We all have our dreams, myths or visions of Africa. It is many things to many people. To some, it is the cradle of humankind; to others, the home of one of the first civilizations to flourish. It holds the beauty we often see gracing the cover of National Geographic.
And it holds the horror and devastation we often see on the cover of Time. To anyone who has an inkling of the disaster that was the U.S. involvement in Somalia, or the atrocities of Rwanda, the idea of our involvement in Africa may be compelling, but it is also frightening.
Mark Wentling '70 has devoted his life to Africa and its people. He has worked on and for the continent for 30 years — working his way up from a Peace Corps volunteer, through the ranks of the U.S. Foreign Service and USAID program, to his position now with CARE, for which he is the assistant country director in Niger. He has seen many of the horrors, and the beauties, that we associate with modern Africa.
This is one man's view of the continent.
–– Matthew Eck
ON SEPT. 20, 1970 I ARRIVED IN AFRICA. I never thought that Africa would become my life. I thought I would do my two years as a Peace Corps volunteer and return to my studies in the States. But one thing led to another, and I ended up doing development and humanitarian work in all regions of the continent.
I never did make it back home, and now my home is almost anywhere in Africa. Being married to an African, raising children in Africa and dealing with extended families in different regions of Africa have haught me some hard lessons about the continent.
I may not have been born in Africa, but I was made here.
A lifetime of total immersion in Africa has made it clear to me that addressing the continent's ills is more complex than anyone can imagine. Indeed, many of Africa's afflictions may not be amenable to remedies offered by the kind of outside assistance I have witnessed.
Various positions I have held with the U.S. Foreign Service have given me ample oppotunity to observe some important moments in African history, and I have dealt with African presidents and their ministers and underlings. Too much of Africa's history is accidental.
In Somalia in 1993-94, I met President Aideed and his adversary Ali Madhi several times, as well as other warlords from one end of that country to another. In 1994-95, I visied the teeming refugee camps in Tanzania. I was chased out of eastern Zaire in October 1996 by Zairian troops fleeing the first round of rebel attacks.
I ended up in Kigali where I attended a strange meeting between French-speaking civil servants and their new English-speaking masters. I have known South Africa before and after apartheid. I was in Sao Tome for its first Independence Day celebration.
More recently, I was in Senegal and observed the transition of governments and spoke with representatives of the Casamance rebels, including their aging leader, Monsignor Diamacoune. I have had adventurous travels in most African countries.
When I look back on the years and the people I have encountered and the events I have witnessed, it all appears a mixed-up dream. When I think of many of the people whom I have met, I usually come up with the feeling that it was all such an unfortunate miscasting of characters.
A Mosaic of Affliction
Many think I should have answers for why Africa is the world's least prosperous continent, but volumes have been written on Africa's development woes and billions of dollars have been expended since independence on thousands of projects across the continent. None of this has kept Africans from slipping deeper into poverty. The simple fact is that today the average African is poorer than he or she was 30 years ago.
Poverty is not merely the problem of an individual or a family. It becomes a national problem. In Africa's case, the entire continent has become one gigantic graveyard of failed projects, misguided diplomacy and broken dreams. Africa probably suffers the same things that other parts of the world suffer, but it does so in too many instances in an extreme fashion.
In many ways, Africa is so full of paradoxes, being so terribly poor and potentially rich at the same times, that it defies a rational explanation. I am indeed as upset as anone about the miserable conditions most Africans live in, but I do not have any magical solutions for remedying these situations. But in order to fix the problems, we must attempt — however difficult that might be — to identify what they are.
First and foremost, too many African leaders have been after their own gain for too long at the expense of the people, who are often too willing to submit themselves to these leaders. Too many are unjustifiably proud of these leaders and their own failing ways when they should seek to adopt new and more productive ways to conduct life. I've often thought that if the top political and military leaders could be removed from each African country experiencing trouble, the people could then peacefully find better ways of governing themselves.
Many of my African friends remind me that there are hundreds of people ready to replace these leaders and that they would do an equally bad job. Often, military regimes and leaders put in power the wrong people who block the involvement of better elements of society. There are many people of good will in Africa who would gladly volunteer their time and efforts to help their communities, but such initiative has been stifled by years of authoritarian government.
Conditions need to be created that reward behavior which benefits the community, and more needs to be done to encourage people to come forward for the common good.
In Africa, the extended family unit is all that most people care about. Everything goes to protect and promote one's family, which is good in terms of ensuring family survival, but not in terms of developing a modern state. This “family first” attitude is often the source of corruption and, for prominent families, impunity.
Most families are male-dominated, and one of the most damaging strikes against Africa is the powerlessness of its women. The harsh socialization process girls are subjected to and the extraordinary dominance of men in most African societies have resulted in Africa not benefiting from the potential of women — who account for half of the adult population.
The “family first” attitude also results in the organization of castes and slavery. Africans who steal from the government or private firms to enhance the staus of the family are often looked upon as role models, not criminals. Making matters worse, conformity is the rule, not personal initiative.
An African who tries to seek his or her own way can be ostracized from the family and village, and that is akin to suicide. The pressure to conform and to meet extended-family-support demands discourages many from attempting more lucrative vocations. This stifles innovations and prevents the competitive effort needed to make a free enterprise system work well.
Their daily struggle for survival has made Africans some of the toughest people on Earth. They have become the world's experts on how to cope with adversity and life-threatening risks. But the scramble for survival has had devastating environmental and social consequences.
