© 2006 The Seattle Times Company

I’m a great advocate of teaching men to fish. That is, as opposed to giving them fish. With few exceptions, any man who does not know how to fish, no matter how many fish he is given, will end up going hungry again. Such is Bill Gates’ insight into the problem of hunger in Africa. True, hunger is only one of the many, many problems in Africa, but you have to start from the ground up. Bill and Melinda Gates, in association with the Rockefeller Foundation, have formed the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, aimed at helping Africans improve their farming techniques and technology rather than simply giving them money and food. The purpose is, as Melinda Gates puts it, “…to help millions of the most vulnerable people in Africa lift themselves out of poverty.” Key words? “Lift themselves.” Teaching Africans to fish. No change forced upon a society can have lasting results; they must come to it by their own will and effort. Africans will never rise from hunger and poverty by having food and clothes thrown at them. What we need to give them is the process, not the end result. Africa must develop through their own effort and industry, but we can certainly help them along the way.

We’ve seen most of the world get considerably wealthier over the last decade. Of course the glowing example is China, where what used to be considered wealthy is now common. Africa, however, is a frustrating anomaly. A problem which I, for once, will not declare that capitalism can solve. At least not yet. Even if multinational corporations setting up shop in Africa were to provide wages above sustenance level, economic progress is negligible if your government is corrupt and ineffective at providing a stable banking system and reliable regulatory environment. Nobody saves if inflation and crime are likely to wipe out those savings. Slow progress is no progress if you have civil wars that wipe out the infrastructure every decade.

As much as we’d all love to see the worst African nations become global players, or even be able to grow enough to be considered remotely adequate, the African economy is not the first problem in line, and couldn’t be addressed before the others anyway. The first is hunger- creating food production with substantial local results, so it doesn’t need to be delivered through a broken economy with a corrupt government. Greater crop yields will help the economy when Africa reaches that stage, but right now, people simply need food. The next problems: corruption and violence. I couldn’t even begin to say how we address these problems. If history is any basis for a guess, then once Africa is able to produce more and lift itself further out of poverty, intolerance and violence will begin to decline. Corruption? Well as we’ve seen in Iraq, lasting beneficial changes to a government can’t be forced by foreign powers. The best we can do is support political parties in favor of fair and honest governments and let the people of Africa make that happen themselves. I’m no expert on social or political matters, but I can tell you that with greater production in a stable landscape with a fair and responsible government, economic growth will occur. In many years, African nations may begin to become forces in the global market. However, this is a point which Africans must come to through their endeavor. Until then, the best thing we can do is teach them to fish.