The Bleeding Continent: How Africa Became Impoverished and Why It Remains Poor

By Venatius Chukwudum Oforka

This book tells the story of the sorry state of Africa. Although it acknowledges how Europe especially initiated and has surreptitiously maintained the ongoing predation on and the impoverishment of Africa, its major attention is on Africas self-betrayal, how Africas political leaders and elites have contributed in the present predicament of Africa. Beginning from the dishonourably sadistic roles some of the kings, chiefs, and elites of Africa played during the slave trade era to the predatory systems of governance many of their political leaders adopted after decolonisation and have maintained to date, this book x-rays the internal factors that are also responsible for the poverty of Africa. The author argues passionately, consequently, that only Africa can help Africa, not foreign aid or any external intervention. He stresses that unless the cannibalistic system of governance in many African states are reformed and systems that can stimulate and sustain economic growth adopted, the disappearance of Africa is imminent.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 11, 2015
• ISBN: 9781514429723

Venatius Chukwudum Oforka

Venatius Chukwudum Oforka comes from the town of Isiokpo in Ideato Local Government Area of Imo State, Nigeria. He holds bachelor’s degrees in philosophy and theology from Urban University Rome and master’s degrees in the same areas of study from Imo State University and the University of Lampeter, Wales, respectively. He did his doctoral studies in moral theology in the University of Tübingen, Germany.

Book preview

Copyright © 2015 by Venatius Chukwudum Oforka.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 04/29/2016

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

723063

Contents

Foreword

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1 The Colour Of Africa’s Poverty And Backwardness

Defining the Poverty of Africa

Africa’s Economic Morass

Food Crises in Africa

The Crisis of AIDS in Africa

The Drought of Health Care Services in Africa

The Poor State of Education: Africa’s Hollow Future

A Dismal Report

2 Theories Of The Poverty And Backwardness Of Africa

2.1 Theories Of The Poverty And Backwardness Of Africa: The Theory Of The Curse Of Ham

Hatching the Aetiology for the Enslavement of Black Africa

From Myth to Reality

Dismantling the Lies of Many Centuries

2.2 Theories Of The Poverty And Backwardness Of Africa: The Geography And The Culture Hypotheses

The Geography Hypothesis

Climate and the Inhabitants of a Geographical Environment

Climate and the Environment

Assessing the Geography Hypothesis

The Culture Hypothesis

2.3 Theories Of The Poverty And Backwardness Of Africa: The Slave Trade Factor

The First Phase of Self-Betrayal

The Demographic Effects of the Slave Trade on Africa

The Economic Effects of the Slave Trade on Africa

The Socio-political Effects of the Slave Trade on Africa

A Shared Infamy

2.4 Theories Of The Poverty And Backwardness Of Africa: The Plunder Of Colonialism

The Berlin Abattoir

The Rending Apart of a Continent

The Showdown of the Den Gun and the Maxim Gun

A Bleeding Continent

An Emasculated Continent

In Spite of Colonialism

The Ethiopian Question

The Cases of Countries that Broke through the Mould of Colonialism

Treasure in Crucible

Being Fair to History

3 Decolonisation And Shattered Dreams: The Second Phase Of Self-Betrayal

The Big Dream

Dashed Hopes

Inheriting the Colonial Mould

Bogus Leaders and Power Mongers

The Second Self-Betrayal

4 Struggling With Democratisation

Riding on the Wings of the Wind

Democratisation in Francophone Countries

Congo People’s Republic

Togo

The Republic of Gabon

People’s Republic of Mali

Democratisation in Anglophone Countries

Malawi

Uganda

Nigeria

Ghana (The Gold Coast)

