BY MARKUS SPECHT
Markus Specht is a first-year IDEV student at SAIS Europe and editor of SAIS Perspectives.
The SAIS Development Roundtable and the SAIS African Studies Program hosted W. Gyude Moore, a senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development, for a discussion on power and African development. Moore previously served as Liberia’s Minister of Public Works with oversight over the construction and maintenance of public infrastructure from December 2014 to January 2018. He also served as Deputy Chief of Staff to President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf and Head of the President’s Delivery Unit (PDU). As one of the President’s trusted advisors, he also played a crucial role in supporting President Sirleaf as Liberia responded to the West Africa Ebola outbreak and shaped its post-Ebola outlook.
Following his presentation, Mr. Moore spoke to SAIS Perspectives about power and development, what his ideal Africa summit would look like, and the implications of COVID-19 for Africa’s development. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Perspectives: In recent years, many governments in the Global North have come up with “Africa strategies,” such as the German Marshall Plan for Africa. Do you see anything new in how these strategies approach economic development cooperation with Africa or is this just the same old story in a new format?
Gyude Moore: Almost every single thing that we've seen here, almost every single thing that's been brought forth is a reiteration—maybe with minor tweaks—of something that's been presented before. And from what we know of states that have made the transition from low-income to middle-income or from low-income to high-income, there's been one path and one path only, and that is to be able to transition a mass of people, a large number of the workforce, from subsistence activity to more productive activities. The way that has been done every single time is through manufacturing.
It is difficult to imagine a path for economic development in Africa that just skips that step. Whether it is the German “Marshall Plan for Africa” or whatever other strategy, it's hard to conceive of a way to achieve the goals we have set for ourselves without that development model.
Perspectives: The comparison is often made between the economic development of East Asia and that of Africa from 1945 onwards. How does that comparison inform your assessment of these strategies?
Gyude Moore: A lot of people refer to how close African economies where to their Asian counterparts in the 1960s. People say, in 1960 the GDP of Ghana and South Korea was almost the same. While this is true, it is like comparing today’s Nigerian economy with the South African. Both of them have a GDP of about 450 billion. However, more than eighty percent of Nigeria's tax revenue comes from selling petroleum and petroleum products. The South African economy is more complex and diverse. While they might be worth the same, the two economies are in completely different worlds. If ten years from today, they're not in the same place, that only makes sense.
This logic applies to the comparison between Asia and Africa as well: Even though African countries may have had the same aggregate GDP as their Asian counterparts at one point, the endowment in human capital, for instance, was completely different and we saw that difference play out over the years.
However, this also means we know what to focus on. I don't know if we need to try a new strategy. We know what to do and at what costs.
Perspectives: Along with the new Africa strategies, there have been more and more “Africa Summits,” and this is the topic you spoke on during the Development Roundtable. Do these summits tell the same story as the Africa strategies? Do you think any of them have come up with innovative solutions or new approaches to pressing issues?
Gyude Moore: Whether it is partnerships that are pushed on Africa or partnerships that Africa enters into on its own accord, I think both sides, Africa and its partners, are not yet willing to pay the costs that are necessary. That's why I chose to use these summits as the organizing idea around which I have structured my talk.
First, there is a clear power asymmetry between Africa and its partners. Simply put, one is weak and one is really powerful. These are not international summits. They are not multilateral affairs.
In multilateral affairs, regardless of how powerful a country is, one country has one vote, so there's a level playing field. However, if the UK invites all of the African heads of state—you have to imagine this one country inviting fifty-four others—it is as clear a demonstration of power dynamics as it could ever be and it's hard to imagine a win-win situation resulting from such a stark power disparity. Not only is it a powerful act to invite the less powerful, it is also that the entire conference is designed by and done on the soil of the more powerful actor.
If I am this powerful actor and I am designing a program, then I have certain objectives in mind and I will design a program to deliver those objectives for me. This means that African governments will show up at an event that is driven in a certain direction. And since there is no joint meeting back in Africa where the fifty-four countries meet and decide on a course of action, it's fifty-four individual units negotiating.
In the end, most of the summits have ended with transactional wins: Over the next five years, we're going to invest five billion dollars across Africa. However, those are simply aspirations. The World Bank, the WHO, the UN are asked after every crisis to make pledges for funding. But how many of those pledges are ever realized? However, in exchange, African governments are asked to make policy concessions, for instance on taxes or on tariffs, so that they might be attractive to foreign direct investment.
In the end, the outcomes of almost all of the summits have reflected the power dynamics going into them in the first place.
Perspectives: When you talk about the power asymmetries in these summits, do you see a pattern where countries within the African continent are played out against each other, for instance by being encouraged to lower the cost for or restrictions against foreign direct investment, so that they might attract capital inflows rather than their neighbors?
Gyude Moore: I don't know if it's that overt, but it ends up happening anyway, because every African leader who is at the summit wants to go home and be able to say, “I've got this amount and this deal signed.” They are more likely to accept suboptimal outcomes simply because they will be able to show some sort of number, knowing that if they don't do this, there are fifty-three other countries who will.
Perspectives: What would your ideal Africa summit look like?
