Why Is Africa Still Poor? (Page 5)

Faced with such facts, Sachs tries to recalculate reality. He publishes a chart of corruption figures that have been "controlled statistically for income levels" and concludes that Africa is not "distinctly poorly governed by the standards of very poor countries." This is a little like saying if you control for height, the Ivy League is the best conference in college basketball. The generals who looted Nigeria--a government of "average" honesty by Sachs's measure--were not stealing relative dollars: Check their Swiss bank statements. Some, like Guest, contend that in Africa corruption matters more than anywhere else, because the margin of survival is so thin. Rapacious rulers are literally stealing bread from the mouths of those they serve.

Sachs's solution sounds simple enough: Lavish billions on good countries like Ghana and punish bad ones like Zimbabwe by stopping the checks. The hitch is that the list of countries considered "good" and "bad" keeps changing. Sachs's favorites include Ethiopia, Uganda and Mozambique. But fifteen years ago these countries were basket cases; Zimbabwe was the success story, under the wise rule of its benevolent autocrat Robert Mugabe. Fifteen years before that, the paragons were Nigeria and Ivory Coast. Whenever a darling disintegrates, much of what development aid finances--paved roads, schools, hospitals, advanced farms--is destroyed, and the process must begin anew.

The closer you look at some of Sachs's chosen countries, the more you wonder about his judgment. Take Kenya, for instance. Sachs minimizes the problem of corruption there, attacking leery donors for their "useless and false moralizing," but no Kenyan I've ever met would share his lack of concern. (Nor, it's likely, would the country's former anticorruption czar, who resigned earlier this year in frustration.) One leader Sachs frequently consults, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, has lately been acting like an old-school dictator, imprisoning political opponents after an allegedly fraudulent election. In Uganda, where more than half the country's budget comes from foreign aid, a recent confidential report written for the World Bank concludes that donor aid is becoming a "mechanism for regime maintenance," allowing the ruling party to set up "slush funds" to pay for patronage and a military buildup. Meanwhile, the percentage of Ugandans living in poverty has risen. Sachs says this is nothing an extra $1.8 billion a year won't fix.

The point is that playing favorites requires vigilance and a willingness to recognize when success is turning sour. Africa is not the unremitting disaster Martin Meredith portrays. Countries like Botswana and Senegal stand out as models of stability, and Sachs is right to say that more Africans enjoy more democracy today than ever before. Everyone who knows the continent well believes it could benefit from a boost in generosity and--especially--closer attention from the American government. But an endeavor as ambitious as ending African poverty demands a little humility in the face of the task. We must recognize history, and understand the continent as it is, not as we wish it to be. To worry about corruption and misrule is to amplify the concerns of Africans I've met all over the continent, whose greatest anger is inevitably reserved for those leaders who have misspent so much in their names. Their voices should be heard, too, over the din of the rock concerts.

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