What was it again that Bill Clinton was saying when he made his historic trip to Africa? Ah, yes: the first U.S. president ever to tour the continent, Clinton pledged that a new era was at hand. Since Africans themselves had set about putting their house in order–overthrowing corrupt dictators like Zaire’s Mobutu, establishing free-market economies and moving toward democracy–America would help. It would pay more attention to the continent and, at the very least, open its markets to African exports. But the administration failed to get a pro-Africa trade bill passed, partly because it didn’t try very hard. Except for a recent decision to join with the rest of the rich nations in forgiving some developing-world debts, America has given Africa little attention since Clinton went home. Despite the strides Africa has made this decade, it finds itself more isolated and ignored than at any time in recent memory.
In the three and a half years I have covered Africa for NEWSWEEK, the continent has undergone a remarkable transformation. After decades of stagnation and regression, Africa has awakened. The majority of its 750 million people live under elected governments for the first time ever. There remain massive problems, from widespread poverty to the eruption or reignition of civil and regional wars. But most of the continent is free and at peace. Yet despite the promises of Clinton (and other Western leaders) to help Africa, indifference, ignorance and cynicism still best describe the West’s attitude.
Nowhere is that clearer than Angola. The World Food Program says its latest request for money from donors like the United States, Europe and Japan has been all but ignored. WFP officials in Luanda say that food and personnel have been diverted to Kosovo, even though Kosovo had fewer refugees than Angola and they faced no threat of starvation. (“In Kosovo they got cell phones and psychological counseling; all we are asking for is maize,” gripes one WFP staffer.) NGOs, U.S. diplomats, African governments and even senior Clinton administration officials lament the desertion of the continent. “For Africa to have ever believed the West was going to help is a folly they have been well disabused of now,” says Millard Arnold, America’s minister-counselor for commercial affairs in South Africa.
Why has Africa been forsaken–again? Donor fatigue, disillusionment, racism, the emerging-market crisis, geography. (Though one Western diplomat in Luanda says Slobodan Milosevic and UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi are “the same person, egomaniacal ideologues bent on destruction and ethnic hatred,” no one expects the U.S. Air Force to bomb Savimbi into submission.) Indeed, as it becomes clear that aid can accomplish only so much, some diplomats and aid workers are taking a depressing view. Just as Europe had to suffer the wars and plagues of the Dark Ages before it could be reborn, the argument goes, so perhaps must Africa pass through a period of AIDS and bloodshed.
Not everyone thinks that way. The plan to forgive billions of dollars in debt of the poorest countries, announced at the G8 summit two weeks ago, is a sign that there’s still some sentiment for relieving African misery. But it took rock stars like Bono, millions of signatures and thousands of rowdy protesters to make it happen, and even then, supporters of the debt-relief campaign say it doesn’t go far enough.
But there are reasons for hope–from within Africa, not from without. Thabo Mbeki’s inauguration as South Africa’s second democratic president this month was a milestone for the continent. So was Olusegun Obasanjo’s coming to power in Nigeria in May after decades of dictatorship. World-class leaders of black Africa’s biggest economies, they are expected by observers to work as a team, tackling African wars and creating an axis of stability that will attract international investment. “For the first time, with South Africa and Nigeria no longer pariah states,” says Arnold, “you can see possibilities where before there were none.” The West may disappoint, he says, but what matters most for Africa’s future is this developing partnership.
I tend to agree. But real stability will be years–or generations–in the making. Eventually, I believe, Africa will prosper. With luck, the West will be there to smooth the worst bumps along the way. And maybe even to keep Felix Sambimbi from starving to death in the meanwhile.
