Skimping in Africa

The United States continues to respond to the African emergency with generosity and relative efficiency while failing to mount an appropriate long-term program to address the fundamental problems. This only invites a prolongation of the emergency and a deepening of the suffering.

There will be another example of this flawed policy today when the American delegation sits as bystander rather than participant at a World Bank meeting in Paris. The meeting was called to create a special billion-dollar emergency fund to accelerate reforms deemed essential to reverse the economic decline in Africa. The United States has chosen to support the Special African Facility at the World Bank in words only, without dollars.

Instead, the U.S. government is seeking to address the same goals with its own Economic Policy Initiative, a $500-million, five-year program to reward African nations that implement economic and political reforms judged effective in solving development problems. The American program will be closely coordinated with that of the World Bank, American officials have said, but that coordination cannot eliminate the additional overhead costs and political handicaps inherent in trying to use bilateral aid to leverage political changes in another nation. International agencies can do it more effectively and efficiently.

Long-term development in Africa has also been penalized by two other decisions of the U.S. government. The first was the insistence last year on a $3-billion reduction in the replenishment of the International Development Assn., the highly effective concessionary arm of the World Bank serving poor nations. The second was the cancellation of government funding for the International Planned Parenthood Federation earlier this month, just as the organization was launching new programs to bring birth-control programs to Africa, now beset by the world’s highest birthrates.

Yet another test of the U.S. government commitment to solutions will come next month, when negotiations are renewed on a replenishment of the International Fund for Agricultural Development--a program now jeopardized by a quarrel over shares between the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and the Western donors.

Long-term solutions have been further frustrated by the present policy in Washington to put more emphasis on bilateral, security-oriented aid.

America’s generosity in responding to the food emergency in Africa contrasts with its regular aid program. There is competition between Congress and the executive to provide additional emergency funds. About 2 million tons of food, 50% more than in any previous year, already are committed, and, with a supplementary request now pending before Congress, the Africa program during this fiscal year will equal $1 billion.

Some of the American response has been more apparent than real. The Peace Corps call for 600 volunteers to help resolve Africa’s agriculture crisis was a dramatic gesture, and the response of 6,000 Americans in six days showed the eagerness of Americans to help. The initiative would have been more impressive, however, had it represented an expansion of the Peace Corps program rather than merely a reallocation of its pinched resources, cut again in the budget proposed for next year. And many experts would argue that a more substantial investment in long-term research on the particularly complex problems of agriculture in Africa would have made it more likely that persons trained on American farms could help in Africa.

The spirit inherent in the response of the United States to the emergency may yet be translated into support of the long-term programs that are so critically needed. That is a particular leadership challenge to the Administration in Washington--a challenge not yet accepted.