Only So Much Outsiders Can Do By: George Ayittey Alarmed by the deteriorating situation in Africa, the international and donor communities have sought to mobilize resources. On December 14, 1999, the Strategic Partnership with Africa (SPA) in Paris pledged $3.7 billion from donors for poverty reduction and economic development in Africa over the next three years. That is in addition to the debt relief agreed to in September 1999 under the Enhanced Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative and the nearly $5 billion expected from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Since 1988 SPA has mobilized $18 billion in assistance for Africa. To be sure, AIDS and chaos in Africa threaten not only the continent’s economic future but also global security and stability. But there is only so much the international community can do. Without strong political commitment on the part of African leaders, well-intentioned initiatives are doomed to fail. Indeed, similar high-profile crash initiatives for Africa have in the past failed miserably. Back in 1986 the United Nations held a highly publicized special session on Africa. It got nowhere. A decade later the United Nations launched a $25 billion “system-wide special initiative on Africa” to revive development. Boutros Boutros-Gali, U.N. secretary-general at the time, warned that Africa was in danger of becoming the “lost continent.” Not one African head of state bothered to attend last September’s annual conference on AIDS in Africa in Lusaka, Zambia. Notably absent was the president of the host country, Frederick Chiluba, whose office was just minutes away and whose own minister of local government and housing, Bennie Mwiinga, died of AIDS on the eve of the conference. (The official cause of death was listed as something else.) We have been in denial African government officials for years dismissed AIDS as a “racist conspiracy plot” invented by the West. “For a long time we have been in denial. We looked at AIDS as a foreign problem, involving white people, foreign people,” said Mary Kanya, Swaziland’s ambassador to the United States. Half-baked attempts were made at public education. Existing AIDS-related laws seldom were enforced. Only two countries made serious efforts to confront the AIDS epidemic. Senegal managed to hold its infection rate below 2 percent of the adult population. Uganda, through intensive public education, condom distribution, voluntary testing and counseling services, cut its infection rate from 15 percent to below 10 percent in the 1990s. The others prefer to allocate scarce resources for the procurement of arms to crush an indigent population and prosecute senseless wars. Even in those countries at peace, government priorities are grotesquely misaligned. South Africa, for example, faces the fastest-growing AIDS crisis in Africa: 1,700 people contract HIV every day and within five years more than 6 million of its 40 million people will have the virus. Morna Cornell of the Johannesburg-based AIDS Consortium, a clearinghouse for organizations fighting the epidemic, estimates that in the next five to 10 years 3.5 million South Africans will die of AIDS. And this is the country -- of all those in sub-Saharan Africa -- that is best equipped to deal with the AIDS crisis. It is relatively more developed and has the infrastructure and health care delivery systems. A paradigm shift is needed The new millennium calls for a paradigm shift: a new approach and a complete overhaul of how the international community deals with Africa’s problems. Africa cannot enter the new millennium preoccupied with violence, war and political instability. Sustainable development cannot occur in such an environment. Nor can control of the AIDS epidemic. Attempts by African leaders, governments and the Organization of African Unity (OAU) to resolve conflicts have been unimpressive. ACTIONS: >> email this article to a friend  >> react to this article  >> more articles Note: Please email your opinion to op-ed@majalla.org; Op-Ed articles are not peer-reviewed. New Op-Ed articles are published monthly, and as special edition when warranted