Realism and Responsibility by Fareed Zakaria

June 20, 2005 U.S. Edition

Realism and Responsibility
Listen to some of the new wise men of Africa. They insist that unless Africans get their own house in order, aid will not fix anything.
By Fareed Zakaria

Richard Curtis, the screenwriter who wrote "Four Weddings and a Funeral" and "Love Actually," has written a new romantic comedy, this time about global poverty. I know, it sounds sleep-inducing, but the HBO movie, "The Girl in the Café," is a pleasure to watch. And it does leave you wanting to do something about global poverty, which is not the urge I usually have when I walk out of a theater.

In the movie, the good guys are the British prime minister, a youthful man who is almost too articulate, and a rumpled chancellor of the Exchequer, both of whom want to end poverty in Africa. (Any resemblance to Tony Blair and Gordon Brown is entirely coincidental.) The bad guys are the Americans, who sound cautious and contrarian. But off screen, the good guys and bad guys could complement each other and actually deal with one of the world's most urgent moral challenges. There are three forces coming together that make this potentially the brightest moment in Africa's history: American realism, European generosity and African responsibility.

Realism is not simply an American attitude, though Washington voices it most loudly. Germany and Japan are also extremely nervous about another round of large-scale aid transfers. They know that unless the recipients are competent and reasonably honest governments, chances are that large sums of money will be wasted. The Western public will come to believe that this problem has no solution. People who speak of the need for a Marshall Plan for Africa should keep in mind that the continent has had, over the past five decades, the equivalent of five Marshall Plans.

The Bush administration's Millennium Challenge Account is the right way to think about financial assistance, because it provides help to governments that have demonstrated the capacity to use it. Giving money to Robert Mugabe is not going to modernize Zimbabwe's economy. The trouble with the administration's approach, however, is that having proposed a good idea, it has not followed through with the cash it promised. The Millennium Challenge Account was meant to have a $5 billion annual budget. To date, the administration has dispersed a pitiful $110 million.

European generosity has been more impressive and has forced a shift in policy. Last week the world's eight richest countries closed a deal to write off more than $40 billion of African debt. Public attitudes in the West are changing. Five decades of peace and prosperity have produced general affluence and also some concern for the fate of the world's poorest. Even in the United States, where the government provides the smallest aid outlays as a percent of GDP, the tide is shifting. Three years ago President Bush increased foreign aid by 50 percent and no one objected. The Christian right has now begun to take the problem of African poverty seriously. The left is increasingly re-energized on this issue as well.

And there are things you can do with money even when governments are hopelessly incompetent and corrupt. By focusing on health, for example, one can often bypass government failures. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has shown that by being smart, focused and disciplined, you can get a huge bang for the buck. Nancy Birdsall of the Center for Global Development suggests that about $5 billion of the new aid money to Africa be spent outside the continent, developing medicines to treat and cure diseases like malaria and AIDS that have crippled Africa's economic growth. The money would be spent efficiently in the industrial world but would have a massive effect on Africa's future.

The most hopeful force for the future is Africa's growing sense of responsibility. Listen to some of the new wise men of the continent, such as South Africa's Finance Minister Trevor Manuel, or his counterpart in Ghana, Kwadwo Baah Wiredu. They insist that unless Africans get their own house in order, aid will not fix anything. They are moving their countries toward better governance and their continent toward greater accountability. All of this is producing results. The IMF estimates that Africa's economy will grow at about 5 percent in 2005, and inflation will average under 10 percent. In the past 10 years, 16 African countries have had average growth rates of 4 percent. Of course, these trends are fragile, and many serious problems, like AIDS, could overwhelm them. But for the first time in modern Africa's history, there is significant good news to report.

In the movie "The Girl in the Café," the "bad" American official argues that what Africa really needs is not aid but trade. Again, he's absolutely right. But of course it is American (and European) policy to deny Africa access to our markets. We subsidize a few hundred of the richest agricultural companies in the world, and prevent tens of millions of the world's poorest people from participating in free trade and capitalism. It is estimated that if Africa gained 1 percent more of the world's share of exports, it would be worth five times the total amount of foreign aid it receives. So America is correct: good government policies are key—but in this crucial case, it's our policies that need improving.