Tag Archives: Millennium Development Goals

Karen Rothmyer insight on “Afro-optimism”, gloom and the media

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Karen Rothmyer writes her latest insightful dispatch from Nairobi in the current issue of The Nation, discussing perceptions of the dire state of Africa surrounding the reporting on the status of the Millennium Development Goals against the recent Sala-i-Martin and Pinkovskiy study concluding that there is significant progress in poverty reduction.

Sitting here in Kenya, I find it hard to believe that the situation is really as grim as portrayed by the UN, the World Bank and most of the NGO crowd. OK, maybe the rapid growth of Nairobi shopping malls, complete with fake waterfalls and expensive dress shops, is mainly a middle-class phenomenon. But whenever I travel in the countryside I am equally struck by the fact that so many rural women sport stylish braids or other hair designs—a far cry from the simple head scarves of forty years ago.

So I was very excited a couple of months ago when I read a Reuters story about a new study by two academics, Xavier Sala-i-Martin, a Catalan economist who teaches at Columbia, and Maxim Pinkovskiy, an MIT doctoral student, titled “African Poverty Is Falling… Much Faster Than You Think!” In the paper, published under the auspices of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER, the sober outfit that decrees when recessions have begun and ended), the two argue that “the conventional wisdom that Africa is not reducing poverty is wrong…. In fact, since 1995, African poverty has been falling steadily.” The reductions have occurred, Sala-i-Martin and Pinkovskiy report, in all types of countries and all regions. Moreover, economic growth hasn’t benefited only the elites; inequality within countries has declined throughout the continent.

For several days after reading the Reuters piece, I checked the Internet to see how other major news organizations, especially those in the United States and Britain, would follow Reuters’s lead. Given the media’s appetite for provocative news from the world of science and health—whether on how fast the polar ice caps are melting or the value of drinking a glass of wine a day—I assumed that sooner or later everyone would want to report on this latest case of man-bites-dog. But apart from mentions in a couple of blogs and one piece in the Guardian, there was hardly a squeak. (I did find some earlier references to a possible fall in African poverty, but none so definitive or high-profile as the Sala-i-Martin and Pinkovskiy paper.)

Karen is a very perceptive observer from a long career as a reporter, and writes with a degree of care and understatement that may also reflect her experience as an editor and journalism teacher. She has a frame of reference in Kenya that goes back to the Peace Corp and she always seems to know who to talk to, so I give her thoughts on these things great weight.

Part of what is going on here really is the basic problem that too much of the information that we hear about Africa is generated through or at least influenced by a thick filter of self-interest, if nothing other than that of people looking out for their own perceived career circumstances. It’s not as if that is not the case in whatever policy area domestically in “the West”, but it may be harder to spot in regard to the state of economies in Africa.

Another factor, at least for people like me in the U.S., is the realization that most of us are relatively oblivious and complacent–so those of us who have experienced a bit of Africa do tend to want to whack people over the head a bit in hopes of generating just a bit of interest or awareness.

“Africa’s Role in a Post-G8 World”–Chatam House Report for Event in London today

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Excerpts from a new Chatam House report with a strong call for a fresh approach to Africa from “the West”:

A strong diplomatic and trade engagement with Africa matters. Africa is the foundation of the global supply chain – a strategic source of almost 40 per cent of the raw materials, agriculture, fresh water and energy essential for global growth. Its rainforests play a central role in the planet’s climate. Its population of one billion are increasingly important consumers. Africa is strategically placed between time zones, continents and hemispheres. However, the overwhelmingly humanitarian interest of many Western countries and traditional partners has led to stereotyped perceptions of Africa in terms only of problems. These views are increasingly patronizing, recursive, out of touch, and a deterrent to serious business interest. Meanwhile the emerging economic powers of the G20 see Africa in terms of opportunities – as a place in which to invest, gain market share and win access to resources.
. . . . 
Development assistance has played, and will continue to play, an important role for many African countries, but economic fortunes across the continent are now diverging. This makes it less meaningful to treat Africa as a single entity in international economic negotiations. 
. . . .
Africa has never been in such a strong bargaining position in international affairs, with increasing numbers of suitors. However, African leadership is at present insufficient and the activism and vision that characterized the first few years of the twenty-first century are less in evidence now. This is dangerous because without strong, effective leadership the competition for Africa’s resources may degenerate into the kind of colonial exploitative scramble from which much of the continent has only recently begun to recover. Governance institutions in general – from national governments to regional bodies and the African Union itself – are stronger than they were, but they need to be far stronger still. 
. . . . 
Aid is a very necessary safety net, but it is not a springboard. It will ultimately deliver the development Africa needs only if it is used in support of private-sector-led growth and stability. Emerging economies are capitalizing on this. Western countries ought to benefit too; indeed it should be a strategic imperative for them. Yet thus far there is insufficient evidence that they recognize this. Most Western countries still enjoy a comparative, if diminishing, advantage over emerging powers in policy and academic understanding of Africa. Yet resources and expertise on Africa have been allowed to wither in Western governments, academia and the news media. The advantages many former colonial powers enjoyed in terms of expertise, trade links and cultural affinity are now far fewer than many policy-makers assume. Beneath the rhetoric of the importance of Africa, diplomatic and trade resources devoted to it are still being cut in many Western capitals, leading to a downward spiral of ignorance and thus marginalization in strategic awareness. Reversing this trend will require time and investment, but the rewards should be considerable. The financial crisis challenged Western claims about the superiority of the democratic and free market model. Western countries should welcome the opportunity to demonstrate the advantages, dynamism and resilience of their economies and governance systems, and export them to Africa for common benefit, in an increasingly mpetitive multipolar world. 

One Recent Study: “African Poverty is Falling…Much Faster than You Think!”

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A recent study by Maxim Pinkovskiy of M.I.T. and Xavier Sala-i-Martin of Columbia:

Our results show that the conventional wisdom that Africa is not reducing poverty is wrong. In fact, since 1995, African poverty has been falling steadily. Moreover, contrary to the commonly held idea that African growth is largely based on natural resources and helps only the rich and well‐connected, we show that Africa’s income distribution has become less rather than more unequal than it was in 1995, and therefore, that a great deal of this growth has accrued to the poor.
. . . .
Not only has poverty fallen in Africa as a whole, but this decline has been remarkably general across types of countries that the literature suggests should have different growth
performances. In particular, poverty fell for both landlocked as well as coastal countries; for mineral‐rich as well as mineral‐poor countries; for countries with favorable or with unfavorable agriculture; for countries regardless of colonial origin; and for countries with below‐ or above median slave exports per capita during the African slave trade.3 Hence, the substantial decline in poverty is not driven by any particular country or set of countries.