Sanou Mbaye: For Africa to thrive its rulers must see error of their ways

THE slump in prices for Africa's natural resources, which led to chronic deficits in the past, has been reversed. Consumption, fuelled by Asian demand, is rising. For much of Africa, this should mark a decisive break with endemic poverty. But, unless African leaders change their ways, it won't.

Africa is estimated to hold more than 10 per cent of global oil reserves and one-third of cobalt and base metals. South Africa has 40 per cent of the world's gold. Meanwhile, Africa's agricultural potential has barely been touched.

Long-term global demand for Africa's commodities, land, and manpower is unlikely to diminish. China, which has increased trade with Africa five-fold since 2003, has played a leading role in this, which has encouraged investors from elsewhere, including Europe and the US, to rethink their approach to investing in Africa. This has translated into a steady flow of investments. As a result, the IMF forecasts 4.7 per cent GDP growth in sub-Saharan Africa this year, rising to nearly 6 per cent in 2011.

Unfortunately, while the direction of Africa's trade may be changing, its composition - raw-material exports and manufactured imports - is not. In the past 50 years, sub-Saharan Africa has experienced many false dawns. One remembers the 1960s, when the global economy's "long boom" gave Africa a chance to save its surpluses, invest in value-added industries, and increase productivity. Instead, Africa squandered the opportunity on consumption of foreign goods.

This pattern of behaviour conforms to some of the worst undertakings of Africa's elite. Hundreds of years ago, many African kings effectively engaged with the West's rising imperial powers to halt the growth of indigenous industry. Instead of having their peoples begin to manufacture their own goods, these rulers chose to import them from Europe in exchange for slaves.

When slavery was abolished in the mid-19th century, the terms of these rulers' partnership with western colonisers changed from trade in slaves to commodities. After independence in the early 1960s, during the Cold War, many African rulers played the West against the Soviet bloc to retain their predatory economies. Today, they pursue the same goal with the help mainly of China, but also of Iran, Venezuela, and occasionally India and Brazil.

Elite networks continue to conspire with foreign interests to cannibalise their economies and retain the perquisites of power: luxury cars, private jets, bank accounts in tax havens, overseas properties, consumer goods, weaponry, etc. Their contempt for local products extends to health and education: rather than invest in these, they use private overseas health care and schools.

This culture of exploiting Africa's human and natural resources at will - not through entrepreneurial endeavour but by means of predatory politics - is deeply entrenched.The few trade unionists, intellectuals, and others who challenge these regimes usually do not seek to change how the state functions, but rather to ensure they get their "turn to eat".

One might expect national and international non-governmental organisations would fill the gap. Not so. If a few NGOs have achieved great results fighting the ills of Africa's poor, the vast majority are perceived as either a "fifth column" of the West or a refuge for fringe members of the elite who use poverty as another source of lucre.

According to estimates this year, at least $854 billion (543bn) has been siphoned from Africa since 1970 in cumulative capital flight. However, this cost is nothing compared to the scars associated with Africans being seen around the world as the "wretched of the Earth". Apart from war-ravaged regions, only Africa has so many young people - some 60 per cent of the population - who are prepared to brave any danger to flee their land. However painful it is to admit, a fleet of slave ships docking on Africa's shores today would be overrun by willing would-be deportees.

Africa faces a crisis of leadership and governance, owing to a dysfunctional ethos. If Africans want to change this, they cannot spare themselves a collective debate about their elites' complicity in widespread impoverishment.

• Author Sanou Mbaye is a Senegalese economist and a former member of the senior management team of the African Development Bank.