Democratisation in Belgian Colonies

Republic of the Congo

Democratisation in Colonial Portuguese Territories

Mozambique

Angola

5 Struggling With Democratisation: Matters Arising

The Effects of the One-Party System on the Development of Africa

Repudiation of Mandela’s Patriotism

Celebration of Mugabe’s Paranoia

The Idea of True Democracy

Not Really Lack of Democracy but Political Apathy and Cannibalism

Lessons from the East

Telling the Tale of Africa

6 The Malady Of Socio-Political Instability

Aftermaths of the Colonial Chess Game on African Stability

The Cold War Antics and African Instability

Western Economic Interests and African Instability

Alibi Not Enough

Political Prodigality of Africa’s Political Elites

A Roll Call of the Perfidy of Military Putsches and Rules in Sub-Saharan Africa

7 Restless Swords: Wars And Conflicts In Sub-Saharan Africa Since The Postcolonial Period

The Nigeria-Biafra Thirty-Month Civil War

The Rwandan Genocide and the Great Lake Wars

Wars in the Sudan, Somalia, and the Horn of Africa

The Liberian Massacre and the Sierra Leonean War

The Rolling Stone

8 The Unforgivable Sin: The Culture Of Economic Squandermania

The State of African Economy after Independence

African Leaders and the Decline of the African Economy

International Interventions and the Squandermania of African Leaders

The Rampaging Dinosaurs

Appraising the Performance of the IMF

9 Dancing Nude At The Market Square: The Monster Of Corruption And Africa’s Poverty

The Menace of Corruption in Africa

Bribery: The Unholy Ally of Corruption

Self-Inflicted Malady: The Costs of Misrule and Corruption on African Countries

Crippling Effects on the Economy

Moral Bankruptcy

Health Issues

Environmental Crisis

Brain Drain

Humiliating Migrations

10 Whispers Of Hope?

Only Africa Can Help Africa

Socio-political Reform: The Hard and Only Way

A Case against Foreign Aid and the Promises of Socio-Political Reform

Though Challenging, Not Impossible

Overcoming Poverty with or without the Government

Community Development

The Role of the Christian Body

Reversing Brain Drain to Reign of Patriotism

Conclusion

Bibliography

Periodicals, Archival Sources and Other Documents

Electronic Sources

Endnotes

About the Author

For dependable, selfless and beloved friends Günter Schmider and his daughter, Julia.

Foreword

There are many poverty-stricken individuals in our world today. Many are confined within a poverty trap, a situation implying lack of hope or inability to escape poverty. This ugly phenomenon has accompanied humanity through its history, although every generation has its peculiar experiences about the brutality of poverty. What is bewildering in the structural development of human societies is the persistence of this pest with the different challenges it poses to every age. Even in this twenty-first century, in spite of the political, economic, industrial, and technological advancements, poverty has remained a seemingly insurmountable problem to humanity. Considering the enormity of woes transmitted by this bane, poverty could count as one of the greatest enemies of the human being and dignity. Poverty humiliates and draws its victims to misery and sometimes to death. It destroys physically and psychologically and practically hampers many aspects of human development.

Poverty does not just mean the lack of financial or material means of living. Poverty has many faces. It could be economic, socio-political, cultural, intellectual, religious, or ethical. Norbert Mette once tried to describe these many faces of poverty by equating them with suffering, which (from various perspectives) challenges the modern man: the poor faces who are suffering because of inflation caused by foreign debts; the hungry faces caused by social injustice; the disillusioned faces caused by unfulfilled promises of politicians; the humiliated faces arising from the denial of their rights and cultural integrity; the suffering faces as a result of aggression and intimidation; the suffering faces of children who are living in fear, out of school, roaming the streets, feeding from slums, and sleeping under the bridges; the suffering faces of women who are regularly humiliated, marginalised and socially disadvantaged; the tired and depressed faces of migrants because they cannot find an abode worthy for the human being; and the unsatisfied and worn-out faces of workers who labour immensely but can hardly sustain their existence with their very little earnings (‘Option für die Armen—Lernschritte zur Umkehr: Theologische Orientierungen und sozialpastorale Perspektiven im Kontext einer Wohlstandsgesellschaft,’ in: Arbeiterfragen 2/93, Herzogenrath, 1993, 8). Indeed, these many suffering faces reflect the poverty nuisance in many parts of the world.

