The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2006

means that there cannot be anything like satisfactory solutions to many of their major problems without some kind, and some degree, of what Mandelbaum calls “global gover- nance.” Retired FSO Parker Wyman served in Berlin, Cairo, Duesseldorf, Milan, Tay Ninh (South Vietnam), Addis Ababa and Lagos, as well as in Washington, D.C. For 11 years following retire- ment he helped develop specialized computer programs for use by the Foreign Service and the State Department. Tough Love The Trouble with Africa: Why Foreign Aid Isn’t Working Robert Calderisi, St. Martin’s Press, 2006, $24.95, hardcover, 230 pages. R EVIEWED BY D AVID C ASAVIS Over the past half-century, many grand schemes have been launched to fix Africa’s woes, often accompanied by huge sums of money. So why is much of the continent still in dire straits? In The Trouble with Africa: Why Foreign Aid Isn’t Working , Robert Calderisi has a ready answer: “The simplest way to explain Africa’s prob- lems is that it has never known good government.” A retired World Bank spokesman for Africa, Calderisi makes full use of the ammunition he gathered during his 22-year career there. He dismisses the Bank’s Chad oil watchdog commit- tee as more interested in receiving diplomatic passports and traveling first class, with all the perks, than in mak- ing sure that President Idriss Deby’s government spends revenues from the Chad-Cameroon pipeline properly. Because of this and other failures, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have been nicknamed “the Masters of Disaster” in some parts of the continent. The author concedes that there is plenty of blame to go around, to be sure. He lists several prominent NGOs as being better known for “pompous officials, padded budgets, stuffy reports and incessant self-con- gratulation than for any real progress in pooling national resources.” At the same time, he identifies African traits that he says work against develop- ment, chief among them “petty com- petition among enlarged egos.” In his view, Western aid is actually slowing down democratization in Africa, as it props up dictators while doing nothing for the suffering mass- es. For support, he quotes no less an authority than former Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere: “If our effort slackens, [donors] will — and should — lose interest in cooperating with us for our benefit.” Again and again he returns to the theme that aid works best when recipient governments are already on the right track. He even argues that countries like the Congo (formerly Zaire) that are too far gone to be reformed should be allowed to fail and break up, reasoning that things could hardly get worse. He also quotes some average Africans who wish European colonialists would return. Conversely, Calderisi advocates increasing Western aid to the conti- nent’s few successes — Tanzania, Mozambique, Ghana, Uganda and Mali — and other countries that are serious about reducing poverty. Calderisi’s human touch is what draws the reader through often grim reading. He vividly illustrates the cumulative impact of day-to-day cor- ruption, such as the need to hand over a month’s farming income just to obtain a burial certificate, or the tradi- tion of heads of state buying new pres- idential airplanes as soon as aid money arrives. And he explains why desper- ately poor farmers “tip” a school- teacher to have a son or daughter seat- ed in the front few rows: in a class of 150 to 200, that is the only way to ensure they get any attention. Those new to Africa will find this book a breathless tour across a conti- nent four times the size of the United States. Those formulating policy might want to concentrate on the country case studies laid out in the middle of the book. And Africa hands will find Chapter 12 of particular interest: it lays out 10 ways to change the continent. Whether one agrees with Calderi- si’s basic thesis that less aid is best, there can be no doubt of his sincere commitment to improving the lives of Africans. He repeatedly hails the indomitable spirit of the continent’s many, varied denizens who, he believes, have nothing to lose but their exploiters. David Casavis has worked for the Commerce and Homeland Security departments. He has just completed a book on visa fraud. J U LY- A U G U S T 2 0 0 6 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 51 B O O K S Calderisi believes Western aid is actually slowing down democratization in Africa by propping up dictators.