The first thing is that Africa is pretty clear in what it wants. There is something called Agenda 2063. This is the aggregate, cumulative expression of African aspirations compiled by the African Union. That document is supposed to guide African economies going forward. If there were an African summit with another party, I would imagine that that party, whoever it would be, designed the summit so that it reflected the goals of Agenda 2063.
The second thing is that the African continent and its leaders have realized that because they are fragmented, it is difficult for them to be able to get the big policy wins that they want and to attract investment. If you have a factory in Benin, you’re in a small country. However, if the entire continent were a single market, you could build the factory in Benin and still have access to all of Africa. Then it becomes really attractive. This is why the continent decided to go in the direction of a single market for Africa. If you want to design a summit, that is what it should be about: In support of an integration of all African economies. But that doesn't always happen. As it stands, the U.S. government is in the process of negotiating a bilateral free trade agreement with Kenya, at exactly the moment when the entire continent is attempting to create a single unit.
The third thing is that fertility rates in most places of the world have stalled, remaining either at or falling below replacement levels. In the US, the fertility rate is currently at 1.73, so statistically each family has 1.73 children. This is below the 2.1 that is required for replacement levels. In Africa, the population continues to grow. What Africa therefore needs over the next decade is to create 18 to 20 million jobs every year, so that these people can enter the labor force. The way to do that is through factories that can absorb large numbers of people. We need to be able to transition most people away from subsistence agriculture and set up more mechanized farms, so that Africa can be able to feed itself. What we need is investment in factories, investment in mechanized agriculture, investment in storage. The summit should also address this.
Perspectives: You spoke about the fact that most of these ideas are recycled and that the process is always the same. What about technological innovation? Medical drones on the African continent have been around for a couple of years and are receiving heightened attention during the COVID-19 global health crisis. Looking beyond this moment in time, do you think the “leap-frogging” of certain technologies is a good option for the economic and social development of African countries?
Gyude Moore: There is an inclination among us as human beings to go for magic bullets, for simple answers to complex problems. Because of the success we saw with mobile phones bypassing traditional telecommunications infrastructure, there is this sort of exuberance about what technology could do. But I’d like to use what I said in a talk I gave on roads in Africa to explain why this won’t work.
The US is pretty technologically advanced, yet 75 percent of goods produced in the U.S. and freighted into the U.S. are transported on roads, not drones. Across the EU, it’s around 76 percent. For the UK, it’s over 90 percent.
The US interstate system, which covers only two percent of the paved miles in the US, carries over 25 percent of vehicular traffic in the US. It is almost impossible to imagine how one builds a modern economy without a functional infrastructure in place. I am sympathetic to the desire to find something that is able to do so, but I don't think you can leapfrog roads.
Perspectives: Lastly, before COVID-19 and the slashing of global economic growth projections, the recent slowdown in Chinese growth had analysts worried about many African economies which have close ties to China. The situation has quickly become much worse, with some economists forecasting negative growth rates across much of Sub-Saharan Africa for 2020. Although this is all still unfolding, what needs to be done economically for Africa right now, in your opinion?
Gyude Moore: Long before we had our first COVID-19 case in Africa, long before we felt any of the impact of the health crisis, we were already feeling the economic costs of the pandemic. As I noted before, a significant amount of what is consumed on the continent is imported. When Chinese ports shut down, the cost of goods went up simply because suppliers had to struggle to find other sources of supplies, whether in Turkey or India.
You also have to remember that many African economies are barely recovering from a slowdown in trade because of the trade war between the US and China. This meant that when Chinese factories shut down, African economies who supply them with raw materials had no markets to sell to because of collapsing demand. At exactly the moment when they needed money and for spending on boosting the health systems’ capacities, they were losing revenue. For those economies on the continent that are largely dependent on rents from natural resources, the oil price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia is making the situation much worse.
Additionally, there are countries where there is significant underinvestment in the health sector, which often survives largely on donor assistance. Given the current situation, some of that assistance may not be forthcoming or may not be forthcoming in a timely manner because almost every donor is itself dealing with a crisis at home. The World Bank is already projecting that about forty-nine million people, most of them in Sub-Saharan Africa, are going to be plunged into poverty due to the pandemic.
The UN is also projecting that there will be food insecurity and famine of biblical proportions. As it stands, all of East Africa is dealing with the largest locust infestation in seventy years. This is not a continent that was free of problems before this. This is a continent with a very fragile underlying economic architecture that was already sort of bruised and that is now being battered by this global crisis—without the kind of support that industrialized nations’ governments offer up to their economies.
Perspectives: Is there anything that gives you hope?
Gyude Moore: I think everybody recognizes that for this global pandemic, it’s not over until it’s over everywhere. If this had happened five years ago, there would have been a significant American presence in terms of leading the global response. Well, over the last four years, we've seen a closing of the US, with the country becoming more insular internationally. And in its absence, there really isn't a player big enough to be able to take on that role.
Germany could have, I think. But Angela Merkel used up most of her political capital when she received one million migrants, so it is difficult to imagine her leading the global response, especially since Germany is also dealing with the current crisis at home. That means that there is no replacement for the United States. I think we're very open at least to see who steps in—if anyone, hopefully.
Perspectives: Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts with us today.