EXCHANGING MINDS: TO THE AFRICAN IN YOU

“The darkest thing about Africa has always been our ignorance of it.” George Kimbel

Five years remain for the United Nations to achieve a very ambitious set of goals they mapped
out ten years ago.

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), ratified in September 2000, aimed to slash by half
the percentage of people living in absolute poverty (under $1 per day), eliminate gender disparity
in all levels of education, and completely terminate the spread of HIV/AIDS and malaria, all by
2015.

These are only 3 of the UN’s 21 targets. But hey, anything is possible. So please stop rolling
your eyes at the UN. Please ignore their embarrassing track record and their inability to put their
foot down and their infinite capacity to disappoint. This time, like always, things are different.

For example, in his recent progress-report on the MDGs, economist Jeffrey Sachs, the Director
of the United Nations Millennium Project, made the heart-warming announcement that “A great
deal has been achieved, with some of the most exciting breakthroughs occurring in Africa.” Of
course, Dr. Sachs went on to actually disprove this very statement by listing reason after reason
and failure after failure to the contrary. This is not because he or the UN are not trying hard
enough. It is because they set goals that are hard to measure.

Directing our attention to Africa, Dr. Sachs lists six (excellent) reasons why the MDGs may not
be achieved there by the target date of 2015:

1. Less donations than promised from high-income countries.

2. Human-induced climate change.
3. Rampant population growth.
4. Excessive corruption, mostly engineered by relentless American, Asian, and European
companies whose talent for exploitation knows no limits.
5. Foreign traders closing their markets to African agricultural products.
6. Ignorance.

Ironically – as Dr. Sachs notes – not a single one of these set-backs to Africa’s prosperity has
much to do with Africa itself. For example, human-induced climate change is usually the nasty
byproduct of highly industrialized developed countries. Efforts at voluntary population control
and family planning are severely hindered by the no-birth-control policy of an extremely
influential Roman Catholic presence on the continent.

“Attaining these goals on a global scale may seem impossible,” as Sachs wrote in his 2008
book, Common Wealth, but maintains, rightly, that “there is nothing inherent in global politics,
technology, or the sheer availability of resources on the planet to prevent us from doing so.” So
what is preventing us?
We are told that we live in a zero-sum world, where in order for some countries to do relatively
well, others must not. However, the deterioration of African countries is no longer only relative
to the prosperity of richer countries. “Many of these countries are not just falling behind,” says
economist Robert Collier. “They are falling apart.”

Most economists and activists now agree that the problems within Africa can only be solved by
Africans. Our over-reliance on agencies like the UN not only destines us to disappointment, but
it distracts from the real problem and its accompanying solution.

Some experts reduce the issue to the language of poker, suggesting that Africa has a bad hand
because of its poor location and Flintstone-esque technology. But perhaps it is this very image of
an eroding Africa, painted elaborately by many politicians and “experts”, that has pushed
millions of intelligent and hopeful Africans to invest their energies not in developing their own
usually resource-rich country, but rather in escaping from it.

It is unacceptable for our leaders to take Africa no more seriously than a photo opportunity. It is
unacceptable for us to be stand by and watch our brave brothers and sisters trying desperately to
reverse the corruption and violence in their countries without doing something about it. It is
mostly unacceptable to forget where we all came from: Africa.