Guest Blog: African Renaissance?

"Joe, as I state in the opening, I had a chance to interview Dr. Ayittey. Dr. Ayittey published another piece on Africa in today's WSJ editorial page (subscribers only). These are some of my thoughts based on my research and past interviews."

A Few Thoughts on Africa
Tom Donelson

A few years back, I had the opportunity to interview African economist Dr. George Ayittey, a veteran commentator for various journals and newspapers as diverse as the New York Times, The Ghana Drum and the Wall Street Journal. His book, "Africa Betrayed" presented a myth-shattering view of the myriad problems of his native continent.

No friend of western imperialism or black African tyranny, Ayittey contends that the pre-colonial cultures of the African continent were rich in both social and economic institutions - a past that provides the implicit key to an future African renaissance.

Africa's abysmal realities belie its amazing potential. Compared to the Asian economic tigers - South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Japan - Africa is blessed with an abundance of mineral wealth and a relatively low population density.

Pre-colonial Africa was poised in many respects to follow a development curve similar to that of late-medieval Europe. Authoritarian regimes, such as those of the Fertile Crescent, the Nile, the Indus, and the Yellow River were not part of the African heritage. "Land was abundant," Dr. Ayittey writes, "and tribes that found themselves subjugated could always move elsewhere." The most successful African empires were loose confederations of vassal states. The Ghanaian Empire lasted for some 900 years. By contrast, the Zulu Empire of Shaka, centralized and authoritarian, lasted a mere ten years. Pre-colonial Africans, members of 2,000 tribes were ill-inclined toward the authoritarian systems which impeded modernity in the great empires of the East and Middle East.

Pre colonial Africa was rich in nascent free market institutions as well. "The means of production in traditional Africa," says Ayittey, "were privately owned and never owned by the Chief or the Kingâ¤|. Village markets were free and the Chief did not fix prices."

Imagined what Europe would have looked like if the twin bulwarks of the Franks and the Byzantines had not prevented the establishment of a trans- Mediterranean Islamic Empire in the middle Ages. Decentralized Europe, isolated in the backwaters of the great authoritarian civilizations, leapt from feudalism, to commercial empire, to industrial empire and finally to political hegemony.

Africa was less fortunate. Successive waves of slavers - first Islamic, the European-were followed by the colonialists. The abrupt departure of the Europeans resulted in totalitarian states based on the structures they'd left behind - bureaucracies not organic to African institutions, unbounded by popular restraints of any kind.

Post-colonial African leadership looked not to indigenous institutions, but to European models, including Marxism and ultra-nationalism. "Our leaders failed us," Ayittey told me, "It is not racism to say that. We need to distinguish between the African people and their leaders." For almost two generations, the African experiences has been characterized by one party dictatorships, unrivalled kleptocracy, and declining economic performance, leaving many nations on the continent worse off than ever before. The color of the oppressor's skin gives scant consolation to those who are starving or dying of AIDS.

Corruption is the hallmark of modern Africa. Leaders shifted billions of dollars to Swiss bank accounts while their people survived on a day by day basis. Corruption breeds dependency. Billions of dollars in aid flow into Africa each year and much of it is looted. Many African nations spend between a quarter and one half of their GNP on military machines, whose primary purpose is to protect the leaders from their own people.

But for all the money flowing into Africa even more is flowing out. Annually, 15 billion dollars leaves - far more than the aid which the continent receives. And as long as African leaders refuse to protect property rights and to erect judicial structures of civil liberty, capital will be neither invested nor reinvested. The authoritarian reality underlying the socialist facade undermines all attempts at reform.

Ayittey says any future renewal must stem from a rebirth of the decentralized political and economic traditions of the continent. The West can help in minor ways. First, Western nations must demand real reform in exchange for aid. Leaders who reject property rights and civil liberties may benefit from Western aid - but their peoples do not. Ayittey also believes that Africans need training in the art of democracy, much like the residents of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

Ultimately, however, Ayittey maintains Africans must solve their own problems. Aid administered through corrupt centralized governments merely exacerbates the continent's problems, reinforcing regimes that ought to fall. Ayittey takes the contrarian view that Africa needs less aid not more. Africans must turn to their pre-colonial roots. According to Dr. Ayittey, societal rebirth requires loose confederated governments which protect tribal rights; political freedoms; and reestablishment of property rights. This plan was indeed presented by Dr. James Africanus Horton in 1868.

People of Africa were betrayed by their own leaders after the "first liberation" from their colonial powers. Their true liberation will come when, recovering their pre-colonial past, they overthrow those who betrayed them.

JK: Ayittey, de Soto... development economics is getting a lot more interesting these days, and seems to finally be producing ideas that might help people instead of killing them. Is Ayittey's view hopelessly rosy, or is he on to something here? Use the Comments to tell us what you think.