The intensity of this scourge in the African continent (especially in the sub-Sahara) aptly justifies our author’s description of Africa with the diction ‘the bleeding continent.’ Decadence in Africa has become a plague. Obviously, all societies are not the same. Some have relative poverty, while others are weighed down by a more biting form of inhuman living—the absolute poverty. This means that the greater percentage of its citizens live under the absolute existence minimum. In effect, most Africans seem to have remained perpetual victims to this blight. This is baffling because Africa ‘is a continent, which possesses extraordinary human resources. Currently, its population is rated at a total of a trillion citizens, and its birth-rate is the highest in the world today. Africa is in a land with enormous riches for human living, but this life is unfortunately characterised with serious poverty, and is suffering under heavy injustices’ (Benedict XVI, ‘Speech before the Angelus on 4 October 2009’, in: L’osservatore Romano, 39, Nr. 41-9, October 2009). In reality, the enormity of Africa’s natural wealth and resources makes Oforka’s question pertinent: Why has Africa remained poor?

His research into this question has illuminated many colours and theories about the (self and foreign) impoverishment of Africa. The extent of the backwardness of Africa shows itself in her continued economic decline, food and water crises, persistence of diseases like malaria and AIDS, general disaster in its health services, inadequacy of educational possibilities, and crippled societal advancement. The causes of this backwardness can be identified from many perspectives; apart from the natural destiny of Africa’s geographical environment, climate, and culture, Oforka mentions the demographic and socio-economic effects of the slave trade, which, as it were, vandalised the African self-consciousness and identity. He again considers the atrocities of colonialism, as well as the antics of the Cold War, which contributed immensely in emasculating the African continent. With these plunders from without, things fell apart in Africa (Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart, London: Heinemann, 1958) and hitherto are no longer at ease (Achebe, No Longer at Ease, London: Heinemann, 1960).

The more hideous factor, however, that has impoverished and kept Africa in the state of poverty is identified by Oforka as coming from within. The dreams and hopes of Africans of decolonisation and the freedom of African states seem to have been shattered when some bogus leaders and power mongers showed the signs of having inherited the mould of colonialism. While we acknowledge with respect Africa’s struggles towards democratising her homeland—segmented as colonial territories—we cannot undermine the depth of indigenous political cannibalism being meted out by the so-called bogus leaders and unpatriotic power mongers. Much harm has been perpetrated against this continent, which has, in turn, instituted an ongoing structure of poverty in Africa. On the one hand, we are aware of the exploitative economic and political interest of the West and how it influences African instability, which is one of the reasons for Africa’s poverty; on the other hand, we cannot deny the lack of patriotism and the economic and political prodigality of some African elites. Also, the evil of military rules and recurring military putsches in most African countries have not helped matters. Tribalism, nepotism, and brutal wars and endemic conflicts in many parts of Africa hamper growth. Power mongering and the massacre of political governance are a thorn in the flesh of the African societies. Economic banditry, bribery and corruption, as well as squandering of public funds, have assumed the status of a culture. Are we still in search of the reasons why Africa has remained poor?

One must admit that it no longer pays to fold hands and lament the woes of the African political history and destiny. No doubt, the slave trade, colonialism and foreign magnetism remain unfortunate and may be contributive to the ongoing poverty and African demeanour, but the upheavals are today not insurmountable. It only needs the political will (of the African nations and their leaders, elites, and citizens with a determined spirit of patriotism) to reform. While we expect the unfair protectionist economic politics of the industrialised nations to be redressed, we call on Africans themselves to place all hands on deck, make reforms, and seek ways out of this quagmire. In Oforka’s words, ‘only Africa can help Africa’. The ‘manna’ from outside cannot avert poverty. It can only foster dependency, which has led Africans to the stance of ‘brain drain’. Most of Africa’s ‘good heads’ are lured abroad. Also, it is crazy to see that African citizens prefer chemicalised bottled or canned fruit juice imported from Europe or America or even from China over the abundant natural exotic fruits from the African soil. Educating all (especially the young) about patriotism can redress the ugly brain drain.

