Many Westerners have a ‘begging bowl’ image of Africa and Africans, which reduces this vast, infinitely complex continent and its inhabitants to the image of a disempowered pauper desperate for hand-outs.
Yet the truth is that Africa has two thirds of the earth’s resources and the greatest diversity of peoples and cultures in the world. If Africa is this rich, why do many Africans live in poverty so extreme that it’s literally beyond most Westerners’ comprehension?
To understand poverty in Africa, we need to look at how the problem arose in the first place, and stop seeing the relationship between Africa and the rich world as one of victim and saviour.
Colonialism in Africa was larceny on a vast scale, setting up a rip-off system that still sees the majority of Africans being robbed of their birth-rights. Most sub-Saharan Africans essentially live in a state of serfdom. The anti-democratic nature of many African countries results in drastically inequitable access to basics like food, water, sanitation and healthcare: hence all the deaths from malnutrition and disease.
Political independence was gained in name during the 20th century, but economic imperialism and slavery carry on unabated, stultifying the potential of millions of Africans to prosper and resulting, directly, in their ongoing and worsening impoverishment: the average African income per capita is lower now than it was at the end of the 1960s, while life expectancy has plummeted from 60 to 42.
Take oil-rich Nigeria, for example. Shell have made $30 billion from Nigeria in the last few decades – yet not only are the Nigerian people poorer than ever (the number of Nigerians below the poverty line rose from 19 million in 1970 to 90 million in 2000), but they’ve also had to deal with severe pollution from oil pipelines and appalling political repression.
If the people of Nigeria had reaped the benefit of their own resources, the question of whether they should qualify for debt relief or increased aid wouldn’t need to be asked.
Similar stories are repeated over and over again across Africa: resources are stolen from ordinary citizens to line the pockets of ruling elites and swell the coffers of foreign corporations.
Critics in the West tend to blame corrupt African governments for the massive rip-off, and yes, this is a huge factor in African poverty. Yet these governments could not exist without the collusion of the rich world’s powers-that-be.
This collusion takes many forms. It is often extremely complex and surreptitious and its tracks can be hard to spot. Westerners who want to help stop the suffering in Africa need to examine how the activity of their own countries and corporations – as well as their own consumer behaviour – is perpetuating the poverty there.
For example, do you know whether the African materials and goods you buy – e.g. the minerals used in the manufacture of your computer – have come from fair trade, or been extorted by armed looters supported by western corporate interests?
Live 8 and the Make Poverty History campaign have yet again highlighted the huge desire on behalf of the rich world’s inhabitants to do what we can to stop poverty-related suffering in Africa.
But it’s becoming increasingly clear that what’s even more important than doing good things for the continent, is the need to understand, and to end, all the bad things we’re doing.
CONFLICT
As Irish people know only too well, internecine violence is a legacy of colonialism. In the last two decades there have been 24 major conflicts in sub-Saharan Africa. During the first few years of this decade, 13 of Africa’s 52 countries were engaged in some form of civil war. Most wars in Africa today are resources-driven.
The scale of the violence is mind-boggling. A terrible war, for instance, took place in the extraordinarily resources-rich Democratic Republic of the Congo, when between 1998 and 2002, 3.5 million people died from violence and war-related starvation and disease.
The G8 repeatedly urge an end to conflict in Africa, yet the fact is that the G8 countries are responsible for 80% of weapon sales into Africa. The rich world has a huge vested interest in ongoing conflict in Africa.
AID
While thousands of on-the-ground, life-saving projects across Africa are funded by Western aid, a huge proportion of the money donated is wasted through bureaucracy and state theft.
A major criticism of the West’s focus on increasing aid to Africa is that it will fail to usher in the fundamental changes required in African political-economic structures and the continent’s economic relationship with the rest of the world.
By some estimates Africa has already received $500 billion in aid, so legitimate questions have to be asked about how effective another windfall can be.
Some critics argue that, as aid has increased, Africa has sunk deeper into poverty. They say that far from providing a bridge to prosperity, aid has actually helped to impoverish Africa and given it an in-built dependency culture.
The danger is that more aid will assist in further corrupting governments already doing a great deal of harm to their citizens, promoting bad policies and undermining democracy.
By supporting existing elites, aid may have the knock-on effect of undermining real reform. Another important consideration is that western aid often comes with self-interested, profit-making strings attached.
TRADE
Many experts believe that establishing fair trade is the single most important thing the G8 leaders could do to help Africa grow its way out of poverty.
Sub-Saharan Africa’s share in world trade has dropped from 6% in the 1980s to just 2% now.
Raising that share by just a single percentage point would give Africa an extra $70 billion in export earnings: more than can be delivered by aid and debt relief combined.
To turn back the poverty tide in Africa there must be an end to the West’s unfair trading regimes. There must also be a removal of the tariffs put on African manufactured goods entering the ‘first’ world and the agricultural tariffs that push down the world price of food and squeeze out African producers. The fact that rich countries spend €250 billion a year on agricultural subsidies dramatically undercuts prices for African farmers.
Since 90% of the sub-Sahara African population lives in rural areas, economic empowerment in the agricultural sector is absolutely vital for poverty in the continent to be effectively tackled.
African farmers alone could help the continent trade its way out of poverty – but that would put them in direct competition with our own farmers. The key question is: are we willing to take the hit?

* With thanks to Andy Storey, lecturer in development economics, UCD.