The bank says the total combined income of 48 countries in Africa is little more than that of Belgium.
The World Bank report, called Can Africa Claim The Twenty-first Century?, says major structural changes are needed if Africa is to catch up with the
rest of the world.
Africa's problems
Roads: only 16% paved
Telephones: 10 per 1000
Electricity: 80% lack access
Aids: 35m infected
Sanitation: inadequate for 75% of rural population
Source: Can Africa Claim the 21st Century
Even just to maintain current levels of poverty, African economies will have to grow by 5% because of rapidly growing populations.
But, the report says Africa has "enormous untapped potential and hidden growth reserves", if it can mobilise its human resources and improve its
political systems.
Years of neglect
In the last 40 years, average incomes per person in Africa have stagnated
while they have grown in most of the rest of the world.
Africa now accounts for only 1% of the total world economic output and 2% of
world trade.
On average, African countries have economies smaller than a town of 60,000
people in a rich country.
And infrastructure is far less developed as well.
With only 10m telephone lines, half of them in South Africa, there is little
chance of most Africans gaining access to the internet.
Africa has fewer roads than Poland, only 16% of which are paved, and only
one in five households has access to electricity.
Two-thirds of rural Africans lack adequate water supplies, while three
quarters lack adequate sanitation.
Investment in human capital
The World Bank also points out that Africa is under-utilising its human
capital, particularly its women.
The average schooling for African women has increased by only 1.2 years in
the last 40 years, the lowest gain anywhere in the
world.
Instead, women typically work longer hours than men, collecting water and
firewood, and lack access to credit, land, or educational resources.
Africa's human resources are also being decimated by disease, with Aids
infection rates reaching 25% in Zimbabwe and Botswana.
And decades of civil war and conflict, which have affected at least 20 of
sub-Saharan Africa's 48 countries, have increased poverty and violence.
The political system, even where there are elections, is generally based on
a winner-take-all system that is not sufficiently inclusive of Africa's
diverse ethnic groups.
"Political changes .. would do much to empower people and communities and
help energise the development process," the report says
Debt burden
Africa is the world's most indebted and aid-dependent region, with 17% of
GDP flowing out in debt repayments, three times what the Bank believes is a
sustainable level.
But foreign donors are reluctant to give more control to corrupt and
ineffective governments, and are insisting on strict conditions in return
for debt forgiveness.
"Resolving the dilemma posed by aid dependence requires a radical rethinking of the relationships among Africa's civil society, governments, and donors,"
the World Bank says.
It has favoured giving more grants directly to non-governmental organisations who have roots in their communities, effectively by-passing those governments.
The report calls for four key steps to improve Africa's economic prospects:
Better government and fewer wars
More investment in people
Diversification of the economy
More aid from rich countries
The report comes at a sensitive time for the World Bank, which has been under attack from rightwing critics in the United States who would like to
cut its funding radically.
They argue that the Bank has had little effect on poverty reduction, and in some cases actually helped corrupt governments stay in power.
The new report was produced in conjunction with the UN Economic Commission for Africa and the African Development Bank - ironically, one of the
organisations that some argue should replace the World Bank.
From:http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/business/newsid_771000/771271.stm
THE GUARDIAN: A FATE WORSE THAN IMPERIALISM: IN AFRICA TODAY, THE SUFFERING IS CAUSED FROM WITHIN. WOLE SOYINKA LAMENTS THE LOSS OF POST-APARTHEID CONFIDENCE AND CALLS FOR STRONGER UN INTERVENTION
The Guardian - United Kingdom ; 03-Jun-2000 12:00:00 am
A wave of anomie, even a breakdown of humanity, is sweeping across the
continent that must be particularly galling to those who so confidently
trumpeted an 'African renaissance'. What we see today is the opposite: a
reversal of the progress that seemed to have been signalled by the end of
apartheid. At the heart of this reversal is the power syndrome. And it is
destroying Africa, country by country.
