When the Berlin wall came down last fall, 38 of the 46 sub-Saharan states were led by one-party or military governments. Now some of the old-line leaders are breaking ranks. First was Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere, who helped invent “African socialism.” In February he told his impoverished countrymen that the one-party system is not necessarily “God’s wish.” The regime quickly accepted a gradual transition to pluralism. Since then there has been an epidemic of such promises, often accompanied by mass protest. Even before last week’s OAU summit, Benin, Gabon, Ivory Coast and Zaire had announced plans for multiparty systems. Nigeria’s military government promises to cede power to civilians in 1992. Violent protests have broken out in Cameroon, Niger, Mali, Guinea and the Central African Republic. In Zambia, a failed coup on July 1 followed five days of rioting over food-price increases; students also demanded a Western-style democracy. Finally came the upheaval in Kenya, where President Daniel was vowing last week to resist pressure for a multiparty system (page 28).
Pressure was building even before last year’s changes in Europe. During the 1980s, economic collapse left 30 African governments wards of Western lending institutions. The price of loans was “structural adjustment”–the dismantling of catastrophic central-planning systems to let real markets grow. Now the lenders are also attaching political strings to their aid. “Democracy is being presented as this season’s fashion,” complained Chadian President Hissene Habre. French President Francois Mitterrand warned last month that he will be “more lukewarm” to countries that fail to observe democratic principles; British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd issued a similar warning. The World Bank, which controls about $12 billion of the $15 billion in aid Africa receives annually, calls for increased support but also seeks political reform. “We can look at Africa with hope that they have learned a lesson,” said Herman Cohen, the State Department’s top Africanist. “Now is the time to help.”
But aiding Africa is hard to sell. The United States has cut its bilateral aid to Africa in half since 1985, to about $1 billion in 1990, even though the continent contains the world’s poorest nations. Poles and Hungarians will receive 10 times as much aid per capita from Europe and Central Americans 34 times as much from the United States, notes Cohen’s predecessor, Chester Crocker, adding: “Africans could end up paying for the expanding frontiers of freedom everywhere else. That would be an obscene response to the African crisis.” And private investment dwindled from a peak of $2.3 billion in 1982 to $600 million in 1986. “When a building is on fire, you don’t ask someone to buy an apartment,” explained Jean-Pierre Prouteau of the Council of French Investors in Black Africa.
Sub-Saharan Africa’s own vital statistics are unremittingly bleak. With a population of 450 million, the region has a total gross domestic product of $135 billion–no more than that of Belgium, with only 10 million people. The real income of the average African has declined since 1970. Nor is there the prospect of improvement. The region is burdened by a mountain of debt–$135 billion in 1988, equal to 100 percent of its gross domestic product. Of the roughly $15 billion in foreign aid Africa receives annually, an average of $9 billion goes to service debt. Meanwhile, exports are declining. World commodity prices are the lowest in decades, and Africa’s market share has declined sharply. While Africa remains rich in minerals, its production has fallen by a steady 2 percent a year.
The human cost is appalling. In the poorest countries-Burkina-Faso, Ethiopia and Mali-about one in four children dies before the age of 5. More than 100 million people face chronic hunger. Two out three rural Africans don’t have clean water. AIDS has spread farther and faster in Central and East Africa than anywhere else; the World Health Organization estimates that more than a million Africans now are infected with the virus.
Africa may have slipped out of the mainstream, but its problems can’t be contained to the continent. Ecological collapse–increasing desertification and deforestation–affects the whole planet. Economic collapse would hurt banks. Immigration is a problem in several European countries. “Westerners must not forget that with the countries of the Third World, we are on board the same ship,” says Guy Georgy, a former French ambassador in Africa. “We cannot lead the lives of millionaires on the upper deck while the hold is filled with the luckless poor … the passengers in the hold will cut holes in the hull.”
What, then, can outsiders do? It’s unclear if the latest “quick fix”-Western-style pluralism-really is a cure-all. Africa lacks democratic traditions. The political systems created at independence developed along ethnic lines. Liberia’s civil war is largely tribal; ethnic differences fuel the Kenyan protests. Still, “tribalism can work for democracy and against a one-party monopoly,” says Cohen. An example is newly independent Namibia, where a pro-Marxist liberation movement dominated by the Ovambo tribe won a parliamentary majority last year but pledged to maintain a market economy and shares power with parties representing 13 other ethnic groups. And there are some other bright spots. Ghana enjoys roughly 6 percent growth because its military regime undertook massive economic reforms. Nigeria is well along in its third try at democracy. Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe has stuck to the free-market system, though he recently told Western advocates of pluralism to “go to hell.” Botswana built a working democracy on an aboriginal tradition of local gatherings called kgotlas that resemble New England town meetings; it has a record $2.7 billion in foreign reserves.
The best hope for Africa is that the continent’s two giant economies–South Africa and Nigeria–can be harnessed to pull the rest of the countries out of the mud. A post-apartheid South Africa could drive the entire southern region. A prosperous Nigeria–which alone contains a quarter of all Africans–could carry West Africa. Together, they could become a giant market to absorb the rest of Africa’s products. But pessimists abound. A secret French study on “Crisis Scenarios in Africa” was leaked last week, warning of revolts or military coups across the continent. In Zaire, for example, President Mobutu Sese Seko “does not at any time envisage leaving power,” the report said, in spite of his repeated vows not to become another Ceausescu. The road to recovery is open; so is the path toward anarchy and chaos. But, as in Eastern Europe, there is no way back.
Sub-Saharan Africa will need a sharp increase in foreign aid and investment to encourage the forces of political pluralism