Rapid population growth has made this worse; people are forced in many areas to practice unsound environmental practices that will have a negative impact in the long-term. The destruction of the African environment is the entire world's problem.
The struggle for survival strongly impacts young people who no longer find security in the family unit and have drifted away from traditional values. The great mass of unemployed youth (one-half of Africa's population is under 16 years old) are losing hope for any future improvement.
This fatalism is fueled by the lack of jobs even for the well educated. It is heart wrenching to observe young people who do everything right and complete their studies successfully only to find, at best, jobs that pay unlivable wages. The younger generation has also lost much of the good that traditional Africa had to offer in terms of values.
Nothing has appeared to replace these values. Many have left the traditional world for the direction of a Western model, but are stuck somewhere in between. There are also a few specific traditional beliefs that seem unhelpful to social and economic progress as a whole, such as the massive recourse to paying for the services of so-called witch doctors and sorcerers who are actually charlatans.
The effort and expense involved with these practices divert scarce resources and energies away from more productive endeavors, and frequently spark conflicts. If too many families spend more of their time and money for the services of charlatans than for the health and education of their children, it will hinder the advancement of Africa.
I recognize the rich spirituality of Africa, but it often appears that most of the spiritual energy is used negatively. If Africa could harness its vibrant spirituality to bolster social and economic advancement, it could be one of the great engines of its development. This spiritual wellspring offers hope and helps bring back some of the delightful laughter that Africans seem to have lost since the euphoric days of independence.
Rapid population growth has served only to worsen Africa's problems, which are further compounded by a high debtload engendered by infrastucture loans. On top of that, pile insecurities that come with the realization of waning areas of arable land. Such insecurities have led to conflict among groups that previously co-existed peacefully.
Many Africans now suffer from chronic hunger, and growing malnutrition among children has forfeited the future of many of the next generation. Africa urgently needs to reduce hunger and place more money in the pockets of the average person. Employment and income generation should be the litmus tests for any long-term developmental programs.
It is widely acknowledged that Africa's multitude of social divisions often frustrate progress. Although the high level of tolerance demonstrated by diverse ethnic groups that co-exist peacefully is often striking, the hundreds of divisions along tribal, regional, caste, clan and religious lines create numerous hurdles toward progress.
There are also the divides between those who descended from so-called royal blood and the general population, and those who descended from former slaves and those who did not. Furthermore, the formidable divides between agriculturists and pastoralists, and Bantu and non-Bantu populations, represent Africa's most notable conflict fault lines.
All of this leads to one of the most ugly and striking features of Africa that wrenches my soul: the high capacity of some Africans to treat their brethren with the utmost curelty. The shocking record of atrocities committed by Africans against Africans from independence to today is appalling. Parts of Africa are closer to sinking into greater barbarianism than advancing into the 21st century.
Assistance and Beginnings
Africa needs a consistent and aggressive "tough love" diplomacy that refuses to deal with leaders who have blood on their hands and fortunes stashed away in foreign bank accounts. Yet while castigating corrupt leaders, diplomatic efforts should not allow the acts of these leaders to block asistance that is needed by the people.
But most of the bilateral and multilateral assistance agencies have not yet learned how to bring the benefits down to the community level. It is uncertain whether they can ever do so. Most diplomatic efforts in Africa since independence have only complicated matters by going along with the dictators and "politicizing" assistance programs.
A good amount of the current misguided diplomacy came about because of the senseless extemes of the East-West conflict and, more generally, because few people seem to care about Africa. The decline in assistance to Africa over the past decade makes a mockery of the high-sounding declarations we hear about helping Africa.
The level of nation building and social re-engineering many countries in Africa need is far beyond the scope of any donor agency. The dictum of "doing no harm" should be the first prerequistie for any assistance provided to Africa. Sometimes, no aid can be better than too much aid of the wrong kind, and we should not have to force people to submit to our good will.
Africa, as a whole, has fallen far behind. To catch up, it must run twice as fast as any other area of the world. To do so, it needs debt forgiveness, much higher levels of external assistance, and, most important, large increases in private investment.
Africa needs more goods to trade profitably on the world market and better management of its resources. And the high cost of doing business needs to be remedied if Africa is to attract the private investment capital it needs to develop on a sustainable basis. The high cost of electricity and its erratic supply need to be addressed, as well as weak or nonexistent communication and transportation links to foster business.
The countless checkpoints all over Africa need to be demolished and cross-border formalities need to be eased. High security costs also discourage business creation, as a large portion of operating budgets has to be devoted to protecting property.
One defining trend in Africa is the height of walls around residences and offices. Thirty years ago, few buildings had walls around them. Now, walls have grown up everywhere to great heights, and they are topped with broken glass or concertina wire. Increasingly, living well in Africa means living with all the security arrangements of a prison.
The sad part of Africa's future is that even the best-case scenarios will take a monumental, constant effort over many years to realize. But it will be humanity's greatest failure if at the end of this century the gap between Africa and most of the rest of the world is not considerably narrowed.
There are no quick fixes, and the potential fixes are not cheap. Africans need to stop failing themselves and placing too much blame on others for their failures. Although help will be needed from Africa's friends, the choice about their future is upon Africa's people.
But I fully believe that if peace and stability prevail, and the African people are given the chance to engage themselves behind trusted and competent leaders, by the end of this century, Africa will be the continent of the 22nd century.
