Africa’s Problems: Not Who’s To Blame, But What’s To Blame

The continent of Africa, with its many distinct nations, has perpetually lagged behind the rest of the world in the standard metrics of development. Fewer international patents are granted there, the literacy rate is lower there, medical care is substandard.

To be sure, there are individual major cities in Africa which rival any high-tech city in the world: life there is very much like life in New York, London, Berlin, or Vienna. Africa’s modern large cities are every bit as good as the rest of the world’s.

But those large cities are a rare exception to the average life of the average African.

Africa’s developmental delays are due, at least in part, to the physical structure of the land itself, as scholar Tim Marshall writes:

Africa’s coastlines? Great beaches, really, really lovely beaches, but terrible natural harbors. Rivers? Amazing rivers, but most of them are rubbish for actually transporting anything, given that every few miles you go over a waterfall. These are just two in a long list of problems which help explain why Africa isn’t technologically or politically as successful as Western Europe or North America.

The landscape of Africa, then, is an obstacle to internal connections between different regions of the continent, and an obstacle to external connections to the rest of the world.

The problems in Africa have resisted a bewildering diversity of attempted solutions, both those proposed by the Africans themselves, and those proposed by outsiders.

There are lots of places that are unsuccessful, but few have been as unsuccessful as Africa.

The landscape of Africa sharply divides the northern edge on the Mediterranean coast from the much larger southern part of the continent. The Sahara Desert forms an effective barrier between these two areas.

Tim Marshall explains that the civilizations of sub-Saharan Africa were

separated from everyone else by the Sahara Desert and the Indian and Atlantic oceans. Almost the entire continent developed in isolation from the Eurasian land mass, where ideas and technology were exchanged from east to west, and west to east, but not north to south.

The coastline of Africa, with its lack of harbors, and the mostly uncrossable Sahara Desert effectively cut much of Africa off from the rest of the world. Much more important than the exchange of material goods is the exchange of ideas, but the Africans got neither.

Inside the continent, unnavigable rivers kept the communities of Africa apart from each other.

It is therefore a what and not a who responsible for Africa’s lack of development: the land itself kept Africa away from the marketplace of ideas and the marketplace of goods. Africa’s greatest obstacle is the lack of deepwater ports, its unusable rivers, and the impassable Sahara Desert.

New Alliances with Old Allies

Countries generally work with other countries when they have mutual interests: each nation first determines what is in its own best interests and pursues this; then it finds other nations who are pursuing the same goal. Then, cooperation is possible, desirable, and mutually beneficial.

Alliances are not limited to wartime situations. On the contrary, most alliances are peacetime affairs. Countries cooperate on matters of transportation, agriculture, and communication. The joint efforts of Canada and the United States in the construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway and the Sault Ste. Marie locks are examples.

In September 2018, the Wall Street Journal described the emergence of a trade coalition:

The prospect of resolving the U.S. trade battle with China is fading as the White House presses for a revised North American Free Trade Agreement.

As a new NAFTA nears completion, a strengthened working relationship between Canada, Mexico, and the United States would enable the three countries to more effectively resist Chinese efforts to dominate world markets. Other nations will join this alliance.

A successful coordination of Japan, the EU, and the NAFTA countries would be a diplomatic and economic success.

Chinese firms are able to dump products onto the world market at prices below their cost because they have access to labor at substandard wages. Many Chinese workers are given no choice about where they will work, or about how much they will be paid.

The outcomes are related, U.S. officials say, because relaxing trade tensions with Mexico and Canada — plus a preliminary trade pact with the European Union — make it easier to forge a multilateral front to oppose Chinese trade practices. The U.S., EU and Japan have held meetings on such a strategy last month.

In addition to exploitative labor practices, Chinese firms often receive unfair subsidies from the Chinese government. These companies sell products at a loss, and receive payments from the Chinese government to keep the company profitable.

It is somewhat misleading to call these entities ‘companies’ or ‘firms’ because they are, in essence, a branch of the Chinese government. They are not exposed to market forces. They are not under any pressure to be profitable. They are a tool of Chinese foreign policy, inasmuch as they are used to harm the national economies of other countries.

The horrific working conditions of some Chinese laborers borders on slavery.

What can a coalition of Japan, Canada, Mexico, the United States, and the EU nations do about this situation? Trade boycotts and tariffs seem to be the first line of actions.

If this coalition, approximately representing the free world, can coordinate such trade actions against China, then it may be possible to place enough pressure on China to encourage substantive action.

China, however, is currently set on a program of military buildup parallel with its effort to obtain economic hegemony over a number of smaller nations. China will not readily give up its dream of imperialistic expansion.