What Africa Really Needs

Robert B. Reich
July 08, 2005



Robert B. Reich is the Maurice B. Hexter Professor of Social and Economic Policy at Brandeis University, and was the secretary of labor under former President Bill Clinton.

The average income per person in Africa is 11 percent lower today than it was 40 years ago.

That’s the bad news. Here’s the good: Ministers from the world’s eight richest nations agreed last month to write off $40 billion in debt owed by 18 of the world’s poorest nations, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa. African countries now spend up to 40 percent of their budgets on debt repayments, more than they spend on health or education. So debt relief will make a big difference.

And this week, the heads of the G8 nations getting together in Gleneagles, Scotland, hope to forge an agreement to double foreign aid to Africa to an eventual $25 billion a year.

But neither debt relief nor direct aid will give Africa and other poor nations what they really need to rise steadily out of poverty. They need to export what th