The President of the United States of America, Mr Donald J Trump was recently under some serious scrutiny from both international and local voices for referring to African Countries and Haiti as “****hole” in a recent meeting with USA officials. Initially I was outraged as were many Africans, statements were coming through from African leaders exhibiting not only dismay but outrage at the reported slur, I was more outraged about the fact that he referred to Africa as a country. I mean, if you are going to insult Africa, at least do it right.

A few days after the fact, I took a step back and looked at our great beautiful continent and realised that it is not all Roses and Zebras. Our Capital Lusaka was just hit with a Cholera outbreak, a disease that most countries have rid themselves of and is mostly prevalent in war zones and refugee camps where sanitation is not a priority but safety is, a disease of the dark ages preventable by cleanliness, sanitation and a good water supply, things that a 50-year-old country in the 21st century should not fail to provide its people with. Economic statistics from the UN show that 60% of Zambians live below the poverty line and 42% are in extreme poverty. A majority of our population are rarely delved into by the media both state and private due to their heavy concentration on the who’s who in the petty politics that drive this county.Also mostly because their existence is of no considerable importance to the dynamics of a country that has decided to confine itself along the line of rail, a population with no running water, no stable income, no electricity, that lives in huts and a has an extremely low standard of living. During election season you get to hear about all the problems faced by people from constituencies you’ve never even heard of and the multitude of promises our Politicians make to them but as soon as they enter office, well let’s just say million-dollar fire trucks become the priority. The “****hole” statement doesn’t seem farfetched after all.

Before I get labelled partisan, understand that I have lost all confidence in the current political dispensation and its players that govern it as being the key to our development and firmly believe a systemic redefinition of both our economic systems and political ideals will be the only way to change the face of this country and by extension this continent of ****hole countries. I have chosen to embrace the statement because constantly denying that we live in a ****hole country will only blind ourselves to the opportunity and zeal to change the status quo.

Why is Africa such a ****hole continent and by default Zambia?

Africa as always been the oxymoronic continent that is richly blessed with an abundance of natural resources but a population of poor individuals. Mubita C Nawa in his 2015 article on Lusaka Times echoed the view that many people outside Africa tend to have, that Africa is in its current poor state as a result of its own undoing citing poor leadership, dependency syndrome, jealousy, laziness and lack of self-belief as the 5 major reasons. I find his reasons laughable quite frankly, to cite jealousy and lack of self-belief as one of the reasons why one of the largest and resource rich continents is this poor is utterly ridiculous. I find the causes are more complex and systemic than a few retrospection notes one would make for themselves after reading a tritely written and generalised motivational book. I will outline a few views that I genuinely believe are the reason for our stagnation.

• Extrapolating form research by R Hausmann, a professor of economic development at Harvard, our inability to make complex products and dependency on exporting mainly raw materials reduces the ability to improve the country’s intellectual workforce, reduces the number of jobs by eliminating those that would have been created along the transition of the good from a simple raw material to a complex final good and it also reduces the additional income a country may have gotten from selling a finished rather than a raw or intermediate good. Countries like China are some of the biggest importers of raw and intermediate goods, no doubt they are one of the largest exporters of finished goods and funny enough, it exports some of them right back to Africa. It basically transformed itself into one big manufacturing hub, no wonder the Chinese are on a quest of world dominance. “Value Addition” has been a song that has been sung by politicians for a long time now but materialisation of it has been minimal, the exact opposite tends to be happening.

Consumerism has become the order of the day with a proliferation of malls that have been selling finished goods made with raw materials mostly from their own countries of origin e.g. Dola Hill Mall in Ndola, a shopping mall owned and operated by the Chinese Individuals, selling Chinese goods with the benefit being only in the form of business taxes, hardly any income tax as a good number of their employees are below the tax bracket or the case of South African retail shops that offer little to no shelf space for Zambian products. Most of these malls are occupied by foreign shops that stock foreign goods. This was a fear echoed by a scholar from the London School of Economics in an article titled Why Zambia’s Mall Mania Poses Serious Problems for the Country’s Development

• Corruption, call it allegedly or not has taken deep root on the African continent. Transparency International indicated in one of its surveys indicated that African governments are incapable of providing the most basic of needs to its citizens such as running water because of corruption that trickles down from the top to the bottom of institutional hierarchy. The perpetuation of this corruption can be attributed to the nature of the political and legal framework in most of the countries, Centralisation of Power has rendered anti-corruption organisations such as the equivalent of ACC and also the Judiciary toothless and spineless in the execution of their duty due to the mere fact that no man ever dreams of biting the hand that feeds him. Their accountability switches from the people they swear to serve and instead to the people that gave them the opportunity to serve. Massive decentralisation is key to the crackdown of corruption with key organisation operating without influence from elected officials. The lack of such frameworks have left the Executive Branch of most governments across the continent accountable to no one but themselves. The mentality of “ukulyamo” is good in the short term for an individual but adversely affects the society in the long run.