In effect, Africa must minimise the ‘manna’ and expectations from outside and concentrate more on internal capabilities. It must abate or downsize its level of ‘foreign determination’ and learn to take its destiny in its hands. African leaders must wake up. Nelson Mandela is an example. Also, non-governmental organisations can help in alleviating poverty by taking developmental initiatives. Africa must embrace the challenges of democratisation and opt for good governance and political stability. This will improve its cultural, socio-political, and health services and reduce its local crises, as well as the upsurge of humiliating migrations as we experience today. (In the past, Africans were forcefully smuggled into slavery; today, Africans deliberately smuggle themselves into slavery.) Above all, corruption is a cankerworm that has eaten deep into the fabrics of the African states. Aid from outside cannot be the solution to African poverty. Corrupt structures, which cannot manage internally generated resources, will also squander available foreign aids. The ‘culture of corruption’ must be combated and eschewed. The way out is to embark on serious socio-political reforms. This book sees such a move as a sine qua non for Africa. With earnest and patriotic socio-political reforms, this ‘bleeding continent’ can turn into a ‘breeding continent’.

Dr. Dr. Emeka Vernantius Ndukaihe

Associate in the professorial chair for Theological/Social/Intercultural Ethics, University of Passau, Germany

Acknowledgements

This book is a child of many discussions with a friend, Günter Schmider, about the speedy rise of Germany from the state of complete destruction following its experience in World War II to a highly prosperous country, in contrast with the continued decline of Africa (especially sub-Saharan Africa) sociopolitically and economically, resulting today in the continent being trapped in poverty. These discussions were like a catalyst that sets this investigation of why and how Africa has been poor and remains impoverished. I express my gratitude to Günter for this major contribution.

I equally appreciate the invaluable support and encouragement of E. E. Gabriel. I also thank Dr. Dr. Emeka Vernantius Ndukaihe for accepting to write the foreword to this book, in spite of his tight schedule. I am also grateful to Dr. Philip Omenukwa, Maurice Emelu, and Angelo Unegbu for proofreading the manuscript and offering their critical suggestions. I appreciate equally the contributions of Juliana Oforka, whose experiences in economic and financial matters were very useful in this work. I thank also my copy editor, Amanda Kay, for a very good job. I also appreciate the Xlibris team for its dependable services.

I extend my gratitude equally to Vincent Duru and Chidiebere Oforka for their contributions. I unreservedly appreciate the supports of the entire members of my family; my emeritus bishop, Dr. Gregory Ochiagha; and my incumbent bishop, Dr. Augustine Ukwuoma. I thank also many other friends who, directly or indirectly, contributed to the success of this book: Augustine Oppon-Tabiri, Moses Nwosu, Roswitta Kammerer, Rudolf Frosch, Dr. Titus Offor, Dr. Radu Thuma, Claudia Madeja-Stöhr, Lotachi Asiegbu, Lydia Schmidt, Pius Adiele, Wolfgang Dunz, Dr. Remigius Orjiukwu, Roland Hummler, Maurice Chukwukere, Celsius Offor, Markus and Margot Mattedi, Francis Ezinwa, Dr. Dieter Eckmann, John Ekwunife and Cyriacus Uzochukwu.

Introduction

The state of Africa is a sad story. It only inspires pain and sorrow. The continent is presently lying pathetic in a heap of poverty and backwardness.¹ About half of the people living in this continent barely know what it means, even in the twenty-first century, to have a decent human living. In Paul Collier’s expression, they co-exist with the twenty-first century, but their reality is the fourteenth century. The gap between Africa and other parts of the world is depressingly too wide. Scholars and experts describe the poverty in this part of the globe today as extreme, that is to say, they cannot be poorer.

This ugly scenario means that a good number of Africans are just scratching to survive—still at the stage of food gathering. They do not experience the benefits of the technological advancements of our modern world. They lack the basic necessities of life: access to good housing, health care services, water, electricity, access to education or quality education, and security of life and property. Above all, millions of them are hungry.

The situation has reached such a crisis that today many Africans take perilous choices as their only means of escape from this ugly condition. Thousands perish yearly in either the Sahara Desert or the Mediterranean Sea in an attempt to enter Europe. Some resort to drug trafficking and engaging in some other crimes as a means of overcoming the African predicament. Consequently, thousands are incarcerated in various prisons in different parts of the world.

