A preview of the unpublished book A CIVILIZATION WITHOUT A VISION WILL PERISH: AN INDEPENDENT SEARCH FOR THE TRUTH by David Willis. CHAPTER 1: INDIFFERENCE TO POVERTY (Part 53). This blog is a continuation of the review of The End of Poverty: How We Can Make it Happen in Our Life Time, by Jeffrey Sachs, published in 2005
DEEPER CAUSES OF AFRICAN POVERTY
Both the critics of African governance and the critics of Western violence and meddling have it wrong. Politics, at the end of the day, simply cannot explain Africa’s prolonged economic crisis. The claim that Africa’s corruption is the basic source of the problem does not withstand practical experience or serious scrutiny. During the past decade I witnessed close at hand how relatively well-governed countries in Africa, such as Ghana, Malawi, Mali, and Senegal, failed to prosper, whereas societies in Asia, Indonesia, and Pakistan, enjoyed rapid economic growth.
The Transparency International “corruption perception” rank
Table 1 compares the Transparency International “corruption perception” rank for these African and Asian countries and their respective economic growth rates. We see that African countries lag behind in economic growth even when they are perceived to be less corrupt than their Asian counterparts. Using formal statistical tests, it turns out that Africa’s per capita economic growth is significantly lower, by around 3 percentage points per year, than in other developing countries with comparable levels of corruption and income.
Vietnam is a case in point
At the same time, Africa’s harsh colonial legacy and the West’s very real depradations in the postcolonial period also do not explain the long-term development crisis. Other regions of the world that are now growing rapidly also experienced severe damage from decades or centuries of colonial rule and postcolonial meddling. Vietnam is a case in point, a country that had to fight for independence for decades and yet emerged from that brutal experience to achieve very rapid economic growth.
Some promising solutions
In sub-Saharan Africa, therefore, a good differential diagnosis is urgently needed. The political story lines of both the left and the right reflect platitudes and prejudices, with little explanatory power about economic development. I was intent on finding a better approach. My work in Africa has been both an intellectual as well as a human adventure, and I think the effort has paid off in helping to uncover some of the deeper roots of Africa’s predicament, as well as some promising solutions.
FIRST ENCOUNTERS
From my first drive across the border from Zimbabwe into Zambia, and during innumerable visits since, what has impressed me most is the distinctive physical ecology, and how it has helped to shape Africa’s recent economic history. The great biologist E.O. Wilson is correct, I believe, when he argues that human beings are “hard-wired” to feel a special resonance (“biophilia”) with the African savannah, the place where our species arose some 150,000 years ago. Yet however captivating these savannahs are, they pose innumerable and unique challenges for modern economic development: disease, drought, and distance from world markets, to name just three. Adam Smith, I noted earlier, had already pointed out the third of this trilogy in The Wealth of Nations, when he observed in 1776 that Africa had been poor from time immemorial because it lacked the navigable rivers and natural inlets that afford the benefits of low-cost, sea-based trade.
Zambia was losing trained capacity much faster than it was being gained
I was in the Bank of Zambia on the second or third day after my arrival, when my colleague from Harvard University explained to me that a Zambian coworker in the financial reform project had recently died. “How old was he?” I asked. “Oh, our age.” “But why?” “AIDS, Jeff. AIDS.” This project was meant to be “capacity building,” but Zambia was clearly losing trained capacity much faster than it was being gained.
AIDS and malaria
AIDS was not alone in its devastating impact on African society. Soon I became vividly aware of another insidious killer: malaria. Everyone’s children – rich and poor alike – contracted malaria. And all risked grave complications. Never, not even in the highlands of Bolivia, where illness is rife, had I confronted so much illness and death. India had never evoked the same sense of death in the air.
Sub-Saharan Africa’s life expectancy stood at 47 years
By the turn of the new millennium, sub-Saharan Africa’s life expectancy stood at 47 years, more than two decades lower than in East Asia (69 years) and 31 years lower than the average age in developed countries (78 years). The worldwide map of life expectancy in Map 8 highlights Africa’s unique and extraordinary situation.
Could the exceptional burden of illness be a reason?
According to economic historian Angus Maddison, Africa’s growth rate has been among the lowest of any world region during each major subperiod since 1820. That includes a long stretch before Africa fell to European colonial rule in the 1880s and the period since independence. Could the exceptional burden of illness be a significant reason?