• Trade and the entire economic system is designed for exploitation by foreign elements. Africa is rich in mineral resources, Zambia in particular sits on copper making it one of the top 8 producers of copper in the world, it also plays home to other valuable minerals, a beautiful scenery that can make an unenlightened tourist beg for double citizenship and is richly blessed with land and water that can feed an entire continent. This is a similar narrative for other African countries but regardless the continent continues to wallow in poverty. Collectively African countries are net creditors owing to the tune of 40+ billion dollars and Zambia’s debt alone has been rising at an alarming rate.2015 estimates show that about 160 billion dollars entered the continent and 203 billion was leaving in many forms

[pullquote]2015 estimates show that about 160 billion dollars entered the continent and 203 billion was leaving in many forms.[/pullquote]

The efflux of revenue from the continent is NOT largely facilitated by Multinational Corporations (MNCs) in the form of repatriations as is the case with influx but by under the table deals that span everything from cooked books in tax havens to illegal logging. About 30 billion dollars was stolen from the continent in the form of illegal logging, fishing and wildlife, 68 billion dollars in the form of tax misreporting by MNCs, 37 billion dollars in the cost of adapting and mitigating to climate change that is a result of industrialized country’s effect on the environment, these and other examples of wealth efflux in Africa leaves the continent a net producer of wealth not for its people but the for rest of the world.

Africa looks good on paper, generating ponderable amount of revenue, but sadly the benefit to the governments and its people is only marginal as most of the profits generated within the economies are repatriated, the loss is further exacerbated by low taxes for MNCs, tax incentives promised by the governments in their desperate search for foreign direct investment and MNCs’s use of tax havens. This is evident in which most of the money generated by the Zambian government is from income tax (e.g. PAYE) and taxes on its own people rather than from the existence and exploitation of its resources by foreign elements. Wealth is not being generated in the country because our natural resources keep being exploited by foreign elements, our home economy can play example to that where the government through institutions only owns between 5%-20% of the shares in industries such as mining and hardly any shares in some. Aid, Loans and Foreign Investors in a way perpetuate such systems in their demand for incentives to pour money into the country that leave governments with unfavourable concessions to make. Furthermore, the inability of governments to protect and shield their small and emerging industries leaves the country crippled. Most of the economic policies that have been pushed down the throat of African governments that encourage foreign investment and its liberalisation have been to the benefit of corporations that fund and lobby most of the political parties and institutions in western countries with little to no benefit for Africans themselves. There is need to promote policies that grow and nurture domestic companies as opposed to dependency on foreign direct investment, western countries never developed on foreign investments so I wonder why they push the agenda that it will help in Africa.

• Education and Brain Drain. Many parts of Africa have populations that are unable to access education with ease. Particularly, Zambian Journalists in their rare moments of glory have exposed certain parts of the country where children still learn under trees and have to cross rivers just to get to those trees, this lowers the child’s appreciation of his right to and benefit of education as some would rather enter the informal sector where a prospective substantial income is unlikely. The current state of our public schools in Zambia doesn’t address the skills and knowledge needed by a globally competitive graduate, most Undergraduate Degree holders prefer to further their studies abroad due to the low standard of education offered in the country where sadly most of them choose to never return from as they find better opportunities for personal development, this significantly costs the country in skilled labour, one of the major factors of production. A lot of home grown brilliant individuals are of benefit to overseas countries because of their under appreciation by their home countries.

• Religion and Spirituality in Africa has taken too much of a centre stage as opposed to reason and practicality. For the better running of government, a school of thought proposed the separation of religion and state for which most modern governments have adopted. This prevents the government on leaning on solutions that depend on people’s personal unsubstantiated belief as well as their faith, ties them to adhere to practicality, removes the invocation of religion as a reason why good and bad things are happening and makes the government a little more accountable and less manipulative. If a minister can come out and propose prayer as part of a solution to fight a disease or to encourage nimbus clouds to be more generous with that rain, know that your country’s ideologies are very backwards. Religion as an agenda is someone’s personal life but should never be put on a national one. Secondly the increase in Televangelists commonly known as Prophets in Africa have continuously fed and grew a mind-set that makes certain people entitled to economic prosperity as a form of disbursement for their faith and belief leading them to concentrate more on growing that falsely grounded belief as opposed to them making practical decisions about their finances.
Moving forward we need revaluate as a continent our economic models and position with foreign investors and aid. Promote policies that tie foreign companies to not only utilize local products but aid in bettering the quality of product and the efficacy with which it is produced, ridding ourselves of the ‘resource cruse’ where our economies are primarily focusing on extraction of resources and become a manufacturing hub, unity amongst countries and leaders with emphasis of trading blocs allowing the collective access to natural resources within Africa that will push the continental growth. The revocation of licenses for MNCs that operate or own subsidiaries in tax havens.

Conclusion
The list in not exhaustive as there exists a plethora of reasons why Zambia and Africa as a whole still largely remains underdeveloped.
Country men and women, we cannot pray away bad governance, bad policies, diseases and economic stagnation, we don’t need national days of prayer to develop this country. We need practical solutions, tougher and scrupulous leadership, new economic models, an educated nation not a praying. Haven’t we prayed enough or haven’t we been humble enough while we watch secular nations that don’t even care about religion take over our economies. The time to take action is now before we wake up 50 years into the future wallowing in debt and poverty, with no natural resource to speak of and an abundance of memories left by foreign investors that once roamed the country.
I am now mad again about the ****hole comment because now it’s the systemic exploitation of African countries by foreign corporation that have left these countries in the current state and their leader has no right to insult the state of something he indirectly or directly helps in destroying. Worse, the African leaders that are rebuking his statement are the same that perpetuate the corruption and ignorance that leaves the continent in its current damaged state.

By Toshiki Kucheba