Every year, thousands of Africans—professionals and non-professionals—migrate abroad as a way of containing the tide of poverty in Africa. Yet many of these African immigrants, especially non-professionals, are but into modern forms of slavery overseas. They endure many dehumanising conditions to remain abroad, while some are practically trapped and cannot even transport themselves back home. Africa’s human resources, as during the period of slave trade and colonialism, benefit the economy of other continents while its own economy continues to plummet. Today this continent is deeply trapped in poverty.

The Bleeding Continent confronts the nagging questions: What is the truth behind the African plight? Why is Africa this poor and backward? Why are many countries in Africa, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, nearly alike in terms of poverty and backwardness? Why has the tale of Africa always remained a tale of woe? What accounts for the principle of diversification that makes Africa different from other parts of the world? Who or what is responsible for this unsavoury condition? Is the African fate a fatalistic given or a human fabrication? What could be done to pull Africa from the trap of poverty and set it on the track of economic prosperity?

The Bleeding Continent simply tells the doleful story of Africa. It tells the story of a continent that has been bleeding for nearly two millennia. It tells the painful story of how Africa became poor and how this condition of poverty has been sustained. Different theories have been sponsored to explain the fate of Africa today: the religion-backed theory of the curse of Ham, the geography and climate hypotheses, the culture hypothesis, etc. This book debunks these theories as false diagnoses of the African condition and tells the story of centuries of vicious trade in human wares; destabilising, exploitative and impoverishing colonialism; and virulent Cold War antics. It also assesses their relationship with the ongoing socio-economic and political haemorrhage in Africa today.

The Bleeding Continent perceives these external factors, which have, no doubt, unleashed the dialectics of poverty in Africa, nonetheless, as orbital causes of the poverty of Africa today. Its main attention is on the internal predation, which has been going on in this continent for many centuries now. This is a truth that Africa must be ready to tell itself, the truth of how it has contributed in impoverishing itself and how it has sustained this impoverishment.

The role of some African kings, chiefs and merchants in both the Saharan/Mediterranean slave trade and the Atlantic slave trade began the story of this self-betrayal. The persistent banditry of the African political elites after decolonisation continued the self-betrayal and used the critical juncture provided by colonialism to viciously dismantle Africa both politically and socio-economically. This is the main thrust of The Bleeding Continent. The choice of political institutions and the activities of political leaders in Africa seem to have combined with external predatory factors and a few adverse natural causes to make the fate of Africa appear fatalistic and inexorable. The story of Africa shows that the plunder that officially began with the Arab slave trade in the seventh century AD in Africa has continued unabated to the present day.

The Bleeding Continent examines the political structures of different sub-Saharan African states and the activities of different political leaders since independence to justify the claim that most of the African leaders inherited, adopted and intensified extractive socio-political institutions. Subsequently, this political situation afforded the political elites a favourable climate to avidly prey on both the states and the citizens, thereby aggravating the impoverishment of the continent initiated by Arabian and Western interlopers. The local political elites practically recolonised the states of Africa, when the colonial powers appeared to have receded, and have continued relentlessly the colonial politico-economic pillaging of these states.

The Bleeding Continent argues consequently that the solution for the poverty of Africa lies within Africa and not outside Africa. It contends in strong terms that it is self-deceptive to think that the solution for the problems of Africa can come from without. This would be an illusion because, first, there is no convincing ground to believe that the West especially wants to help Africa overcome its poverty challenges and backwardness, which they initiated. Second, even if external agents are genuine in the interventions to help Africa overcome its fate, they cannot achieve this goal without basic good socio-political institutions and economic policies. These factors can only be provided locally.

This book takes a strong stance against aid as the answer to Africa’s problem. No amount of external financial aid, against the conviction of some Western scholars like Jeffrey Sachs, can liberate Africa from the poverty trap with the existing political intents and institutions in many African states. Aid encourages corruption and laziness and compounds the problem of Africa. What Africa needs is not aid but urgent socio-political reform as the first key to a successful struggle for economic liberation. Africa is not as poor as it is being presented. It does not lack even experts who can provide smart economic policies to pull it out of poverty. Its leaders only need to rid themselves of greed, corruption, and self-interest.