Certainly, in Africa today the terrible suffering is not caused by external
enemies, but from within. African leaders have created one another as their
own worst enemies. And they are dragging their populations down into the
abyss as they seek to establish their own individual domination. Look at the
crude and vicious way that Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe is fomenting racial
division to stay in power, manipulating genuine racial grievances for
political ends. For 20 years he has been in power, all the while doing
nothing about land injustice. For that alone, he ought to resign as an incompetent leader.
But suddenly, when his power is threatened, his lagging sense of justice
awakes! It is political opportunism of the most despicable kind, a total slap in the face to the South African spirit of reconciliation that was going to raise the continent.
Instead of choosing men like Nelson Mandela as an example, leaders like
Mugabe would rather see their countries on fire than give up power. I have
spoken extensively to both the leaders of Eritrea and Ethiopia. Privately,
they tell me this war is not necessary. What, then, pushes them? Why don't
they call off this war, even with the United Nations threatening sanctions
against them? How can one explain this madness? I can't.
I further cannot explain the steep descent into barbarism of Africans
against themselves. It was Belgian King Leopold of the so-called Congo Free
State who started the practice of amputating the hands of the children of
his enemies. This brutal method now seems to have spread like some psycho
virus to warlords, including Foday Sankoh, the rebel leader in Sierra Leone.
These men have indoctrinated their followers into the total abandonment of
any traditional notion of man's humanity to man. What new kind of monsters
have been born in Africa?
Despite what Africans are doing to themselves, the international community,
particularly Europe, does bear some responsibility for the destruction of
our societies wrought by colonialism and by power plays during the Cold War. From that historical perspective, the abandonment of Africa today is not at all justified.
<>
Further, what is at stake now in Sierra Leone is not just the rescue of the
United Nations peacekeepers, but the rescue of the UN itself. Can we allow
the UN to be abandoned, discredited and divested of moral influ ence? If so,
the world will see only a cruel panoply of violently contesting forces, and
not only in Africa. I do not envy the task of Kofi Annan in this rescue
operation because it is against all odds.
Of course, this means that when the UN goes anywhere, it does not fool
around with incompetent, lightly armed or underfunded troops. There is
little point to future UN operations unless they will have what it takes to match the fighting forces on the ground and dominate the situation.
If Sierra Leone or the other UN peacekeeping failures point to any lesson,
it is that it is foolish to rely on the goodwill of the warring parties,
even if they have signed peace agreements. Not only is the UN the only
entity concerned enough to try to do anything in Africa, it also should be that entity.
The idea of regional African peacekeeping forces won' t work. When the
Nigerian army routed the rebels in Sierra Leone a few years back, the
Organization of African Unity was euphoric at this specific success of
regional peacekeeping. But the excitement was premature because it laid the
seeds of the current strife.
Whenever a country goes it alone against another country, it becomes an
emotive point. Indeed, the rhetoric of the rebels in Sierra Leone was
exactly this: 'Look, we are being colonised by Nigeria.' So there was great
pressure for Nigeria to leave. When I discussed this at the time with
Boutros Boutros-Ghali (the former UN secretary general), who in turn
discussed it with Nelson Mandela, we agreed that the departure of Nigerian
troops could not leave a vacuum but must be filled immediately by a
multinational force. Otherwise and this is what happened the rebels would
use the anti-Nigerian sentiment to exploit any vacuum and try to seize power.
The point is that warring parties in Africa will see any regional African
force with a big power like Nigeria involved as bent on pressing its own
interests against theirs. Everyone in Africa knows which states are
supporting which rebels in the neighbouring areas. Any such force, assembled
by the OAU or otherwise, will be riddled with suspicions about the motives
of the participants, thus only further muddying the already filthy waters.
If peacekeeping or peacemaking is going to work in Africa, it must be done
by an impartial organisation with no stake in the local fight, that is
committed to a global view of resolving crises, no matter where. It is not a
matter of using any force, but of legitimate force. Only the UN can fill
this role.
Wole Soyinka 2000. Nigerian playwright Wole Soyinka won the Nobel Prize for
Literature in 1986. Distributed by the Los Angeles Times Syndicate
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