How to aid - that is the question

How to aid - that is the question

Much is made of Africa's difficulties in the post-colonial era. What is the way forward, the key to the much-vaunted African renaissance? Is it foreign aid, Thabo Mbeki's NEPAD, the new African Union? It is worthwhile debating these issues of progress when free and fair elections are a relative rarity on the continent, when the ‘president for life' syndrome still exists, when corruption plagues many aspects of political, economic and even everyday life? In the face of the apparent failure, and even far reaching damage, of outside involvement, an African solution to an African problem is surely the way forward. This is not to say the rest of the world does not have a role to play. Far from it: markets, trading partners and allies are all indispensable assets in the modern world. Perhaps the most important role for Europeans, Americans, Asians and Australasians however, is that of the visitor.

Fair Trade?

Tourism, and more particularly eco-tourism, is often held up as the panacea for the so-called developing world - a way of realising foreign currency without the usual trade-offs of unsustainable development and one-way traffic of resources out of said countries. As the developed First World nations produce more and more pollution and lose their natural resources to industrial and other development, so the less developed Third World nations and their largely untapped resources become more and more valuable. In the day and age of the global village there is much to be said for an economic return on undeveloped resources. For example the Amazon rainforest and the role it plays as a sink for carbon and a producer of oxygen is an integral and essential aspect of the well-being of all the world's countries. Perhaps Brazil and other forested nations should be reimbursed by the First World polluters for not developing (or exploiting) their heritage in much the same manner that US farmers on marginal prairie lands have been paid not to work the land. This concept may in fact even penetrate popular consciousness and an American rock band recently ‘bought' (in the form of a donation) a certain acreage of rainforest land that counterbalanced the negative ecological effect their upcoming world tour would have.

The fastest growing industry

Even if this ‘trade' goes against the grain for some, another, perhaps more realistic way of making these natural resources pay in a sustainable way is through tourism. The leisure industry has been widely acknowledged as the world's fastest growing sector (although who knows how this may change in a ‘new world order') and in South Africa during 2002 tourism contributed R72,5 billion ($9 billion) to the GDP while providing 1,5 million jobs. This was as a result of 1,8 million overseas visitors visiting the country and spending R17,3 billion ($2 billion) in the Western Cape province alone. Impressive for a country that until recently (read 1994) had a limited tourist infrastructure.

While most of this Western Cape expenditure of course occurred in Cape Town and along the Garden Route of the southern coastline, it does help in protecting natural areas of the spectacularly diverse Cape Floral Kingdom. With wildlife high on the agenda of many foreign visitors, there are an increasing number of private games reserves being formed from formerly marginal farms in the Western Cape. With the axis of the Garden Route this has extended eastwards into the Eastern Cape where ambitious plans are afoot to greatly expand the Addo National Park and even include an important stretch of coastline. High time one might say, but of course without the support of visitors not much of this would be sustainable. It is a recipe that can be followed in the rest of Africa where natural resources are abundant and often untouched, but of course must be preceded by peace, security, transparency and genuine multiparty democracy which, to loosely borrow a phrase, is implemented ‘by the people for the people'. You can take a horse to water ... as the saying goes.

-Chris Roche-

Posted: Other by CC Africa, Date: 21 November 2006