In an interview on Africa through African Eyes

Your next choice is Dambisa Moyo’s Dead Aid, which again reflects the idea that the West is getting it wrong.

Yes. Dambisa Moyo, who was a student of mine at American University in Washington DC, represents a growing chorus of Africans who regard the Western foreign aid-driven development model – or the Washington consensus – to be an abysmal failure. More than $800bn in Western aid has been pumped into Africa since 1960, with little to show for it except a multitude of black elephants, show-airports amid institutional decay, and crumpled infrastructure. Moyo argues that foreign aid actually made Africans poorer by creating a dependency on aid, depreciating their pride and dignity, and preventing them from crafting their own development models. All aid to Africa should be halted in five years, she urges.

Do you agree with her?

I agree with her general theme that Western aid to Africa has worsened Africa’s condition, but not with her contention that it should be halted, and much less with her urging that Africa should look to China as a role model. Firstly, foreign aid has become a huge industry replete with its own lobbyists. I doubt if foreign aid can be stopped. Instead, we should try to improve its effectiveness. Secondly, Africa should look neither West nor East but inwards. China’s state capitalism model has been tried in Africa with disastrous consequences. More pertinently, the enthusiasm for China’s extensive forays into Africa in search of resources to feed its hungry industrial machine has now soured. I call China’s frenetic engagement with Africa “chopsticks mercantilism”. With chopsticks dexterity, it can pick platinum in Zimbabwe, bauxite in Guinea, oil in Sudan, timber in Gabon and so on. China is also engaged in a vast array of infrastructural projects across the continent.

Are Chinese investments in Africa not welcome?

To be sure, Chinese investments – in infrastructure in particular – should be welcome. But China’s tactics are downright reprehensible and objectionable. For one, the deals are on barter terms to China’s advantage. They are opaque, secured through bribery – building presidential palaces in Sudan and Zimbabwe and soccer stadiums in DR Congo, Guinea and Nigeria, and there is outright corruption. A Chinese firm, NuTech, was indicted in Namibia for [allegedly giving] kickbacks to officials in securing a contract for an airport security system. Also, China brings its own workers to work on contracts in Africa, generating little local employment. Thabo Mbeki, former president of South Africa, warned on Chinese investments in Africa of “a new form of colonialism”.

What do you mean when you say Africa should look within for culturally appropriate solutions? Why is culture important in development?

The basic reason why things went so wrong in Africa is because after independence, the leadership – with few exceptions – rejected their own cultural heritage, went abroad and copied all sorts of alien and unworkable systems to impose on their people. The continent is littered with the putrid carcasses of these failed imported systems. The most pernicious were the political and the economic systems. The post-colonial political systems were characterised by Sultanism, undemocratic one-party-state systems and “presidents for life”. The economic systems were marked by statism or dirigisme [heavy state interventionism] under-girded by socialism or Marxism. None of these systems can be justified or defended on the basis of African tradition.