving behind 35 million orphans and slashing the region’s economy by a quarter.

The combination of AIDS, resurgent cholera and malaria, and infectious diseases such as E. coli have caused average life expectancy to decline to just over 48 years, compared with 76 years in Western industrialized nations.

“Africa has not yet fallen off the edge of the world,” the senior official said. “But the gap between it and the rest of the developing world is getting wider and wider by the day.”

Clinton’s First Stop Will Be Nigeria

When Clinton returns to Africa today, he’ll stop first in Nigeria to herald its recent transition to democracy under President Olusegun Obasanjo.

Yet even if Nigeria represents a ray of hope, it’s also a microcosm of the problems the continent faces.

Vast oil reserves have made Nigeria one of Africa’s richest countries. But it also is considered one of the world’s most corrupt. Bribery is a way of life--and an important source of income for police officials, civil servants, the military and the judiciary. Nigeria serves as a hub for international criminal activity and narcotics, U.S. officials say.

In addition, Nigeria has more than 350 ethnic groups and is riven by ethnic and religious strife between its large Christian and Muslim communities.

Yet regional experts argue that U.S. engagement remains critical.

“It’s a good thing that President Clinton is going there,” said Morrison of the Washington think tank. “It’ll shore up Obasanjo’s position as a leader and focus attention on a country that is trying to change.”