Hungry for Truth, Peace and Justice

How to Lose Friends in Africa

By Luke Pryor
The Cornell Daily Sun
November 3, 2009

Paul Kagame is one of the West’s favorite African leaders. The current president of Rwanda, he was the leader of the Rwandan Patriotic Front when it ended the genocide in 1994. He has ruled over the reconciliation of as fractured a country as there ever has been, prevented the nation from falling into a prolonged civil war that once appeared inevitable, and has enjoyed robust economic growth for the last decade and a half.

Under his stewardship, Rwanda has been called Africa’s “biggest success story” by writer Fareed Zakaria, and his prudent economic and social policies have given him a lot of sway amongst African leaders. So, it must have been with some displeasure that Western leaders took his comments last month praising the role of China in Rwanda’s development, while simultaneously criticizing the aid of the West.

Now, you could say Kagame has a lot of reasons not to like the West, and that’d be true. He watched in 1994 as Western powers categorically ignored the massacres occurring in his country. But his most recent set of accusations was not about what the West didn’t do, but rather, what it has been doing. That is, he is sick of his country just receiving aid from Western countries – he’d rather trade with them. Among other grievances, he cited that Western powers have been polluting Africa, and depriving African nations of the same trade rights that they give each other. He feels this has been preventing African businesses from building themselves up, and ultimately, from reducing the country’s poverty.

China, to the contrary, has been doing exactly what Kagame desires. They’ve been investing in businesses and infrastructure in Rwanda by providing capital for companies and building roads. In essence, if this investment is successful, it allows Rwanda to help itself, as these are policies that enable trade between Rwanda and other nations (trade is very difficult if, for example, you don’t have adequate roads). To Kagame, this is what is necessary for his country, and others in Africa, to truly develop.

Unsurprisingly, this is not pure altruism on China’s part, as it gets something out of this, too, beyond the return on a successful investment – it gets political capital. China is enjoying rising popularity in Africa, which translates into supportive votes in international bodies when China’s sketchy (to say the least) human rights record comes under attack. In addition, China is forging economic ties with a number of countries that are likely to be the world’s emerging economies in ten or twenty years. Imagine investing in India two decades ago, and you can see the potential benefits for a country that is already experiencing some of the fastest economic growth in the world. If its investments are successful, China has happened upon a mutually beneficial development program – akin to the holy grail of helping poor countries.

Kagame’s comments, and China’s strategies in helping Africa, touch on one of the largest debates in development theory: that of trade versus aid. There is not a consensus on the correct answer, and the various arguments are far too complex and multifaceted to get into here. Likely, poor countries need some of both.

But, there is an aspect to this debate that returns to being a matter of respect. Much of development aid focuses on telling the poor countries what to do. And it is true that sometimes these countries honestly do not know what is best for themselves, and providing aid restricted for specific causes is necessary (though this is less common than most officials at the IMF and World Bank would like to believe). But when the very countries that we are trying to help are asking us to stop helping them, and instead treat them as equals, and when the leaders of those countries are respected all over the world, and when that nation is seen as the biggest success on the continent, maybe it is a sign we should rethink our decision. Maybe it is a sign that some poor countries deserve our respect in addition to our money.

Related Materials:
China and Africa: Don't Worry about Killing People

Rwanda: East- West Rumblings - What About Country's Burden of Choice?

Paul Kagame’s blackmail aims at granting him impunity

Kagame attacks Mo Ibrahim, accuses west of “polluting Africa”

Who's doing well in Africa? Look south

What Really Happened in Rwanda?

What they don’t tell you about Rwanda

Yesterday a victim, today an oppressor: how aid funds war in Congo

The Power of Horror in Rwanda

The genocide in Rwanda: The difficulty of trying to stop it happening ever again

posted by Mamadou Kouyate @ 10:08 PM