Sub-Saharan Africa: An Author Sees a Hopeless Future And He’s Unapologetic

ELIAS BIRYABAREMA
KAMAPALA

Kampala—Lately, as it appears, sub-Saharan African countries seem to be on the rebound. Conflagrations have been doused in much of the sub-continent and as peace takes a firm hold, economic stability has followed, bringing opportunity and better welfare to millions across the region.

The International Monetary Fund, IMF’s regional economic outlook for sub-Saharan Africa published on October 20th showed a glowing portrait of a region in the midst of an energetic transformation. Economic growth for the region, said the IMF, will average 6 percent in 2007 and 6.75 percent in 2008, which will be a remarkable rise of about nearly 2 percentage points from 2005’s five and a half percent.

“This would extend a period of very good performance,” said the IMF. “In recent years the region has seen its strongest growth and lowest inflation in more than three decades.”

Capital flows into Africa are at their highest levels since independence. Investment is flourishing—the World Investment Report said the continent attracted $36 billion in 2006, double 2004’s figure—creating jobs and boosting incomes. Export earnings for the region, too, have soared to unprecedented levels on the back of an explosive worldwide commodity boom, particularly oil.
Through the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative, MDRI, engineered by multilateral donors (WB, IMF, African Development Bank, Paris Club) and the G8, most sub-Saharan African countries have had their crushing debts cancelled and more resources are now being funnelled into long-neglected economic infrastructures.

All this has reversed decades of a downward spiral and lifted Africa onto the first rung of the ladder to economic prosperity, Right?

Not quite. At least, according to afro-pessimists.

Dr. Jacob van der Veen, an afro pessimist par excellence believes the worst is in fact yet to come. Dr. van der Veen who has travelled extensively and worked in sub-Saharan Africa sees all of the latest wave of seeming economic vitality as another of those endless episodes when Africa has suddenly become luminous, showed convincing promise and appeared ready to climb out of poverty only to for it to explode and plunge as dramatically as it had brightened.

Powered by globalisation, information and communication technological breakthroughs and mass consumption, Mr van der Veen observes in his book, What Went Wrong With Africa, that “it is clear that on average people’s lives have improved, all over the world, on every continent.”

Except Africa—to be more precise, sub-Saharan Africa. To be sure, Mr van der Veen’s book, first published in Dutch in 2002 and translated in English in 2004, brings no new compelling ideas about the tragedy of Black Africa but it’s the scale of detail he gives his diagnosis of the crisis and the shocking (almost provocative) candour of his views on the continent’s future that makes it a gripping and invigorating read.


“Even a confirmed optimist would hesitate to predict that life in Africa will get better in the years ahead.” van der Veen writes. His despair and doomsday arguments, which echo the familiar themes of Western reportage on Africa and scholarly work by several other Western authors, drew consternation and a hostile reception at a public debate in Kampala organised by Acode (a policy advocacy NGO) on Oct. 24th.

Dr. Kayunga Simba and Mr. Mwagutsya Ndebesa, from Makerere University Departments of political science and history respectively and Mr. Bernard Tabaire, Daily Monitor’s Managing Editor (Weekend Editions) accused him of regurgitating old and discredited theories that suggested that there was something peculiarly African about sub-Saharan Africa’s economic stagnation and chaotic politics.

To their pique, van der Veen, instead of seeking to clear misconceptions that may arise from his gloomy assertions, pressed forward, declaring that there was “nothing to make him optimistic about sub-Saharan Africa, not even the robust economic growth rates trumpeted by the IMF and the oil bonanza that is stirring euphoria all across the region.


A good measure of the economic dynamism that sub-Saharan Africa has picked up lately is so tenuous that even van der Veen’s critics may grudgingly admit that Africa’s perils may not be overcome as yet. Take exports, for instance. Prices for oil, metals, timber, coffee, sugar and several others are currently shooting through the roof; pouring prodigious amounts of money into the sub- Saharan African economies. But sometime, as it happens with booms, the prices will come crushing, and when that happens the same economies will start to sound distress signals, anew.

In many ways van der Veen’s book is easy to stoke indignation in Africans, particularly coming from the West which Africans generally tend to hold responsible for all their predicaments.
The litany of accusations is endless. Europe colonised us, pillaged our resources and has since continued to stymie our economic progress through economic marginalisation in the global marketplace. The West often displays astonishing ignorance on the complexities of the African society. The West does not offer much aid and while it’s ever railing against the corruption of African leaders, it’s content to keep the loot stashed in their banks by the same leaders.

Participants in the discussion pointed all this out.

And more, the thicket of hurdles that tamps down black Africa and which form the core of van der Veen’s narrative, too, are all familiar: state patronage, corruption, strong tribal loyalties, aid, decaying and ineffective institutions, violent conflict etc.

Many in the debate found it insulting—arguably for a good reason—that that a great deal of these problems had receded in many of the sub-Saharan countries, apparently signalling better times for the region. And yet van der Veen was still insisting that this was not enough to warrant any optimism.

Asked after the debate what he made of the accusations of bias and ignorance, van der Veen suggested that it was in fact such attitudes that were the greatest hindrance to the region’s development.

“I have noticed for instance that Ugandans are complacent,” he said. “They seem to say, ‘ok we were so badly off but now we’re somewhere and we’re happy with that’ which is really shocking if you really know what it takes to transform a pre-modern nation like Uganda to a modern country.”


He’s also not optimistic, he said, because he finds Ugandans and Africans generally to be too un-ambitious, complacent, slow-paced and much obsessed with blaming others for their crises instead of seizing and shaping their own destiny.
“There’s no sense of urgency among Africans. I have seen that wherever I have gone in all of sub-Saharan Africa and that will not take your countries anywhere,” he said.