The Shackled Continent, by Robert Guest
Published by Pan; New Ed edition (July 1, 2005). 288 pp.

From a luxurious flat in posh Johannesburg, to the jungles of the Congo where refugees still recover from the Rwandan genocide, Robert Guest leaves no stone unturned in his thought-provoking investigation into the heart of Africa - The Shackled Continent. As Africa Editor for the Economist, Guest spent most of the last decade traversing the diverse landscape of a sub-Saharan Africa ravaged by disease, war, and bureaucracy. Despite the horrors he describes, his confidence in the potential of the continent and its people is evident.

In recent years, much has been made of Africa's dire need for foreign aid and intervention. Rock star Bono calls for debt relief, the United Nations begs for more aid, and Dr. Razeen Sally, a prominent European economist, goes so far as to suggest that Africa would be best served by the United States taking an interventionist/imperialist role. Guest, on the other hand, rejects the idea that a full-scale "Marshall Plan" for Africa will solve its problems, which are almost too many to count.

The responsibility for the shackled continent, Guest asserts, lies squarely with its own leadership.

AIDS ravages populations in countries where sex is still a taboo subject, tribal loyalties overwhelm democratic responsibilities, and entire governments succumb to nepotism and incompetence. Bureaucracy makes it impossible for an unconnected person to get a job in many nations, while in South Africa affirmative action makes it impossible to fire an incompetent employee. Rampant corruption has created a continental class of elites who siphon foreign aid to pay for mansions while their populations starve. Unchecked war drains many countries of the sizeable intrinsic wealth they already possess with their vast deposits of precious metals and minerals. The individual nations that Guest examines often suffer from a mix of the above symptoms, or sometimes, all of them combined.

No wonder the quote on the back cover calls this a "book for those who despise Africa." Guest pulls no punches in his harsh exposes on the incompetent and often malignant leadership of African nations. "Since independence," Guest writes in the introduction, "Africa's governments have failed their people."

Perhaps no country is examined more closely than Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe. To Guest's eye, Mugabe is the archetypal African dictator. He came to power as a hero of the brutal battle for independence from colonialism, and immediately set about solidifying rule for himself and his party, the Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF). Unfortunately, he could hardly have done a better job of wrecking his country.

Since independence, the average national income has dropped by more than half due to Mugabe's choice to nationalize industry. In addition, the government's decision to print currency any time Zimbabwe's economy leaned towards crisis, the Zim dollar has gone from being worth more than the U.S. dollar to being worth roughly one fiftieth of an American cent. His stance on property rights (i.e., no one has the right to property but his party's officials) has devastated the prospects of foreign investment or local entrepreneurship. Though Zimbabwe has tremendous scenic beauty, tourism is currently nonexistent, and little is being done with the massive deposits of precious metals lying beneath Zimbabwean soil. In addition, AIDS has significantly reduced the average life expectancy of the country.

Guest asserts that the answer to these problems, in Zimbabwe and across the continent, is fairly simple. "Africans are poor largely because they are not free," he writes. And almost no country is less free than Mugabe's Zimbabwe.

Mugabe's reelection campaign in 2000 is a prime example of how to successfully ruin a nation. He offered farmland for votes, which he stole from farmers and gave to cronies with no knowledge of farming, which set the stage for a famine. War veterans, known widely as torturers, handed out voting ballots and kept an eye on how each person voted. Interestingly enough, a large number of dead people cast votes for Mugabe. Thugs brutally beat and often murdered opposition party members. A newspaper editor was arrested for printing a photo of a beaten opposition worker.

Unsurprisingly, Mugabe won the election and South African officials curiously found no evidence of vote rigging.

Though some other African countries have suffered under dictatorships as ruthless as Mugabe's, thankfully most have not. What many other African governments do share, however, is a reluctance to allow free elections or enterprise, an inability to deal with AIDS, a penchant for cronyism, and a bloodthirsty streak that often leads to enormous, multi-nation uprisings.

Several other reviewers of this book have complained that Guest offers few recommendations on how to improve Africa while reviling in its misfortunes. I found this to be an inaccurate stance. Though Guest paints an unnervingly clear picture of the challenges that the impoverished continent faces, he also finds innumerable reasons for optimism.

Angola was recently ranked by UNICEF as the worst place on earth. Life expectancy barely breaks forty, and the country has spent much of recent years at war with itself. Still, Guest reasons, a life expectancy of forty is better than most Western countries a century ago. Modern medicine, though inefficiently applied in most places, has lowered infant mortality rates and has provided some defense against the onslaught of Africa's many infectious diseases. In 1900, almost no Africans could read. Now, 60% can.

Perhaps no country gives Guest a better reason for optimism than the tiny nation of Botswana. Guest describes the economic situation of four decades ago with typical British cheek.

Botswana was, at independence in 1966, one of the poorest countries in the world. Cows grazed the few patches of ground that were not desert. Herdsmen herded them. That was pretty much the sum total of economic activity in Botswana.

Having remarked that foreign aid to Botswana accounted for 98% of its GDP in 1971, Guest goes on to relate a remarkable story of economic growth. Vast deposits of diamonds were discovered in the country shortly after it gained independence, and, unlike many of its neighboring "Vampire States," the government of Botswana did not use its mineral wealth to finance genocides or to pad the fat pockets of well-connected bureaucrats.

The windfall from the diamond mines was put back into infrastructure and public services like health care and education. Free enterprise was encouraged and property rights were respected, both rarities in modern Africa. Tourism boomed.

As a result, the Botswanan economy has had the fastest growth of any nation in the world over the last thirty-five years. Aid donors, satisfied with a job well done, are starting to move on. Though the country still has a severe AIDS epidemic, it now has surplus cash to be used for treatment and prevention.

Other answers that Guest gives are as varied as the problems. The high-tech industry has already brought significant changes. From 1998 to 2002, the number of African cell phone users jumped 1500%. In many cases in Africa, it takes longer than four years just to get a landline installed in one home. If African governments will promote them, Guest believes that the tech industries could provide a boon to African economies. Mobile phones and internet technology provide better access to foreign markets, and foreign money. African countries at the bottom of the tech ladder are in a position to "leapfrog", skipping recently outmoded models of communications and manufacturing, and investing in cutting-edge technology.

He also argues for more transparency in governance and aid expenditures, as well as, and perhaps above all, for private property rights to be respected. Property could form the basis of Africa's economy, if governments will respect it. Whether the majority will, in the near future, remains to be seen.

For anyone interested in Africa, The Shackled Continent is required reading.






Contributed by Sam Wardle, Sam Wardle is a writer and journalist in Asheville, NC. Reprinted with permission from A World Connected.

To read another Global Envision article about economic development in Africa, see Development & Economic Freedom.

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