French President Jacque Chirac spoke recently about the prospects for Europe if Africa’s economic fortunes do not improve. According to Chirac roughly ½ of Africa’s nearly 1 billion people are under age 17 and the population is expected to more than double by 2050. Those two statistics alone highlight Africa’s principle problem: population.

The continent, particularly Sub-Saharan Africa is bursting at the seams. Such a population explosion would place considerable strain on a vibrant economy, to say nothing of the damage such reckless birthrates pose on 3rd world economies like many African nations. The fact that many Sub-Saharan countries also have relatively young populations poses additional strain. These combined population scenarios, place a heavy responsibility on the adult aged population in Africa to produce more and more efficiently to support a population not yet ready to enter the work force.

As Chirac correctly points out, with such problems, those who have the ability will flee their homes for better opportunities in Europe, just as is the case with Mexico vis-à-vis the United States. Those who remain behind, will generally be the feeble and the very young, leaving Africa in even worse shape.

As if these population problems weren’t bad enough, Africa has and continues to be plagued by internal conflicts, famine, AIDS and most tragic of all: bad governance. For these reasons it would be a misnomer to categorize many of these countries as developing, as they are more accurately chronicled as stagnant.

Not all the news is bad from Africa, those countries who have commitment to true representative government with respect for the rule of law, stand out as models for change. As a result of this commitment, they have seen massive increases in foreign direct investment and tourism, leading to improved economic outlooks and democratic stability. Countries like Senegal, Ghana, Uganda and Mauritius. Nation’s like Mauritius, for example, have an unemployment rate lower than many European nations.

While Chirac didn’t provide his usual laundry list of socialist solutions to Africa’s poverty crisis, he has in the past spoke of world wide tax schemes and other wealth transfer measures to offset African poverty, such initiatives will inevitably fail. Over the course of the past 20 years, billions of dollars have been poured into these countries with little in the way of measurable results. This is primarily due to the fact that such aid schemes do not address Africa’s systemic problems. Such problems like tyrannical governments and leaders who loot their countries for personal gain. It does not address skyrocketing birth rates and the absence of the rule of law.

Simply transferring wealth from the developed to the developing world is a prescription for stagnation. If Africa is to prosper they must embrace change on their own, rather than expecting the US or other western nations to finance their reform efforts. The world is filled with examples were nations have emerging from the clutches of poverty (on their own initiative), to become major contenders on the world stage. Taiwan, Korea, India, Panama have all either become fully developed or are well along that path and they have accomplished this feat on their own, not through handouts. The fact that many of these African nations are resource rich is all the more reason to expect success from those who are truly committed.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5181080.stm

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