There is suddenly a real chance — the sort that comes but once in a generation — for Africa to reverse its three decades of stagnation. There is a moral awakening abroad, probably the greatest awakening since the movement to end slavery in the 18th century.
What I hear from Africa is that poverty is a spiral. It is a trap. To use an African expression, there is a “poverty which lays eggs”. A simple aim such as free primary education fails in Zambia, for example, because teachers are dying faster than they can be trained. Being practical is not enough.
Africa needs to drive its own development. The Marshall Plan, which resurrected Europe in the 1940s, was based on aid, but it was aid directed at building up institutions and good governance. The United States agreed to transfer 1% of its national income for four years to finance reconstruction.
I have read the report by the Commission for Africa, which proposes a similar plan. Good governance is at the heart of growth.
What the G8 leaders need to decide at Gleneagles is how to lift the yoke from the poor. Africa needs to trade; it has a competitive advantage in agricultural products. Yet the wealthiest nations maintain ethically grotesque agricultural subsidies that bias international trade to the rich nations. The African share in world trade has fallen to 2%. This is not the result of a conspiracy against Africa, but the result of narrow national decisions taken because their effects on the poor were left out of the picture.
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This, the larger picture, can leave us with a nagging sense of guilt and inadequacy. When aid is squandered through weak governments and petty corruption, some say, what is the point? Africa’s own contribution to its poverty through corruption and venality is the very reason why it needs to be supported to change.
Africa has resources and a treasure of human gifts and energy. But without a political will on the part of the G8 countries, it cannot begin to reverse its decline.
The Marshall Plan worked because Americans cared about Europeans. We were seen as family. I see Africans as our family. Which is why this cardinal, to his own surprise, will head north this Saturday.