Posted December 25, 2006

It's Christmas.  Today is a day to be with family, to say thanks to friends and to celebrate plenty by giving generously.  Generally, we give most generously to those who are close to us: children, lovers, friends. 

I am not a Christian, but I accept that today is a good day to engage in all of these activities.  Everything is closed, so there is plenty of time and space to be together, to be thankful, and to be generous.  As a non-Christian, I feel no obligation to celebrate the holiday in traditional ways, however.  So let me make a different kind of offering.  This is an offering not to my close friends, but to people I hardly know at all.  This is an offering to Africa.

I am not an expert on Africa, but I hold it, all fifty plus countries and hundreds of millions of people, close to my heart.  I spent nine months in Africa nearly a decade ago, about half of it in Kenya, and half in Zimbabwe.  I passed by overland bus through much of the East and South.  I interviewed ex-freedom fighters in Kenya, suffered a concussion in a traffic accident in Tanzania, lost my bladder in Malawi, interned for an independent magazine in Zimbabwe, and drank beer in Soweto.  I am not an expert on Africa, but I hold it close to my heart.

So today, I want to write of Africa, because that is where many of today's great tragedies are occurring, and very few people are paying any attention.

Many people ask why we should care about Africa.  It is not geo-strategically important, few people live there relative to poor countries like China or India, and, as a perpetual basket-case, even if we wanted to care about it, it seems nearly impossible to understand Africa's savagery and instability. 

In responding to this logic, well-intentioned Western leaders too frequently resort to claims about how Africa actually does affect us.  It is argued that instability in Africa creates conditions for Islamic terrorism to flourish, or for disease to propagate.  Sometimes, we are told, pursuing a different tack, that we must care about Africa because our actions, through our consumption of diamonds, oil, or pharmaceuticals, actually impact on African lives. 

The problem with these arguments is not that they are false.  They are not.  The problem is that they elide an inspiring moral vision in exchange for a cold, rational calculus which is ultimately unpersuasive to most Americans.  In the first place, the notion that it is in our self-interest to care about Africa seems implausible.  What evidence can be brought to bear in defense of this claim?  We have little exposure to Africa in military or commercial terms, relative to other parts of the world, so why should self-interest raise the profile of the continent? 

In the second place, it may be true that our consumption patterns create some link between us and Africans, but it is problematic to assert that trade with Africa is largely a losing proposition for Africans.  If our consumption of diamonds, oil, or pharmaceuticals (or textiles or coffee or other primary goods) makes us responsible for events in Africa, it seems likely that these markets impact in both positive and negative ways on Africans.  Why should we assume that, on net, we are doing more harm than good? We don't worry about the effect of our trade with other partners, like Europe, with whom we trade infinitely more, on their societies.  That is for them to figure out.  On balance, if trade is not in their interests, they can decide not to do it. 

So, in my view, the case for Africa must rest elsewhere.  The case for Africa must rest with the fact that Africa, more than any other region of the world, exemplifies the limits of the American dream.  In Africa, a smart, well-meaning, industrious child, who does her best to play by the rules and get ahead, has a very high chance of failing to thrive, or even survive.  That should bother us. Period.  America's ideology is founded on the belief that if people work hard, try hard, and play by the rules, they should be able to get ahead.  Not everyone is smart enough, talented enough or lucky enough to be a Fortune 500 executive, the president, a movie star.  But everyone can have a comfortable life if they put their minds to it, and their hearts in it.

This belief is based on the notion that America is an "opportunity" society.  John Locke once wrote that in the beginning, all of the world was America.  He meant by this that all of the world was open space, with boundless opportunities for individuals who were willing to labor.  Locke understood, however, as did all of the "social contract" theorists of government, and America's founding fathers, that labor could only yield progress when there were institutions which protected property and rewarded diligence.  These institutions were not the creation of individuals, but of communities.  Therefore, the edifice upon which the American dream is founded presupposes the existence of institutions which reward work, investment, and creativity.  No man is an island, and no man's accomplishments are his alone.  He owes society a great debt for creating conditions which allow him to prosper.

Peter Singer made a similar argument in his recent piece on the proper levels of charity which private citizens ought to render to the poor.  He wrote:

"People can earn large amounts only when they live under favorable social circumstances, and… they don't create those circumstances by themselves. I could have quoted Warren Buffett's acknowledgment that society is responsible for much of his wealth. "If you stick me down in the middle of Bangladesh or Peru," he said, "you'll find out how much this talent is going to produce in the wrong kind of soil." The Nobel Prize-winning economist and social scientist Herbert Simon estimated that "social capital" is responsible for at least 90 percent of what people earn in wealthy societies like those of the United States or northwestern Europe. By social capital Simon meant not only natural resources but, more important, the technology and organizational skills in the community, and the presence of good government. These are the foundation on which the rich can begin their work. "On moral grounds," Simon added, "we could argue for a flat income tax of 90 percent." Simon was not, of course, advocating so steep a rate of tax, for he was well aware of disincentive effects. But his estimate does undermine the argument that the rich are entitled to keep their wealth because it is all a result of their hard work. If Simon is right, that is true of at most 10 percent of it."

As always, one may quibble with the details of Singer's argument (i.e., maybe Simon's estimate is too high), but the core is sound.  If Buffet is correct, and I think he is, we should be disturbed when a large region of the world does not provide opportunities for people who wish to excel.  Of course, self-interest tells us that we all lose when talented people die young or are unable to contribute to society because of their circumstances.  But we don't need self-interest to tell us that we should be upset and angry when this happens.  We should be upset simply because it is unfair, regardless of whether it affects us directly or not.

And so we should be upset about Africa.  In the second part of this post, I will explore recent events on the continent, events which should make us angry, concerned and active.