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At the beginning of the century, Europe's population was much greater than that of Africa, Europe's advanced technology allowing a greater population. But after World War II Africa's population began to catch up with Europe, to draw even with Europe in 1985, with an annual growth of 3.2 percent per year and the production of food per person falling 20 percent below what it had been in 1960.
Government policies contributed to a drop in food production. The governments of Algeria, Egypt, Somalia, Tanzania and Zambia tried to manage agriculture, and they applied price and production controls. In some instances, governments forced growers to sell to them and, inadequately rewarded for their work, farmers decreased their production. Huge state farms were created in Mozambique, and after Mengistu Hail-Mariam seized power in Ethiopia in 1977 he nationalized all farms, with government directed farming again proving detrimental to agricultural production.
In sub-Saharan Africa between 1965 and 1980 the total domestic product per person grew an average of 1.5 percent per year. But with some societies in Africa unable to buy or grow enough food to make up for its growing population, in places starvation appeared. Hopes like that of Kwame Nkhruma's - dreams of rapid growth and catching up with the West - had been dashed. African intellectuals had learned that freedom did a paradise make and that they had a lot of work to do.
And political matters were not going as well as had been hoped. Added to the problem of too little food were ethnic divisions and war. The Africans had known all along that all Africans were not to be trusted. Following the spread of independence in Africa, most of its forty-five states had experienced military takeovers, some more than once. And by the 1990s only a few states still had preserved the vestiges of democracy, with one-party states or dictatorships dominating. In one of Africa's most populous countries, Nigeria, were numerous ethnic, language and religious divisions. Government was by patronage, people in power giving their supporters jobs, contracts, loans, scholarships or anything else to keep their favor. At every level of government positions were used to advance the interest of one's own group at the expense of the interest of the nation as a whole.
By the 1990s food production in sub-Saharan Africa lagged behind population growth. The average African farmer produced only 600 kilograms of cereals a year, around one-130th the amount produced by an agricultural worker in North America. The westernized nation of South Africa was the power economy on the continent, while elsewhere the average African farmer lacked the farm machinery and the fertilizers available to the Western farmer, and he lacked the means of getting his products to a wider market. One out of every three persons in Africa was malnourished.
By the 1990s, colonialism in Africa had ended, Zimbabwe having become independent in 1980 and Namibia in 1990. The colonists left behind state boundaries that were arbitrary unifications, African states consisting of a variety of ethnicities, many hostile to one another. Differences in political opinion within political boundaries in Africa was often without tolerance of dissent or acquiescence to a systematic rule of law. Despite his fervor for justice, President Sékou Touré, Guinea's first head of state, had criminalized dissent and had abolished his state's judiciary. Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, despite his education and idealism, had done the same. So too had Hastings Kamuzu Banda of Malawi. By the 1990s, most of Africa's forty-five states had experienced military takeovers. The new government that came to power in South Africa in 1994, led by Nelson Mandela, was hope to many who looked forward to something different: a new, democratic, Africa.
With colonialism having ended, Africans were free to choose what to do in domestic affairs and free to accept or reject ties with foreign powers or financial entities. They could borrow money from the West or not borrow. They could invite investment from abroad or not. By the 1990s, the Soviet economic model was rejected, and instead of China's Maoist model there was that course taken by those Chinese whom Mao called the "capitalist roaders." Association with the capitalist West and taking part in international trade, as were the "capitalist roaders," African nations sold coffee, cotton, oil, textiles, rough diamonds, tanzanite, minerals used making computers and many other commodities. The development of industry and agriculture required more importation and investment. But investors were not interested in investing in agricultural development. Nor were they interested in investing where there was political instability and war.
Wars abounded in Africa. Genocide and civil war in Rwanda killed around a half million. In 1997, during another civil war, in the Congo, the dictator Mobutu was overthrown. Mobutu - who had adopted the name "all powerful warrior," fled the country he had called Zaire. Laurent Kabila, a former follower of Patrice Lumumba, assumed power and renamed Zaire the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Hope for democracy increased, but warring in the Congo continued, and Kabila was assassinated in January, 2001. There was civil war in Sierra Leone, tribal warfare in Nigeria, wars in Liberia and violence in Zimbabwe.
War in Angola resulted in 100,000 amputees from land mines. Angola's economy was in disarray. During the Cold War, President Ronald Reagan had supported Angola's guerrilla leader, Jonas Savimbi, believing him to be an anti-communist freedom fighter, while Cubans were supporting government forces. Savimbi had as his power base the state's largest ethnic group, the Ovimbundu, while the government forces were urban-based and described as cosmopolitan. A peace agreement was signed and elections held in 1992, but when Savimbi lost those elections he returned to warfare. Another peace agreement was made in 1994, and a national unity government declared in 1997, but fighting in Angola resumed in 1998.
The more economically advanced nations outside Africa were sending a small fraction of their GDP to Africa as aid, and they were looking forward to responsible African nations joining in collective action to maintain order, rather than calling on the intervention of troops from outside powers.
In the poorer countries, populations were growing faster than the economy. The ten poorest African countries, with per capita GDPs for 1999 between $850 and $510 had high population growth rates. Mali, for example, had a per capita GDP of $850 and the following year an estimated 30.1 more births than deaths per thousand people. Botswana, one of the more economically successful African countries had for 1999 a $6,600 per capita GDP and the following year only 4.7 more births than deaths.
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Copyright © 2002 by Frank E. Smitha. All rights reserved.
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