Yesterday at the Rose Cafe, I had the chance to hear Professor Nicolas van de Walle of Cornell’s Department of Government speak about his experiences with Africa’s economy and dictatorship. There have been many efforts to further development in Africa, as many people (specifically  British and French colonists) believed the land had more potential for development than Asia or the Americas. For the most part, development in Africa was a problem of capital; the more that people believed was built in capital — schools, dams, etc. — development would grow, but this proved to be a slow process. Much of the money in the 1970s was spent on human capital — education and public health centers. This time proved to be productive for Africa, but this money was soon washed away with the oil crisis in the 1980s.

Many countries in Africa went bankrupt because of this and caused an era of structural adjustment. The main problem with why development would not work in Africa was placed on the corruption and bad government placed in many countries with dictatorships. V,an de Walle stated that some of the most successful countries in Africa (with the exception of Ethiopia) were successful because of their implementation of democracy. The government needs to be held accountable with its expenditures in order to be successful. Otherwise, with a dictatorship, the government and the country falls into disarray.

One of the topics van de Walle touched on was the concept of foreign aid and why he believed it didn’t work a lot of the time, especially for Africa. He shared his belief with us that the best way to help other countries without setting precedence or hurting the people is to not have military governments give money. He believes that with any country that has a power set in place, such as a dictator, for ten years or more should not be spoon-fed aid or given hand outs unless they have a part in a project that will benefit them. I see van de Walle’s point in this, that if an African country is in need of development and can provide  for half of the funds for a project to benefit the people, then we could provide aid. However, I feel that it is an obligation of the countries that have good relations with a country under dictatorship to help dig them out — not necessarily to spoon feed them, but give them the help they would not otherwise get from other powers.

I was glad to go to van de Walle’s talk because there is so little in the media talked about Africa and its economy, besides the images of starving children and the poor living there. I was surprised to hear that a good amount of countries in Africa are very well off, and that there are also Chinese immigrants settled in Africa in order to make a living. This gave me a good set of information about Africa I would not have otherwise heard from the media.