Africa Slowly Slipping Back to Serfdom |

With over 50 million Africans living on less than a dollar a day, Africa's policy-makers focus on policies that encourage external donor funding.

According to the World Bank, aid inflows to black Africa rose from 3.4 per cent of the Gross National Product (GNP) in 1980 to 16.3 per cent in 1995. These official inflows typically funded basic government programmes, together with all or most government development expenditures.

Dependence on aid has led to African governments virtually ceding the shaping of their economic and social policies to external agencies. Wealthy nations and international institutions, such as the World Bank and the IMF, have become Africa's central economic planners.

The end result is sporadic project implementation, corruption and poor economic performance attributable to inept policies and political tensions as each tribe jostles to partake of the "national cake".

At independence, Africa's leaders were faced with the task of building nations and developing economies. For the past 40 years, African countries have stuck to the inherited economic systems that rely on the production and export of primary resources.

Black Africa's share of world trade has declined over this period from 3.1 per cent in 1955 to just 1.2 per cent in 1990.

The entire continent accounted for a lesser share of the world's export than Belgium. Agricultural goods and raw extracted minerals form the bulk of the exports.

Africa must urgently move away from reforms to please donors to reforms that will encourage entrepreneurship.

Recent developments in Kenya and Africa in general demonstrate that people are suffering from the fatigue of excessive State manipulation. One regime after another promises to make life for Africans better. But, in the long run, they have all ended up taking away individual liberties in the name of public safety and State security.

Our political and economic systems have tended to make people rely more on governments for solutions to problems that they can solve on their own. Most of Africa's agricultural activities are carried out on patches of impoverished soils. Seventy per cent of the population is rural and depends mainly on agriculture. Sixty per cent is in absolute poverty. Eighty per cent of the expenditure is on food.

Repeated pest and disease attacks and expensive farm inputs, coupled with natural disasters, have put this industry in jeopardy. The food crisis has exposed Africa to manipulation where wealthy nations use food aid to further their agenda.

Without analysing the long-term impact of their decisions, policy-makers have accepted food aid that has further disoriented Africa's farming communities, making this continent even more vulnerable.

Extraction of mineral wealth, instead of making Africa wealthy, has turned into a curse. Coltan, gold, copper, uranium and oil wars in the Congo, oil and water wars in the Sudan and diamond wars in Sierra Leone have devastated a big section of this continent.

It has also led to thousands of innocent people displaced as refugees, family lives disrupted and government systems destroyed. Africa's conflict situation has made it difficult for strong institutions that support predictable and enforceable laws to be created.

This has not only made it difficult for African entrepreneurs to come up, but made it difficult for external investment.

Political instability makes it difficult for Africa's leadership to focus on leaving a positive legacy besides looting. Due to lack of security in their political office, African ruling elites give priority to looting and banking outside Africa.

This breeds short-term policies meant to satisfy the ruling clique without ever focusing on the future of Africa's children and future generations. There is no proper institutional new knowledge or maximum us of their potential.

In Africa, entrepreneurship is frowned upon by political elites. They fear potential rivals. Many are made to focus on salaried employment because commercial enterprise is viewed to be immoral and exploitative.

It is in Africa that, if one employs 100 people, one will be seen as an exploiter. But if one is put in command of the same number of people, one will be viewed as a respectful member of society.

Unless Africa wakes up to the reality that international relations are driven mostly by commercial gains, it will be difficult for it to fit in the global economy.

In market economics, the consumer is king. This was well illustrated when Kenya's tourism industry went to its knees due to inability to honour the demands of the consumer.

The European Union has been strict on residues found in flowers from Kenya. It has imposed phytosanitary standards to be met by Kenya's exporters and fishermen have been put on notice concerning possible presence of heavy metals in their products.

Subsidies in developed countries have virtually grounded agricultural output in Africa. Poor countries are unable to bargain because they rely on the very same rich nations for their livelihood.