The Bleeding Continent provides series of arguments backed with politico-historical realities to contend that the solution of Africa’s unfortunate fate must begin with a socio-political reform. This will in turn introduce institutions that can support economic growth for the state at large and jettison extractive institutions that have continued to impoverish both the states and the masses in many African countries. Political economy confirms that politics has primacy over economics. This means that political institutions define and limit the scope of economic policy. Wrong political institutions will necessarily yield unsuccessful economic institutions and policies. This is why political reform is paramount in dealing with the state of Africa today. Such a socio-political reform needs unconditionally the discipline that only the rule of law can offer. The state of this populous continent today is not an inexorable fate but a product of human action. It can also be undone through human action.

1

The Colour Of Africa’s Poverty And Backwardness

In Africa, the high aspirations following colonial independence have been largely unfulfilled. Instead, the continent plunges deeper into misery, as incomes fall and standards of living decline. The hard-won improvements in life expectancy gained in the past few decades have begun to reverse. While the scourge of AIDS is the centre of this decline, poverty is also a killer.²

—Joseph Stiglitz

Defining the Poverty of Africa

Africa, especially sub-Saharan Africa (the land of the black people of the world), has continued to experience a steady downward movement in the poverty index. There has been so much suffering in this part of the globe, where people find it difficult to take care of their basic needs. When compared with other parts of the world, they seem to be centuries behind. The rate of poverty and backwardness in this part of the continent is simply high. Poverty in sub-Saharan Africa means managing to hang on the fringe of existence. Life for sub-Saharan Africans is a completely painful struggle without respite or the hope of a better future in sight. Recent studies have described the poverty of this people as ‘extreme’. This means Africa has descended to the lowest rung of poverty calibration that humans can ever experience and cannot become poorer.

According to Jeffrey Sachs, extreme poverty exists when families are unable to meet basic needs for survival. This means they are chronically hungry, cannot access health care services and lack the amenities of safe drinking water and sanitation. They cannot afford education for some or all of their children and also lack rudimentary shelter, clothing, shoes, etc.³

The World Bank has a benchmark for measuring the poverty rate. It uses the income of $1 per day per person, measured at purchasing power parity, to determine those who live in extreme poverty. It uses, in the same way, $2 per day to measure moderate poverty. With this grading, it is estimated that half of Africa’s population lives in extreme poverty. Specifying this, Stanley Igwe notes: ‘Aside South Africa (and, of course, Botswana) and the Arab countries to the North, the average African makes $1,000 a year while the worldwide average is over $6,500.’⁴

Poverty is, however, not simply lack of money, as Amartya Sen argues. It is not having the capability to realise one’s full potential as a human being.⁵ Roel van der Veen criticises accordingly the use of the benchmark of $1 to measure poverty as a very crude measure, which becomes less useful when local circumstances are studied in more detail. He argues that the purchasing power of the dollar is not the same everywhere. For instance, what an individual can buy with $1 can vary quite widely within a country or even within a small area. An income of $1 a day might make you much poorer or richer in one place than in another. Nonetheless, he accepts the $1 measure on the ground that it was often taken because of its simplicity, since it was a quick way of gaining an impression of the poverty situation. He provides, nevertheless, another way of seeing poverty—poverty not just as low income but also as inadequate control over productive facilities, lack of political influence, and poor access to services, such as health care, education, water, and sanitation. According to him, other components frequently added were lack of information and insufficient awareness that public services were available. He argues that this was a form of social marginalisation or exclusion, which was closely linked to poverty and threatened people’s self-reliance and independence.⁶

Banerjee and Duflo assent to Veen’s explanation of what poverty really entails: ‘Living on 99 cents a day means you have limited access to information—newspapers, television, and books all cost money—and so you often just don’t know certain facts that the rest of the world takes as given, like, for example, that vaccines can stop your child from getting measles. It means living in a world whose institutions are not built for someone like you.’⁷ This further description of poverty by Veen and Banerjee and Duflo perfects the painting of a model of Africa’s poverty by unveiling its multi-facetedness and extremity.

