Africa How Do You Spell Relief?

By Jill Smolowe.

The rhetoric was just what the world has come to expect of a United Nations forum. African officials spoke earnestly about the need for their continent's people to "pull themselves up by their own bootstraps." Western officials spoke approvingly of Africa's new maturity, its emerging can-do spirit. During the special five-day session of the General Assembly, representatives of both borrower and lender nations heralded an agenda to tackle Africa's Herculean economic, agricultural, ecological and growth problems. Even the Reagan Administration, often critical of what it sees as misguided African policies, joined in the cheering, speaking of a "stronger partnership with Africa based on shared ideals."

But when the moment for rhetorical flourishes had passed and the time came to map out a concrete strategy for the future, reality set in. The lenders clung tightly to their checkbooks and, pleading financial difficulties at home, asserted that the meeting was not meant to be a "pledging session." The borrowers, their request to increase development assistance by 130%, to $45 billion, and debt relief by at least $35 billion unmet, expressed disappointment. "What we hear is far from the concrete proposals we were expecting," said Niger's Ide Oumarou, secretary-general of the Organization of African Unity (OAU).

The divisive outcome was perhaps inevitable. Many of the African delegates had arrived anticipating the "tangible, measurable, manageable decisions" demanded by the forum chairman, President Abdou Diouf of Senegal. Western delegates, on the other hand, had expected a freewheeling discussion of medium- and long-term strategies that would have no bottom line. Ray Love of the U.S. Agency for International Development defined the session's goal as "a clear agreement between the Africans and the donors on the key problems and key priorities for investment."

Despite the differing expectations, there was a unanimous feeling that the session had come not a moment too soon. The images of starving Ethiopian children that first flashed across television screens more than a year ago continue to haunt and outrage people the world over. A wellspring of sympathy gave rise last year to Live Aid, the globally televised rock concert aimed at putting an end to famine, and last week to Sport Aid, a 78-country marathon to raise more funds.

For all the millions of dollars in relief assistance, Africa remains a continent near disaster. Besieged by natural calamities, civil wars, foreign debt of $175 billion and an explosive population growth that threatens to increase the continent's inhabitants from the present OAU count of more than 400 million to close to 2 billion by the year 2025, Africa faces a worsening nightmare. Almost a quarter of a century after most colonial powers lowered their flags for the last time in Africa, dreams of full independence have given way to hellish economic troubles.

The sub-Saharan countries, which account for almost 30% of the 159 member nations of the U.N., and the developed nations alike approached the General Assembly session in good faith. The U.N. took more than two years to decide to hold the meeting, which was the first ever devoted to one region's economic problems. Preparations got under way in January 1985 in Addis Ababa, the capital city of Ethiopia, where an OAU committee began to map out a "priority program" for the next five years. Donor nations, too, thought it was time to address the African crisis. "We are going into these negotiations with enthusiasm and real dedication," said Thomas Turqman, the U.S. State Department's chief of economic policy for international organizations. "We're frankly very optimistic that this is going to turn out to be very successful."

But the lenders, particularly the U.S., came armed with lessons in free- market economies, and not cash as the Africans had hoped. On Wednesday, Secretary of State George Shultz offered a sermon on American-style private enterprise, touting the U.S. development experience as "a useful guide to productive economic policies." The solution to Africa's ills, he said, depended on rejecting "now discredited orthodoxies about state-directed development and giving greater scope to individual initiative." It was not the message that the Africans sought, but it was the keynote address of the day.

On at least one point, both Shultz and African officials could agree: the time has come for reassigning economic priorities. In an unusual turn, African delegates, led by Diouf, openly criticized their countries' policies. The OAU report, the core of Africa's appeal for greater assistance, emphasized the poor performance of agriculture and called upon African nations to "take measures to strengthen incentive schemes, review public investment policies, improve economic management, including greater discipline and efficiency in the use of resources." Most notably for the Reagan Administration, the report also pledged that "the positive role of the private sector is to be encouraged."

The need for new initiatives is plain. Twenty years ago, most African countries were not only able to feed themselves but were net food exporters. This year Africa will need to import some 8.5 million tons of grain. Nigeria, for example, used to be the world's main exporter of palm oil, which it now has to import.

The agricultural disaster is the result of several factors, some of them beyond Africa's control. Drought, which at one point afflicted as many as 150 million people in 24 states and today continues to plague six countries, has caused severe soil erosion. In the Ethiopian highlands alone, some 2 billion cubic meters of soil washes down to lower-lying areas each year, leaving farmers with what one Ethiopian villager describes as "a harvest of dust." The Sahara desert has gained an estimated 251,000 sq. mi. in the past half- century, and it continues to push southward today at a rate of 27,000 sq. mi. per year. With population mushrooming at an annual rate of 3%, it is inevitable that arable plots will be overcultivated, leading to further rape of the land.

Nature's excesses have been compounded by disastrous agricultural policies. Some of the donors at last week's U.N. session suggested that Africa's woes are the result mainly of technological ignorance. Israel, for instance, offered to send technicians to Africa to repeat its own miracle of growing food in the Negev desert in the Sahara. By and large, however, African peasants are capable farmers. The problem is that politicians pay insufficient attention to agriculture, preferring to concentrate on more glamorous prestige projects. In addition, most African states provide little incentive to grow more food products. The state-set prices are kept low to please city residents, but in many areas they are not high enough to pay farmers for the cost of production. Unable to make a living on the land, farmers then join the exodus to cities, compounding the hunger problem.

Efforts to reverse the tide have generally been disappointing. Nigeria, for instance, has initiated a "Green Revolution" program to boost output, but the efforts have failed to mitigate the effects of an overvalued Nigerian currency, which makes it cheaper to import food than to grow it. One bright note: recent reforms that ban the import of basic commodities like rice have helped push up prices and stimulate local production.

Misconceived development projects have taken a toll. In the early days of independence, when such crops as cocoa, sugar and cotton were fetching good prices on the world market, many African leaders went on spending binges. Huge resources were plowed into high-rise buildings, international airports and factories. Today many of these projects, idled by a lack of raw materials or foreign currency or both, serve as a reminder of mismanagement, corruption or a leader's inflated ego. "The Africans are disingenuous when they blame most everything on the colonial powers," said Bob Geldof, the Irish rocker who organized both Live Aid and Sport Aid and attended last week's session. "Most of the (session's African delegates) are thugs, or represent thugs." He called the whole conference a farce.

So what is the answer? The variety of approaches suggested at the session hinted at the difficulties ahead. The Netherlands offered to cancel all payments on its loans to Africa for the next five years. Geldof embraced the idea, calling on others to provide short-term debt relief. The U.S. aims, in addition to sending $1 billion in bilateral aid to Africa, to divvy up $75 million in nonprogrammed funds to private recipients and governments that promote free enterprise. If the African delegates went home baffled and frustrated, it is understandable but not surprising. As President Diouf warned early in the conference, "Africa's problems are complex, so one cannot apply simple solutions." Perhaps not, but more attention to agricultural development and greater use of the private sector, as the Africans themselves have finally proposed, would be a good place to start.

With reporting by Patrick Moser/Nairobi and Wayne Svoboda/New York