The raging debate over China’s debt to Africa can be looked at by flipping the coin on the other side; must Africa be helped?
It now seems to be a contest on who has helped Africa most, using the most appropriate method. We are avoiding the question as to who has succeeded the most in making Africa self-dependent.
The debate seems to be lost in the fog of emotions, pseudo-truths and propaganda.
It has put Africa in the headlines, a continent rarely on the headlines except when there is a disaster or war.
Africa is now a darling of both the West and China.
The West says the debt is unsustainable; we say it’s the road to new colonialism or serfdom.
Why has Africa suddenly become the battleground for big economic powers? Can we try and ram through the fog of emotions and explain what’s going on?
One fact is clear - the reason why Africa is being contested for is no different from the Berlin conferences of the 19th century when the continent was shared among the then colonial powers.
Soft debt
They believed at the time that controlling more people and land masses meant more power and a bigger market for their goods.
Today, it’s no different. Does it surprise you that the key contestants on the Africa continent are America and China, the two world’s biggest economies?
In the past, the colonial powers had no problem fighting to get the colonies: South Africa came under British control after the Boer wars while France fought with Britain over Canada while French footprints remain in the French-speaking Quebec. They fought in 1763. Looking at the map of Canada, you can tell who won. The colonial powers in Africa and elsewhere got their trophies either by fighting each other or the natives of the land they colonised. Few places in the world were empty. One of the least talked about topics is what happened to the original owners of the land.
In some countries such as Kenya, we got back the land, but not our minds. The West still holds our minds, our thought processes. We seem to like it. Their grip is getting tighter as the younger generation gets more and more detached from our history. Is English your kids’ first language?
The contest today is far different from the gunboat diplomacy. The US or China are unlikely to dispatch their soldiers to the African continent. This is why foreign aid and debt are the preferred methods of entry into Africa.
Trade is even better but it is riddled with imbalance, with Africa selling raw materials and importing manufactured products. Let’s focus on aid today, often disguised as soft debt.
“Being helped” or aided strikes a chord with most of us. It is very hard to resist help. We are used to being helped. Paying school fees or even bringing up your relatives’ children is considered an honour. We buy lunch for each other. We help each other when times are hard from the cradle to grave. It starts even before birth.
“Baby showers” are not popular because planet Earth will get a new citizen; they are popular because of money raised or help given to the parents-to-be. In the past, newborn babies were a cause of celebration; mortality rates were high and every new member of the community was a big blessing and welcome. It was harder to perpetuate the human race.
The helping goes on through life. We celebrate the availability of free schooling, free healthcare, and any other services. We are annoyed by value added tax on petroleum products because it’s reducing our capacity to help or be helped.
We are even helped to get wives through wedding committees and funds raised. Even after death, help is not far. Neighbours, friends and relatives will join hands to help pay for your burial.
We even forget that taxation, if well structured, is a form of help. High earners ought to pay more tax to help the low-income earners and the unemployed. We can’t exempt those who do not pay taxes from using roads, sewerage or breathing the air that has been freshened by State forests.
Addicted to this help or better put, aid, the West came in after African countries became independent.
Master helper
They had to be helped and the colonial powers continued helping their former colonies.
The ‘help’ was at times physical such as building roads, rarely railways, schools, and other physical infrastructure. We still see plaques that commemorate this aid.
The other aid was softer like scholarships or sending helpers to work on the African continents as teachers or advisers.
The missionaries had come earlier and softened our minds to see helping as godly. We feel guilty if we don’t help. Never mind that economists have throughout this time spoken against helping. They say it interferes with free markets and reduces efficiency. They, however, also accept help where the markets fail.
And now comes China which has become the master helper, taking care of most of our needs, but there is a catch: you have to give up some freedoms, including at one time the number of kids to sire.
That, I find interesting. In Kenya and other African countries, no one should interfere with our freedom to sire kids and paradoxically, no one should interfere with our freedom to be helped!
China found a continent ripe for help. It has been helped since it was first occupied. The helpers even lightened the once-Dark Continent.
The Chinese have been more visible through roads. railways, houses, and some say, affordable electronics and other machinery.
Curiously, Chinese ‘soft’ help had not been as pronounced as the West’s. How many Chinese non-governmental organisations work in Kenya? The use of non-State actors made Africa more used to Western help or aid than China’s or Europe’s.
We have avoided the most important question: should Africa be helped?
We help relatives with the hope they would wean themselves off our help. Most eventually do. Africa has not. Maybe aid became addictive.
While mortality rates have gone down and longevity has gone up, Africa still has a disproportionate share of poverty despite help.
It seems that Africa’s relationship with the West and now China mimics a donkey cart. The cart must be pulled by a donkey. You can always replace the donkey (horses are rare and expensive) but either way, the cart is always behind and helpless without the donkey.
The donkey is either the West or China.
The cart is Africa, always following, being helped. Will China turn Africa into a donkey with its own power, or better yet, an engine which does not get tired? China talks of win-win cooperation.
New thinking
We should keep on asking why aid had not turned African countries into Asian Tigers or African lions like Singapore or South Korea. Why is Kenya not the Swahili Tiger?
Would abandoning Africa help Africa find her own engine to move?
That might call for new thinking, new pride in ourselves and self-reliance. How shall that happen when we don’t want to pay taxes and even when we do they are stolen by those responsible for them?
One of the tragedies of foreign aid or even debt has been its disappearance through the hands of those entrusted with it; the leaders who got into power either democratically or through the barrel of the gun. They steal the money to help their relatives or children. Help yet again!
Helping seems to be Africa’s soft underbelly.
Even in school, students no longer work hard because they expect to be helped to pass exams either through extra tuition, cheating or both.
This thinking is becoming an issue in the workplace; employees want to be paid more money for doing less, otherwise called ‘working smart.’
It seems the best help Africa could get is not aid or debt but helping her stop accepting help or aid.
The West and China should not be contesting on who had helped Africa most and how.
It should not be about debt or projects. It should be about who will be the first to help Africa stop getting help! Who will turn Africa from a cart into a donkey, or better yet, an engine?
Has the African Union set a date when African will be free from help? Do you remember when you got your first pay cheque and freed yourself from getting help from your parents?
I still recall mine. It had a magic number of Sh1,278. When will Africa be cured of its helplessness? The apparent stagnation of Africa despite its attraction to outsiders from Arabs to Romans can easily be explained by a local proverb from Prof JH Kimura: “Igitunywo mwana ni iikagirio mungu.”
To put it into context, traditionally, monkeys would pick a baby from the mother.
To get back the kid, you gave the monkey its delicacy, mungu which is part of a local crop that give us gourds.
It would pick its delicacy and leave the kid which is much more precious.
The West and China might be doing the same, taking the child as we pick mungu. The child is our resources and thinking.
The writer teaches at the University of Nairobi
xniraki@gmail.com
