Africa’s Woes/Africa’s Potential
Colonialism and corporate colonialism still have their harmful effect on the Dark Continent. In Central Africa years of civil wars and its by-product of poverty, superstition, and family disruption have thrown a defacto smokescreen in front of the original causes of these problems. A more immediate and visible problem seems to have been found, the Congo’s children, according to a report months ago by Sudarsan Raghavan of Knight Ridder newpapers.
Superstition is nothing new to Africa, sad to say, abuse isn’t either. But branding or labeling children witches in order to blame them for failed crops, an unstable economy, or an excuse to have less mouths to feed, has become a sick trend in the Congo. Raghavan reports there are two factors that cause the problem: “the disruption of traditional family life caused by the ongoing war, and the surge of revivalist churches whose preacher rails against Satan, and witches as causes of all woes.” Now why aren’t I surprised by the churches role in this? UNICEF counts at least 60 percent of those accused child witches to now be in the shelters of the capital Kinshasa.
The reasons for that region’s downtrodden state of course is much more complicated than either witchcraft or whatever other blame-the-victim program you conjure up. Kids need education, not alienation, they need good timely competent health care, not divisive religious revivalism. Whatever its history it doesn’t seem like either Christianity or Islam is working out for Africa right now, or they are being grossly misused. As times get harder the need for here-and-now solutions should be in more demand. But that takes looking at ourselves, responsibility: “Families can’t pay for tuitions or medicines, so they have to look for a way to escape their responsibility and to find a justification to their predicament,” said Sister Natalia a nun who runs Eckabana House, one of the shelters for accused child witches in the southeastern town of Bakavu. I occasionally write about Africa because much of their problems simply resemble those of Black America, only multiplied tenfold.
An AP story recently stated that the US was going to commit $77 million toward humanitarian aid for the Congo. Secretary of State Colin Powell was the US delegate for that bilateral meeting along with Congo President Joseph Kabila. If Bush wins in ’04, expect him to focus more attention toward Africa. All of a sudden he will outwardly display concern for the downtrodden Africans, but he’ll be sniffing for oil.
Africa’s major oil exporters are Nigeria, Algeria, and Gabon (West African) , but many of these regions lack roads, schools or adequate health care. All they have is one corrupt ruler who is the only local beneficiary of the lands resources, while the West siphons off the major portions. So any ideas toward funding Africa have to first start with cleaning house, or strict outside oversight to make sure basic needs are met. Of course Euro/American governments are of no moral position or aspiration to do this. Ideas are being bounced around however about doubling the amount of aid to African nations in order to boost their economies. In July of 2000 the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), released their finding from a study on “Capital Flows and Growth in Africa.” This 43 page report states: “the only feasible way to end aid dependence [of Africa] is to launch a massive aid programme and to sustain rapid growth for a sufficiently long period so as to allow domestic savings and external private flows to gradually replace official flows.”
In other words UNCTAD is proposing something that has never been done regarding Africa before, instead of nickel and dimming mother Africa, or just giving her enough to just survive, it provides continual concurrent assistance to various nations at an increased rate ($20 billion). As opposed to Bush’s one shot $77 million AIDS deal, the private flows are long term transactions from private funds that cover a whole range of needs form balance of payment to a rise of national savings and investment and faster growth in Sub-Saharan Africa. These would eventually replace the official flows of the World Banlk/IMF, and attract more private investor participation. Not a cure all, but worth a try.