By Gwynne Dyer, Contributor
GERMANS AND Japanese are less sensitive about race in general and about Africa in particular than, say, people in France or the United States, where a significant minority of the population is of African descent, but patronising attitudes about Africa are chronic in all the rich countries. Take, for instance, the current debate about increasing aid to African countries and cancelling their debts.
The leaders of the eight biggest developed countries will probably make a deal at next month's G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, that doubles aid to Africa and slashes the debts of its poorest countries. Prime Minister Tony Blair, this year's host, is determined to make Africa a priority, and Bob Geldof is seeking to repeat his success with the Live-Aid concerts 20 years ago by staging Live8 concerts. But what good will they actually do for Africa?
This is where the debate begins, and most people on both sides seem to see Africans as wayward children. Africans are just as intelligent and resourceful as other people, and if their countries are still poor it is because they face special and very intractable problems, but the argument in the rich countries takes almost no account of this.
It is a debate in which both sides essentially believe that Africans are childlike. One side assumes it openly: don't give them any more aid until they behave better. The other side is subtler: yes, they are backward, but now they have better leaders who won't steal the money.We give monkeys in the zoo more respect than that.
THE PROBLEM
Africa's problem isn't dishonesty or immaturity, which are fairly evenly spread around the planet. It is too many relatively small ethnic groups trying to share the same country. Social traditions that expect successful people to support even distant relations often make the situation worse, but no other continent has such extravagant ethnic diversity, so it's really up to Africans themselves to overcome the problem. The G8 can help, but only in limited ways.
Much of Africa's debt burden was not really aid in the first place, but money that the West (and the old Soviet Union) handed over to keep their African clients loyal during the Cold War, knowing full well that it would be stolen. A lot more was 'tied' aid that funded foolish mega-projects in order to create work for Western companies. So cancel the debt with no nonsense about the beneficiaries proving that they can behave "responsibly." And if you do give aid, give it without crippling "conditionalities."
This is where Africans really get treated like backward children, forced to privatise everything in sight in obedience to the fundamentalist market doctrines that now hold sway in most of the West (which, by the sheerest coincidence, creates new investment opportunities for Western companies).
Africa is not poor because Africans are more stupid or less honest than people elsewhere.
Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.
