Sunday, August 02, 2009

Africa: On The Rise



Fareed Zakaria, the author of The Future of Freedom and host of CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS, recently wrote an article in Newsweek about Obama’s address in Ghana. In the piece, he commended Obama’s choice to highlight African success.

“One of the great underreported stories of the last decade has been the rise of this new Africa…The OECD reports that, in a first, Africa gets more money from investors than from foreign aid. The continent remains poor, disease-stricken, and often poorly governed. But for the first time in a long time, there is forward momentum,” Zakaria wrote in his article, Africa’s New Path.

Zakaria also praised Paul Kagame’s leadership for ending the genocide in Rwanda. Now, Rwanda is being rebuilt and is stable. The country has a national health-care system, increasing education rates and lowering levels of corruption. Kagame also stresses self-reliance, sharing a similar philosophy as Zambian economist Dambisa Moyo.

“The debate against good and bad aid misses the point,” Moyo said. “Aid must do things that wean people off aid – if not, aid is a failure.”

Zakaria believes that because of Kagame’s insistence on self-reliance, Africa’s future looks promising.

“He [Kagame] provides an intriguing picture of what a more hopeful African future might look like –driven by capitalism, pride, indigenous traditions, and a prickly nationalism that insists on finding its own path to success,” Zakaria writes.

-- Jaimie Hwang

Source: Newsweek