Poverty used to be a common experience of the entire humanity until the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It was at this period that mass production and consumption emerged, first in North America and then in Europe. After World War II, these innovations spread to some non-Western countries. In the current globalisation, the percentage of the world’s people living in extreme poverty (on less than $1 a day) has continued to drop. From 30 per cent in 1990, it fell to 23 per cent by 2000. This change in world’s economic history has influenced, on the average, people’s lives positively all over the world and in every continent except Africa. The percentage of Africans living in poverty has not dropped but risen.⁸

This same observation was made by Sachs. According to him, the overwhelming share of the world’s extreme poor, 93 per cent in 2001, lives in three regions: East Asia, South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Since 1981, the numbers of extreme poor have risen in sub-Saharan Africa, but have fallen in East Asia and South Asia.⁹

The level of poverty and backwardness in Africa is better experienced than described. A visit to Africa will reveal a people on marginal existence in the twenty-first century. The states of sub-Saharan Africa, in particular, are so backward and poor that a good percentage could still be called food gatherers. Their singular concern seems to border merely on how to have at least one meal a day, while people at the opposite pole of prosperity (the developed world) are planning to spend their holidays on other planets. It is no exaggeration to say that Africa is the poorest place in the world today. Statistics on the state of Africa today bear strong evidence to this claim.

Africa’s Economic Morass

Contrasting the economic standard of Africa against that of the rest of the world, Acemoglu and Robinson state that the average citizen of the United States is seven times as prosperous as the average Mexican, more than ten times as prosperous as the resident of Peru or Central America, more than twenty times as prosperous as the average inhabitant of sub-Saharan Africa, and almost forty times as those living in the poorest African countries, such as Mali, Ethiopia, and Sierra Leone.¹⁰ The difference in the margin provided by Acemoglu and Robinson indicates that poverty in Africa is at a stage of crisis. Further statistics will help spell this situation out.

Gerald Caplan notes that Africa remains mired in poverty. According to him, of the seventy-seven countries on UNDP’s human development index, the last bottom twenty-three are all African (sub-Saharan) as are thirty-four of the bottom thirty-nine.¹¹ That is to say, out of the forty-nine countries that make up sub-Saharan Africa, thirty-four are among the thirty-nine poorest countries in the world. Apart from South Africa and Botswana, the remaining thirteen are also poor, only they are a little richer than the poorest thirty-nine. According to the same UNDP report in 2004, the index shows that out of the twenty countries that suffered reversals since 1990, thirteen are from sub-Saharan Africa and the five countries with the lowest levels of human development are all in Africa: Burundi, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Sierra Leone. Twenty out of the forty-nine countries of sub-Saharan Africa have witnessed a frightening decline in the standard of living of their citizens since 1990. On average, people in these countries are poorer now than they were in the last decade.¹²

Robert Calderisi made fun of the African economy when he argued that as the twenty-first century began, the typical African economy had an income no larger than the suburb of a major American city.¹³ Martin Meredith corroborated this view on the morass state of Africa’s economy in 2011 and noted that the entire economic output of Africa is just 1.3 per cent of the world’s GDP and that its share of world trade has declined to half of what it was in 1980, amounting only to 1.6 per cent, while its share of global investment is less than 1 per cent.¹⁴ The World Bank GNI statistics also show how flat the economy of Africa is in relation to the rich countries. While the GNI in the European Union in 2013, for instance, was $35,530, that of sub-Saharan Africa was $1,686. The GDP and the GNI of Belgium with about 11 million people in 2013 were $524.8 billion and $46,340 respectively, while that of South Africa—Africa’s supposed economic giant with a total population of 53 million—was, in comparison, $366.1 billion and $7,410 respectively. While Nigeria—Africa’s demography giant (173.6 million)—boasted of $521.8 billion GDP and $2,710 GNI in 2013, Germany, a country with less than half the population of Nigeria, generated a GDP of $3.73 trillion in the same year and a GNI of $47,250.¹⁵

While some countries in Asia that were either poorer or at the same economic level with African countries about thirty years ago have made giant economic and infrastructural developmental strides, Africa has been degenerating economically. For instance, when Zambia became independent in 1964, Zambians were, on average, twice as wealthy as the South Koreans. By the turn of the century, South Koreans have become, on average, twenty-seven times richer than the Zambians. Again, thirty years ago, Singapore and Kenya were just about equally poor. Today Singaporeans earn an average of about €24,000 a year, while the average Kenyan earns about €340 a year or about one-seventieth of that amount.¹⁶ This defines the phenomenon of the gradual disappearance of Africa’s economy.

