Retreat from Africa

Continent's Momentum for Change Stalls

THE WINDS of change that blew across Africa at the end of the Cold War have stalled. Economic reforms that promised to bring back foreign capital investment have thus far only deepened Africa's dependency on foreign aid. The pace of political transition that saw no less than nine leaders toppled by gun or ballot in the nine months following the fall of 1990 has slowed to a crawl, as many incumbent regimes have managed to maintain military control while outmaneuvering splintered oppositions.

But the greatest failure of reform-both economic and political-may be that it is overwhelmingly urban, while Africa is not. Structural adjustment programs have succeeded in getting import prices "right," but fertilizer, for instance, is now beyond the reach of the average farmer. In most countries the creation of new political parties has not directly involved those outside the existing urban political class and has neglected the majority rural poor. Moreover, many of the most prominent new-breed politicians are simply refashioned opportunists of Cold War vintage. Thus while a majority of the one-party systems that dominated Africa's landscape since independence have collapsed under a combination of internal and external economic and political pressures, the narrow concentration of power within most states remains unchanged.

It is becoming all too apparent that political freedom will not address Africa's appalling economic condition. In many countries, in fact, the result is just the opposite: the civil disorder accompanying political reform has only reduced foreign capital inflows and racked the rural poor. A nightmare scenario may be building: a two-tiered Africa where existing political and economic elites reintegrate with the global economy via Western-sponsored "reform," while increasingly isolated rural populations are integrated internationally as perpetual recipients of humanitarian aid.

Declining American Interest

THE UNITED States has been retreating from Job's continent since the implosion of the Soviet Union set America free to pursue its own interests in Africa-and it found it did not have any.