Editor's Note

Despite possessing a wealth of natural resources and a huge population, a combination potentially making for healthy economic growth, Africa is in crisis. Economically, the continent (especially its sub-Saharan sector) is crippled by debt, underdevelopment and poverty, having the lowest standard of living in the world. Politically, it is beset by instability, corrupt and dictatorial rule, and vicious and devastating wars. These twin scourges of economic and political failure are exacerbated by a third curse that feeds off their baleful effects: an AIDS pandemic that has taken millions of African lives and wrought social havoc in several African countries.

How did Africa fall into this chaotic and miserable condition? Can it escape to a better future, and if so how? These questions form the theme of the pages that follow.

Our first contributor enjoys two global reputations, as a musician and as the initiator of perhaps the most famous humanitarian assistance effort for Africa. Bob Geldof received a British knighthood for his 1984 launch of the Band Aid project to relieve famine in Ethiopia, and today he is still actively engaged in campaigning for Africa’s recovery. His article provides an informative and passionate overview of the roots of Africa’s multiple difficulties and of various proposals to overcome them.

Geldof is also the inspirer of the most recent international initiative to investigate and redress the continent’s plight—the Commission for Africa set up this year by Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain. Ray Bush of the University of Leeds considers whether the commission can make a difference.

Of all African action plans, the most widely discussed is NEPAD—the New Partnership for Africa’s Development. Formally adopted by African leaders in 2001, NEPAD has been hailed as a seminal, homegrown attempt to tackle the challenges facing the continent. NEPAD’s viability as an answer to Africa’s economic woes is examined by George B. N. Ayittey of American University, Washington, D.C. Its relevance to the continent’s political burden of bad governance is weighed by Timothy Burke of Swarthmore College.

The extent and strength of democracy in Africa today are reviewed by John Mukum Mbaku of Weber State University, Utah. Inquiring into the reasons for the continent’s democratic deficit, he argues that it can best be remedied by a process of state reconstruction through participatory constitution-making.

State reconstruction is also seen as imperative for African progress and development by Tukumbi Lumumba-Kasongo of Wells College. He suggests that a reconceptualised pan-Africanism could provide the ideological springboard for much-needed new thinking about Africa’s problems and their solutions.

Richard Joseph of Northwestern University, Illinois, identifies as a key cause of Africa’s economic malaise the continent’s loss of institutional capacity—the ability to create and sustain the complex entities needed to supply such essential public goods as education, healthcare, water and electricity, transport, and many other services. He details several measures that could help make good this loss.

If Africa is to emerge from its trough of poverty and underdevelopment, then it must first resolve its debt burden. John Serieux of the University of Manitoba, Canada, looks at the history of Africa’s debt crisis and the failure of putative remedies such as structural adjustment. He argues that Africa must insist not only on sufficient debt relief, but also on adequate resource flows and new external financing instruments.

The two articles that follow discuss one of the biggest threats to the continent’s future: the AIDS pandemic that is ravaging sub-Saharan Africa. Alan Whiteside of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, assesses the scale of the problem, its implications for development, and what counter-measures can be taken. Brooke G. Schoepf of Harvard Medical School describes the social factors facilitating the spread of AIDS in Africa, in particular the inequalities of gender that make women so vulnerable to the disease.

Our perspective shifts from the continental to the national with individual case-studies of three of Africa’s largest and most important countries, whose problems of political representation, resource allocation and communal violence epitomise those of many other African states.

Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja, director of the Oslo Governance Centre, traces the tangled political evolution that saw Zaire become the Democratic Republic of Congo. The heart of his account is constituted by the inter-African war for Congolese resources, a catastrophic conflict that sucked in several neighbouring countries.

Patrick Bond of the University of KwaZulu-Natal dissects the new, post-Apartheid South Africa, seen by many as a beacon of hope for the continent. Bond accuses President Thabo Mbeki of promoting, under a cloak of leftist rhetoric, neo-liberal economic policies that injure the poor, both in his own country and in Africa as a whole. The centrepiece of this sub-imperial policy, Bond alleges, is Mbeki’s brainchild NEPAD.

Bringing our discussion to a close, Ebere Onwudiwe of Central State University, Ohio, analyses the nature of the ethnic and religious violence that has riven Nigeria in recent years, causing some observers to question whether it can survive as a single country. He concludes that Nigeria’s continued future as a unified state depends on how the federal government deals with the twin issues of the distribution of oil income and the unconstitutional adoption of shari’a law in the north of the country.

Paul Theodoulou
Summer/Autumn 2004