"Participation Builds Unity"
"MADE IN AFRICA - FOR AFRICA"
"Participation Builds Unity"
"MADE IN AFRICA - FOR AFRICA"
PRESENTS
TWO IMPORTANT VOICES WARN AGAINST AFRICA’S POLITICAL ELITE
USA-SA BUSINESS SPOTLIGHT
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EXCLUSIVE
Carl NOFFKE (Prof)
12 July 2005
TWO IMPORTANT VOICES WARN AGAINST AFRICA’S POLITICAL ELITE
Two important African voices have expressed concern about the continent’s political elite’s ability to transform without structural reforms.
Moeletsi Mbeki, brother of South African President Thabo Mbeki, warned in an article in The Wall Street Journal: “At the root of Africa’s problems are ruling political elites that have squandered the continent’s wealth and choked its productivity over the last 40 years”.
Thompson Ayodele, Director of the Institute of Public Policy Analysis in Lagos, Nigeria, maintains that “development in the continent is possible through change that must come from within Africa”.
Moeletsi Mbeki is deputy chairman of the South African Institute of International Affairs in Johannesburg as well as being a businessman and analyst. His article in The Wall Street Journal appeared on July 5. Ayodele issued a statement on July 6, when the G8 summit started in Gleneagles.
Mbeki said the list of abuses in Africa is long and impressive. The political elite in Africa have systematically exploited their positions in order to line their own pockets. They have given favours and won influence through the funding of huge loss-making industrialisation projects. They have exploited the natural resources of their countries and then transferred profits, taxes, and aid funds into their own foreign bank accounts at the same time that they ran up enormous debts to finance their governments’ operations.
Future development in Africa, he adds, requires a new type of democracy – one that empowers not just the political elite but private sector producers as well. It is necessary that peasants, who constitute the core of the private sector, become the real owners of their primary asset, land.
Mbeki suggests the so-called communal land tenure system, which is really state ownership of land, ought to be abolished. Africa needs new financial institutions that are independent of the political elite and can address the financial needs not only of peasants, but other small- to medium scale producers. In addition to providing financial services, those institutions could undertake all the technical services that are not being provided at present by African governments, such as research, extension services, livestock improvement, storage, transportation and distribution to make agriculture more productive. Such changes could for the first time bring into being a genuine market economy that answers to the needs of African producers and consumers.
Ayodele said the resources needed for development in Africa can be generated within the continent. From 1970 to 2000 Africa received about US$400 billion in aid. Africa received enough financial aid from overseas. Africa’s lack of development does not stem from lack of funds. More foreign aid will not eliminate poverty and launch African countries to productivity and growth, he added.
“If anyone really wants to help poor Africans out of the vicious circle of poverty he must promote free commerce, protect property rights, encourage openness to trade, allow markets to flourish and reduce government intervention in the economy,” he commented.
Advocating the removal of agricultural subsidies by the world’s wealthiest countries, Ayodele said: “Increased trade and investment, spearheaded by the private sector, is the best hope for combating poverty and disease in the continent.”
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