According to an assessment report by the UN Development Group on how different regions of the world are working towards reaching the Millennium Development Goals, most sub-Saharan African states face great challenges in meeting them. Africa’s average per capita national income is one-third lower than the world’s next poorest region, South Asia. Between 1990 and 2001, the number of people living on less than $1 a day in Africa rose from 227 million to 313 million, and the poverty rate rose from 45 per cent of the total population to 46 per cent. In other words, 35.6 per cent of Africa’s 880 million people lived on less than $1 a day in 2001.¹⁷ A UN report in 2012 showed that the number has yet increased in 2008 by 1 per cent. This means that the economy of many African states has continued to experience negative growth, indicating that, each year, more people become poorer than they were the previous year.¹⁸ These are alarming statistics, revealing the palpable horrifying reality of Africa’s poverty.

Food Crises in Africa

The extreme poverty of Africa means that many of the people in this region lack enough food. Food is in drastic shortage, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. Many people from this part of Africa are malnourished because they cannot provide enough food for themselves. The level of malnourishment has led also to the death of especially many children. Further statistics bear evidence to the level of food crisis in Africa.

Prof. Adebayo Adedeji, the former United Nations undersecretary-general and executive secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, reported in 1981 that some thirty-four countries in Africa suffered from almost chronic food deficits, which affected a total of 260 million people.¹⁹ Nearly thirty years after this report, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization estimated that 239 million people in sub-Saharan Africa were still hungry or undernourished in 2010, an estimated 30 per cent of the population.²⁰ This means that almost one out of every three people in sub-Saharan Africa was undernourished as of 2010.

Kofi Annan, the former UN secretary general, corroborated this when he noted in 2012 that there are 240 million people in sub-Saharan Africa who do not eat well enough for their health and well-being.²¹ Thus, many Africans have continued to suffer from malnutrition, especially children. Africa records many deaths from the effects of hunger and malnutrition. UNICEF reported in October 2013, for example, that about 2,500 children died of malnutrition in Niger alone between January and October 2013.²² What could be the cause of this tragic malady facing the African continent?

Answering this question, Fage argues that the problem facing Africa was made worse because more and more of them were failing to grow enough food to feed themselves and that, by the mid-1970s, population growth (around 3 per cent per annum) had outstripped food production.²³ Adedeji, along the same line of thought, dismally notes: ‘It is sad and unfortunate, but nevertheless true, that agriculture in Africa is in distress.’²⁴ He argues that the African agriculture failed in the 1970s, by ever-widening margins, to produce sufficient food for its population. According to him, while the population increased at a rate approaching 3 per cent every year, food production merely inched ahead. He recounts that a negative annual rate of increase in average food production per head of population (-0.7 per cent) during the sixties worsened (-1.1 per cent) during the seventies.²⁵ There has been since then a persistent rise in population with ever-increasing margins in failure to produce sufficient food.

Annan also observes that Africa is the only continent that fails to grow enough food to feed its own citizens. According to him, cereal yields in Africa are on average a quarter of those of other developing regions and have barely increased in thirty years. He further states that per capita food production and agriculture labour productivity also remain remarkably low.²⁶

The same observation is made by Collins and Burns. According to them, food production in Africa has barely increased in the last thirty years, but the population of Africa has continued to swell, with nearly every woman contributing an average of six children to her generation. Between 1900 and 1960, the African population grew at an unheard-of rate of 2.3 per cent, from an estimated 142 million to 300 million. This pace continued after independence. Between 1960 and 2000, the African population more than doubled to over an estimated 600 million people.²⁷

Ilo was thus right in his remark that in some African countries, more people go hungry than they did a decade ago.²⁸ This means that Africa is retrogressing rather than progressing. In other words, Africa is not simply underdeveloped as Walter Rodney had argued in 1976. It has rather been de-developing.

It is shocking,