I search and inquire, but to no avail. Most of the workers here have not even heard of any such plan. Others have heard of it, but they know nothing more specific. Others have heard of it, know a bit about it, but still do not have the text. They can give me copies of the resolution concerning how the production of peanuts in Senegal might be increased. How the tsetse fly should be combated in Tanzania. How the drought in the Sahel can be curtailed. But how to save Africa? This plan they do not have.
Several conversations in Africa Hall. One, with Babashola Chinsman. He is vice director of the United Nations Development Program. Young, energetic, from Sierra Leone. One of those Africans upon whom fate has smiled. A representative of a new global class: members of Third World nations occupying seats in international organizations. A villa in Addis Ababa (official), a villa in Freetown (private, which he rents to the German embassy), a private apartment in Manhattan (because he doesn’t care for hotels). A limousine, a driver, servants. Tomorrow, a conference in Madrid; three days from now, one in New York; a week from now, another in Sydney. Always the same, the eternal, subject: how to relieve hunger in Africa.
The conversation is pleasant, interesting.
Chinsman: “It is not true that Africa is stagnant. Africa is developing; it is not merely a continent of famine.
“The problem is larger, worldwide. One hundred and fifty poorly developed countries are leaning on twenty-five developed ones, in which, moreover, there is recession and a stagnant population growth.
“It is extremely important to promote regional development in Africa. Unfortunately, the obstacle is a backward infrastructure: unsatisfactory means of distribution, bad roads, insufficient trucks and buses, a poor public transportation system.
“This inadequate transportation network results in ninety percent of the continent’s villages and towns living in isolation — they have no access to the market, and thus no access to money.
“The paradox of our world: If one figures in the cost of transporting, servicing, warehousing, and preserving food, then the cost of a single meal (typically, a handful of corn) for a refugee in some camp, for example in Sudan, is higher than the price of a dinner in the most expensive restaurant in Paris.
“After thirty years of independence, we are finally beginning to understand that education is important for development. The farm of a literate peasant is ten to fifteen times more productive than the farm of an illiterate one. Education alone, without any additional investments, brings material benefits.
“The most important thing is to have a multidimensional approach to development: develop regions, develop local societies, develop interdependence rather than intercompetition!”
John Menru from Tanzania: “Africa needs a new generation of politicans who know how to think in a new way. The current one must depart. Instead of thinking about development, they think about how to stay in power.
“The solution for Africa? Create a new political climate:
adopt as binding the principle of dialogue;
ensure society’s participation in public life;
observe fundamental human rights;
begin democratization.
“Do all this, and new politicians will emerge all by themselves. New politicians, with a clear, well-defined vision. A precise vision — that is what we lack today.
“What is dangerous? Ethnic fanaticism. It can cause an ethnic principle to assume a religious dimension, to become a substitute religion. This is extremely dangerous!”
Sadig Rasheed — a Sudanese, one of the directors of the Economic Commission for Africa: “Africa must wake up.
“One must arrest the process of Africa’s increasing marginalization. Whether this will succeed, I don’t know.
“I worry about whether African societies will be able to assume a self-critical stance, and much depends on this.”
That is precisely the subject of a conversation I have one day with A., an elderly Englishman and longtime local resident. His view: That the strength of Europe and of its culture, in contrast to other cultures, lies in its bent for criticism, above all, for self-criticism — in its art of analysis and inquiry, in its endless seeking, in its restlessness. The European mind recognizes that it has limitations, accepts its imperfections, is skeptical, doubtful, questioning. Other cultures do not have this critical spirit. More — they are inclined to pride, to thinking that all that belongs to them is perfect; they are, in short, uncritical in relation to themselves. They lay the blame for all that is evil on others, on other forces (conspiracies, agents, foreign domination of one sort or another). They consider all criticism to be a malevolent attack, a sign of discrimination, of racism, etc. Representatives of these cultures treat criticism as a personal insult, as a deliberate attempt to humiliate them, as a form of sadism even. If you tell them that the city is dirty, they treat this as if you said that they were dirty themselves, had dirty ears, or dirty nails. Instead of being self-critical, they are full of countless grudges, complexes, envies, peeves, manias. The effect of all this is that they are culturally, permanently, structurally incapable of progress, incapable of engendering within themselves the will to transform and evolve.
Do all African cultures (for there are many of them, just as there are many African religions) belong to this touchy, uncritical mess? Africans like Sadig Rasheed have begun to consider this; they want to find the answer to why, in the race of continents, Africa is being left behind.
Europe’s image of Africa? Hunger; skeletal children; dry, cracked earth; urban slums; massacres; AIDS; throngs of refugees without a roof over their heads, without clothing, without medicines, water, or bread.
The world, therefore, rushes in with aid.
Today, as in the past, Africa is regarded as an object, as the reflection of some alien star, as the stomping ground of colonizers, merchants, missionaries, ethnographers, large charitable organizations (more than eighty are active in Ethiopia alone).
Meantime, most importantly, it exists for itself alone, within itself, a timeless, sealed, separate continent, a land of banana groves, shapeless little fields of manioc, jungles, the immense Sahara, rivers slowly drying up, thinning forests, sick, monstrous cities — a world charged, at the same time, with a restless and violent electricity.
…
Two thousand kilometers across Ethiopia. Empty, unpopulated roads. Mountains and more mountains. At this time of year (it is winter in Europe), the mountains are green. They are sky-high and magnificent in the sun. Profound silence everywhere. But stop for just a moment, sit down by the side of the road, and listen. Somewhere, far off, you will hear high monotonous voices. It is children singing on the nearby slopes — children collecting brushwood, tending herds, cutting grass for the cattle. You will not hear the voices of adults. It is as if this were a world only of children.
And this is a world of children. Half the population of Africa is under fifteen years of age. There are innumerable children in all its armies; children constitute the majority in refugee camps; children work in the fields, buy and sell in the markets. But the child’s biggest role is in the home: he is responsible for supplying water. While everyone else is still asleep, little boys are rising in the darkness and running to springs, ponds, rivers — for water. Modern technology has proven to be their great ally: it gave them a gift — the cheap, light, plastic container. A dozen years ago, this container revolutionized life in Africa. Water is the sine qua non of survival in the tropics. Because there is generally no plumbing here and water is scarce, one must carry it over long distances, sometimes ten or more kilometers. For centuries, heavy clay or stone vessels were used for this purpose. Traditional African cultures did not know wheeled transport, so human beings carried everything themselves, most often on their heads. The division of domestic labor was such that carrying water was women’s work. A child could never manage such a large and heavy receptacle, and in this bare-bones world each house usually had only one.