A position paper for the Secretary of State for International Development, which identifies the underlying causes of contemporary Africa’s most urgent difficulties and discusses policy options for leading Western governments in assisting in addressing these causes

	If the West wishes to help Africans address their problems, it must both identify what these difficulties are, and attempt to explain why they have happened. This seems obvious enough, yet the failure to understand historical, economic and political causality has been a huge obstacle to assisting Africa in the last few decades. Indeed, this lack of analysis has also created problems, as well as exacerbating existing ones. If we want to improve the lives of Africans, both now in the future, we must re-examine fundamentally the way we consider Africa, and ultimately, the way we consider ourselves. The way in which we presently understand Africa constitutes a failed paradigm, and our actions at present, particularly in terms of trade, are damaging to Africans.

	This paper therefore proposes the following recommendations:

	1) That Western governments, including our own, carefully re-evaluate our economic actions so as to minimise their negative impact on Africa
	2) That specific interventions intended to assist Africa consider fully the specific features of African environments and societies

	A definition of a 'difficulty' is required. The reduction of human suffering is the over-arching ambition of most development initiatives, and it is in these terms that we need to consider the problems that exist in Africa. For this purpose, poverty is best expressed in absolute terms. The criticisms of a 'subsistence definition', which are well summarised by Webster, are significant, but it is still a useful concept here as it provides a basis for examining where the need is greatest, as well as a framework for monitoring whether or not interventions have improved the lives of the most vulnerable. 

	Disease, whether widespread and endemic like malaria, or epidemic like HIV/AIDS is a clear cause of human suffering. Violent conflict will also destroy people's lives, both directly and in the damage it does to essential infrastructure. Environmental disasters and agricultural underproduction can both cause famine on a mass scale. Yet, Africa seems to suffer these problems far more often than the West, or at least, it appears less able to cope with them. The task therefore becomes to locate the source of these weaknesses, or more specifically, to explain why the nation-state is weaker in Africa than in the West. This core issue is addressed by Herbst, as he contends that geographical context in Africa has been the key issue in shaping political development. He notes that large parts of Africa are unable to support the kind of dense population that exists in Europe, and therefore "the fundamental problem confronting leaders of almost all African states" has remained the same; that is "how to broadcast power over sparsely settled lands". Herbst, therefore, argues that the modes of governance in Africa are not irrational, but in fact a logical response to the geographical conditions. 

	Related to Herbst argument is the nature of the colonial period, and the way in which it has shaped the subsequent era of independence. The reason that the colonial period is important in causing contemporary difficulties is simple; African leader at the time of independence did not inherit a 'clean slate' on which they could create a society, but instead an influential set of institutions and structures. In discussing the options of post-Independence leaders, Davidson comments that "it seemed impossible to reject any significant part of the [colonial] legacy". This meant adopting 'gate-keeper states', as Cooper describes them, which were in largely created with the intent of economic extraction, rather than meaningful development for the colonial subjects. This form of government was by no means torn down at the birth of independence; instead "when the colonial empires fell apart, African leaders also faced the temptation to strengthen their control of narrow channels, rather than widen and deepen forms of connection across space".  In other words, at the start of the independence era, African leaders faced massive challenges if they were to meaningfully develop their states; as they were burdened with state apparatus attuned to the wrong goals, as well the more fundamental problems of the political geography. 

Perhaps the most striking example of the longevity of the colonial legacy is the also the most obvious; the fact that the imperial map was retained with hardly any significant alterations. This restricted the ability of Africans to grasp the potential afforded to them by Independence, as the optimism and enthusiasm of the period could only be "expressed within the confines of the colonial state". The importance of this is exemplified by the failure of Africa to unite as a continent. While the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) has demonstrated, as Chazan et al state, that “African leaders are conscious of the utility of co-operation”, their pre-occupation with the sanctity of the nation-state has prevented intervention into long-running conflicts which might otherwise have been resolved more rapidly, especially in situations where certain ethnic groups, trapped by the artificial boundaries of the imperial era, have fought against the post-Independence state in a seemingly legitimate struggle for self-determination; in the areas now know as Western Sahara and Eritrea, for example.

