Once a region with bountiful stores of optimism and hope, the African continent now teeters perilously on the brink of economic disintegration, political chaos, and institutional and social decay. The decline in per capita income has been calamitous for many African countries. Agricultural growth has been dismal, with output growing at less than 1.5 percent since 1970. Industrial output across Africa has also been declining, with some regions experiencing deindustrialization. Export volumes for many African countries faltered, leading to a fall by almost half in Africa's share of world markets.
To maintain income and investment, African governments borrowed heavily in the 1970's. Total African foreign debt has risen 19-fold since 1970 to a staggering $130 billion, equal to its Gross National Product (GNP), making the region the most heavily indebted of all (Latin America's debt amounts to around 60 percent of GNP). Debt service obligations absorbed 47 percent of export revenue in 1988, but only half were actually paid; the arrear payments are constantly being rescheduled.
With scarce foreign exchange increasingly being devoted to service debt obligations, less money was available to import spare parts, drugs, textbooks, and other essential supplies. Infrastructure began to crumble for lack of maintenance, roads started to deteriorate, and telephones refused to work. Hospitals in many African countries had no running water. At the Akomfo Anokye Hospital in Ghana, patients were asked to bring their own bandages, blankets, and food.
Educational facilities soon began to disintegrate. Makerere University in Uganda, once called "The Harvard Of Africa", is now in total ruins. The University of Ghana at Legon, once a world-class institution, has not seen a single coat of fresh paint since the colonialists left in the fifties.
In sub-Saharan (of black) Africa, the economic deterioration has been so severe that this region now has the dubious distinction of being home to twenty-four of the world's thirty-six poorest nations. Economic performance of this region, measured crudely by the rate of growth of per capita income, has been pathetic, as the table at left indicates.
The overall picture is even more depressing when compared to the performance of other Third World regions. Social and economic indicators of development, such as output growth, health, and literacy, have shown persistently weak performance in black Africa. For example, black Africa's per capita GNP for the two periods 1965-1987 and 1980-1988 were 0.6 and -2.5 respectively. For Asia, these were 4.0 and 5.5 while those for Latin America and the Caribbean were 2.1 and -0.6, respectively. While all other regions of the Third World advanced, black Africa retrogressed.
The exceptions to the general economic atrophy in black Africa have been few. Botswana continues to serve as a shining black success story, followed by Mauritius and Cameroon, while Senegal struggles to keep its head above water. In the early 1980's, Ivory Coast and Kenya used to be members of this select club but now suffer from serious economic crises.
The worst performers have been Ethiopia, Ghana, Liberia, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Sao Tome and Principe, Sudan, Uganda, Zaire, and Zambia - all of which are
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