A Developmental model for Africa a case for Study Zambia
The African continent still lacks behind with regards to development mainly because of using the western models that have failed the continent
. There is a carrot that is always dangled in front of the continent that has perpetually enslaved the continent to believing that all what comes from the west is good and becomes the basis of justifying why things should be done in that particular prescribed format.Africa has always been dependant on foreign assistance and even with smaller countries such as Netherlands have on its agenda to help African countries. Sometimes I imagine the west pulling the plug off on development aid in Africa how many consequences that can cause to most stagnated economies of the continent. Globalissues.com reports on "Foreign aid or (development assistance) is often regarded as being too much, or wasted on corrupt recipient governments despite any good intentions from donor countries. In reality, both the quantity and quality of aid have been poor and donor nations have not been held to account.
In 1970, the world's rich countries agreed to give 0.7% of their gross national income as official international development aid, annually. Since that time, despite billions given each year, rich nations have rarely met their actual promised targets. For example, the US is often the largest donor in dollar terms, but ranks amongst the lowest in terms of meeting the stated 0.7% target.
Furthermore, aid has often come with a price of its own for the developing nations:
Aid is often wasted on conditions that the recipient must use overpriced goods and services from donor countries
Most aid does not actually go to the poorest who would need it the most
Aid amounts are dwarfed by rich country protectionism that denies market access for poor country products, while rich nations use aid as a lever to open poor country markets to their products
Large projects or massive grand strategies often fail to help the vulnerable; money can often be embezzled away"
Surely Africa at arms length distance is now an orphan of the west, purely this could be termed as modernized colonization and if the yoke of slavery cannot be broken be rest assured that the generation to come will pay a big price. Admired are countries that are singularly called as the BRIC, check on India that has an ancient culture dating back over 5000 years and at the beginning of the twenty-first century, 30% of the population knew English and greater than 40% were illiterate. At this time, the nation was in the midst of great transition and the dichotomy between the old India and the new was stark but in the process India had created the world's largest middle class, second only to china. Does Africa bother to learn from India?
The people driven development could be the best (though not the only solution) to Africa's problems, can't Africans themselves brew their own developmental ideas with a lip glued west? Africa has remained a big laboratory for the west in both scientific and business operations, young fresh Harvard graduates and from other leading universities in the west dictates the economic agendas of the continent which are alien to the exact profile of the continent. In short Africa should not be used as a guinea pig in their experiments of both scientific and business experiments. But why do they use Africa as a laboratory for their prototypes? It is because Africa is hand tied due to the donations they receive.
I will first quote Dogbert's rule of strategies "Any good strategy will seem ridiculous by the time it is implemented" surely Africa needs to plan ahead and involve local donors to drive and sponsor developmental projects. In the case of Zambia, citizens can have trust that can centre its objectives in developing the country and of course mutual trust is required.
A country like Zambia has molded an action plan for the period of 2006-2010 which has christened as fifth national development plan' but one interesting second is found on page 10 of the FNDP booklet talking about External Debt and Aid"a major development during 2005 was Zambia's reaching the completion point under the heavily indebted poor countries (HIPC) initiative resulting in debt forgiveness/cancellation. In addition to this Zambia in 2005 also become eligible for debt relief under the G8 initiative which proposed to cancel 100 percent of all concessional debts owed to the international monetary fund, the African Development Bank and the World Bank. Following the debt relief provided as a result of the enhanced HIPC initiative, Zambia's foreign debt came down to US $4 billion in 2005 from US $7.1 billion at the end of 2004. When the G8 commitments are effected through the multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI), it is expected that Zambia's debt would come down to around US $700 million." Remember I called it interesting because as at March 4th 2010 Zambia's debt stood at $1.2 billion, just 5 years ago after the $7.1 billion was scrapped off from the Zambia's shoulders the debt was reduced to a song of $500 million. Mathematically, it means Zambia in the time space of 5 years has borrowed $700 million. When is Africa going to learn?
It is still possible to develop without been on developed countries' balance sheet as assets in form of debtors, how? My model is easy, having a community based approach of developing. The community should be involved in compassing the developmental direction of its environment. A simple model that only requires dedicated, trusted and ethical conscious people, for example a trust is formed that would encourage people to donate only $4 in the time space of 4 months. Which I believe is a spendable amount and say for argument's sake the trust is able to mobilize 50,000 volunteers and in 4 months the trust would have collected a cool $200,000 which if converted in Zambian currency is cool 1 Billion kwacha. With this amount of money meaningful community driven projects can commence, the advantage with such a model is that it is sustainable as the community is involved from day one and the sense of belonging that is injected in the community becomes the fuel to initiate other projects such as building schools and enhancing/building human capital. With this model can spread across the country and visible foot prints of it can be pasted within the local peoples' minds hence cultivating a philanthropic community.
Africa has the power to move from the quadrant of receiving to giving, if certain fundamentals can be followed and observed such as: education, corruption free society, infrastructural development, free media with a self regulatory conscious, development of human skill-set and placing it in a right place where optimization and operational efficiency is the highest. I believe it can be done, but there should be leadership from everywhere, no strains of greediness should emerge. It is still no problem for Africa to benchmark with both the East and West and also amongst itself. Botswana is a model country that most African countries can learn from.
A Developmental model for Africa a case for Study Zambia
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