It would, however, be a naïve analytical error to place the blame for contemporary African problems completely on the shoulders of the Europeans powers during the imperial era. The cliché of the inept, corrupt and violent leader is, unfortunately, not without a kernel of truth, with Mobutu’s ‘kleptocratic’ regime providing an extreme example of this. However, as even a skilled, committed leader such as Nyerere of Tanzania was apparently unable to bring prosperity to his people, the possibility that any all African states were doomed to failure must be considered. The grounds for this are largely economic. The industrial development of Africa depended heavily on two important external resources; capital, in the form of loans, and goods, particularly machinery and oil. These resources initially poured into Africa in massive quantities, not least because the Soviet Union and the United States considered it necessary to nurture spheres of influence to protect themselves against each other. These resources often spent badly; much was lost in corrupt or badly planned projects. However, as George argues in her analysis of third-world debt, "there were some completely unavoidable reasons for incurring debt, which had nothing to do with the choices of the borrowers themselves". These particularly relate to rising price of oil, itself an important commodity for Africa, as it led to an increase in the price of a whole range of essential industrial goods. These factors, combined with rising interest rates, stifled the progress of even the most efficient African economies. The response of the West to this crisis was to analyse African economies in comparison to Western ones, and see that the problem was in excessive state expenditure and restriction of trade, both of which, it was held, would inhibit growth. Further debt, which was necessary for African governments to stay afloat, was made conditional on their acceptance of ‘austerity’ or ‘structural adjustment’ programmes, which followed neo-liberal economic principles of ‘small government’ and free trade.

	The structural adjustment policies have failed to become Africa’s ‘magic medicine’ for reasons that underline the argument put forward in this paper’s introduction; that is, the need to re-examine fundamentally the paradigm in which we consider Africa. Firstly, as Chabal and Daloz argue, there is the idea that Africa societies are certain to progress in the same way as Western ones, and that they are currently at either “the initial stage of development or the dark opposite of what Western civilization is taken to represent”. In this prescriptive, normative view, the only solution can be to try to ‘Westernize’ as far as possible. There are two important objections to this view, and they form the basis of the recommendation of this paper. The first objection is that a de facto enforcement of neo-liberal economic, which is what IMF/World Bank conditionality amounts to, is hypocritical in the extreme when considered vis-à-vis US and EU protectionist trade practicees, which ensure that key markets, particularly agriculture, are not open to foreign competition. These can either take the form of import tariffs, or production subsidies, such a the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy, the latter of which is can be particularly damaging as it can result in produce being exported to African nations at artificially low prices, harming local industry.

	The second is the broader objection to considering Africa in Western terms. As discussed above, Africa’s political geography is substantially different from the West. Similarly, Africa’s point of insertion into the globalized economy is very different to the West’s. According to Chabal and Daloz, Africans have a very different reality, and a very different set of resources, and therefore a different rationality. This is a useful analytical paradigm, as it allows us to consider the possibility that Africa has entered an era of modernity in the Weberian sense, that is, one where rationality informs the principal decision making of individuals, but this rationality is different to our own. It helps “to explain how apparent disorder can have its own logic”, and demonstrates the reasoning behind apparent chaotic, damaging short-term choices. This does not mean, however, that it is necessary to accept its conclusion that corruption is an unavoidable part of African life, and that Western governments should therefore not attempt to curb it, as this ignores the very real suffering that the misdirection of resources causes. Nor does it seem essential to accept Bayart et al’s pessimistic interpretation of an unchangeable link “between illicit economic activity and primitive capitalist accumulation"

	The second recommendation of this report, as stated above, relates to the way that Western governments assist in a specific problem, for example, a famine, or the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Much has been written by NGO workers, political scientists, economists and so on about why certain development projects have failed, and why others have succeeded. It is now the task of political science to collate this work, bearing in mind the specificity of African conditions, so that our future actions will be better adapted to the task.	

	Perhaps decades from now, the post-modern analysis of Hecht and Simone will prove prophetic in that the ‘disorder’ now experienced will leave Africans “ well-prepared to act in a future devoid of national or international cohesiveness”, but this does make it necessary to accept present-day suffering as unavoidable and impossible to reduce. The denial of the possibility of meaningful social action in dealing with poverty, in assertions such as “"There is seldom all the much that Africans can do about this situation” does not seem to tally with genuine success stories of various development projects.

	A final comment needs to made about the environment. While Kaplan’s nightmarish future of a chaotic, violent future seems speculative and slightly cavalier in its selection and interpretation of recent global politics, we cannot ignore his assertion that “Environmental issues inflame existing hatreds” and be a potential source of serious conflict. Steps must therefore be taken to both encourage sustainable usage of the environment in Africa, and to moderate our own practices.

	It is difficult to reach a firm conclusion about the right course of action in dealing with such broad, complex problems, but it can be hoped that by reducing practices that damage Africans and encouraging carefully planned ones that help her, the basic human suffering in Africa can be reduced.