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Saturday, Mar 12, 2005

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Opinion - Leader Page Articles

No gain without pain

By Larry Elliott

The key to development in sub-Saharan Africa is partnership with the West.

MUCH OF sub-Saharan Africa has a level of human development that would have been familiar to pre-industrial Europe. Only 12 per cent of the roads in Ethiopia are paved, life expectancy in Mozambique is 38, and the average yearly income per head in Sierra Leone is about £86.

Behind the work of the Africa Commission lies the belief that it need not be like this. What kind and how much investment would it take for the poor countries of Africa to replicate the success stories of Asia? Those expecting the report to come up with easy panaceas will be disappointed. "We haven't invented development without pain," said Michel Camdessus, the former managing director of the IMF and Jacques Chirac's representative on the commission. "We haven't tried to re-invent the wheel."

Instead, action across a broad front is required, including increased aid and debt relief, improved trade conditions and governance. The key word is partnership: the West provides finance to kick-start development via debt relief and better aid; Africa does its bit by improving the way it manages itself.

Africa's biggest challenge, if it is to compete in the global economy, is its deficit in human capital. Economic strength used to depend on size or command over natural resources. Now it depends on the quality and skill level of the labour force: the ability to cope with complex production techniques and technological change. It requires the workforce to be educated and also healthy.

But life expectancy has been falling in much of sub-Saharan Africa over the past decade, because of HIV/Aids. Malaria and tuberculosis kill for want of affordable drugs and healthcare workers. The report sets African Governments a target of a million health workers being needed by 2015.

With education, the picture is as stark. More than 100 million African children are not in school; only a small proportion go on to secondary school. Girls are less likely to be in class than boys though development experts say female education is critical to health improvements.

The priority is ensuring that things do not get worse — hence the emphasis in the report on tackling HIV/Aids.Investment is also needed in physical infrastructure. Lack of roads and railways is inhibiting trade in Africa with farmers unable to get their goods to market and few links to facilitate intra-regional trade, let alone access to international trade. A central plank of the report is the requirement for an extra $10billion a year for infrastructure until 2010, and $20billion a year in the following five years.

The concern among many economists is that the report disregards inequality in its desire to secure growth. What Africa needs, argues Kevin Watkins of the U.N. human development report office, are not resource-hungry, large-scale farms producing cut flowers for the West, but policies supporting the poor — such as credit being more widely available, investment in rural roads, and support for small-scale enterprises.

But there is scepticism as to whether this report could really prove a turning point in Africa's development.

Nick Crafts, professor of economic history at the London School of Economics, says the continent has had serious problems of governance; it will not be easy to dislodge special interest groups from their control of resources. "The evidence is, aid doesn't work very well in environments with bad institutions. And if an elite has mortgaged the future of a country, who is to say that when they get debt relief they won't re-mortgage it?"

- Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

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