Bill Clinton: Africa - a continent ready to fulfil its potential

 
South Africa farmers
27 June 2012
WEST END FINAL

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We are living in the most interdependent time in history. The evidence is all around us. Wealth and talent now cross borders that are more like nets than walls but so do less positive forces. The financial crisis that started in the United States and swept the globe proved just how deeply our social and economic fates are intertwined — we can’t escape each other any more.

The good news is that we have more power than ever to build a world of shared values and shared opportunities — and nowhere is this clearer than in Africa.

During my first term as President, when we started looking at ways to support Africa and to build stronger partnerships, it was apparent to me and to my Secretary of Commerce, Ron Brown, that while aid — including debt relief — was important and necessary it would never be enough. So we tried to fashion a policy in which aid, trade and investment could reinforce one another, and in the process build the capacity of our friends in Africa to grow and develop on their own. Behind all of this was the idea that if prosperity were shared more broadly, Africa and the US would both benefit.

So 12 years later, where are we? Thanks in part to policies in the US and internationally that linked trade initiatives and debt relief to good government practices, six of the 10 fastest growing economies are in Africa. The average life expectancy in Sub-Saharan Africa is five years higher, the extreme poverty rate has declined sharply, and the increase in African exports to the US alone has helped create hundreds of thousands of jobs that support millions of people.

A lot of the work I do now with my foundation is based on the idea that while intelligence and hard work are evenly spread throughout the world, opportunity is not. Basic systems that you and I take for granted just aren’t available in many of the places we work; either the government can’t provide these services or the average person can’t afford to buy them from the private sector, and consequently there’s no market. So like many non-governmental organisations in the 21st century, we spend much of our time trying to fill that gap.

One example is the work we do with smallholder farmers in Africa to help them become self-sufficient in agriculture so they can preserve their culture and their right to farm the land. We found that many of the farmers live in remote rural areas without a working transportation system — there aren’t any good roads, and even if there were, most people still couldn’t afford an animal-driven cart much less motor-driven transport.

These farmers, even when they have a successful crop, spend half their income just to get the food to market. So we help these farmers overcome their lack of strong systems by giving them good seeds and fertiliser, and by getting their crops to market. We’ve seen dramatic boosts in both production and income. One individual we worked with — a widow with one child — increased her income fivefold and was able to send her son to school for the first time.

Technology is also playing an increasing role in providing the systems poor countries need. In 2010, a UN report said that the emergence of wireless technology as a common medium has done more to lift people out of poverty than any other technological advance in history. In the poorest countries in the world, every 10 per cent increase in cellphone penetration tends to add almost one per cent a year to GDP growth.

One of the members of the Clinton Global Initiative started a company which allows people in Africa to use their cellphones to text a code to see if their medication is counterfeit or not — addressing a huge problem in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Around the world, cell phones are being used for banking, helping refugees find lost relatives, and allowing small producers such as fishermen find the prevailing market prices for commodities.

When governments, businesses, and non-governmental organisations work together to share expertise and forge creative solutions, everyone can win, not only the people in developing nations but also the corporations and philanthropists involved, by diversifying their businesses, growing their markets, training more potential workers, and, for NGOs, expanding their impact. That’s why I’m grateful to the British Government for maintaining its foreign development assistance even in these difficult times.

This model of creative co-operation also works in well-developed nations in need of reform. The major constraints on growth are instability and inequality. The threat of global warming clouds our future.

Constant conflict and a “winner-take-all” philosophy may work in politics, but in the real world success will come, sooner or later, to those who pursue inclusive societies of shared responsibilities and shared prosperity through networks for creative co-operation.

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