The Challenge for Africa (20 page)

The income of many coffee and tea farmers is extremely low: many cannot pay school fees for their children, or afford to go to the hospital when they or members of their family are sick; the clothes they wear and the food they eat are both of poor quality. They might even need help burying their dead.

Unlike the small-scale farmers, the large-scale coffee farmers, of which there are a number in Kenya, can, like the white settlers before them, deal directly with the government and negotiate a fair price for their product. Cooperatives were recommended to small farmers to allow them to benefit, even as small landowners, from the economies of scale that operate in the marketplace. But the cooperative movement has become so riddled with corruption that far from rescuing the small farmers, it has become the monster within. As much as it behooves the governing elites to be more fair and just to the small farmers, it is also up to the farmers to liberate themselves by demanding better governance from their leaders.

What I found frustrating, alongside the entrenched corruption in the parastatals that had been established with the aim of protecting rather than working against the interests of the Kenyan coffee growers, were the attitudes of some of the farmers themselves. They often didn't give the crop the attention it needed, and instead of working collaboratively to further their collective aims—by, for instance, applying pressure on the Kenyan government to reform the parastatals to ensure a better price from international buyers and reduce the expenses and deductions they were charged; or raise their standards and encourage consistency; or promote the whole region as a prime coffee-growing area—the farmers competed against each other.
Some were unreliable and indeed corrupt themselves, cheating other farmers by inflating the weight of their beans or the amount of coffee or tea they'd delivered to the factory. Others trusted the factory managers blindly because the latter were educated, and thus—so the farmers thought—inclined to be more honest.

Of course, people at the bottom of the economic ladder, like the coffee farmers, have limited power and capacity to negotiate a better deal. That's why it's up to the government to protect them from an inherently exploitative system that preys upon a vulnerable population. When it doesn't, I ask myself:
Is it that the government doesn't see what's happening to the farmers, or that it just refuses to acknowledge their struggle, because elites benefit from the current system governing cash crops like coffee, tea, and sugarcane?

Another example of how the poor can be their own worst enemy concerned macadamia nut farmers in my parliamentary constituency. Macadamia nuts were introduced into Kenya in 1944, but were not extensively farmed until the late 1960s, when the government became aware of their potential to generate income. Not only can the nuts be eaten whole or used in confectionary and snacks, but the oil is useful in salads, the cake for livestock feed, and the shells for fuel and charcoal making. The wood from the macadamia trees is durable, and the tree itself is suitable for planting among other crops, a practice that is called agroforestry.
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Because of the wide variety of its applications, the macadamia nut fetches a good price in the market. If a macadamia nut farmer's trees are already planted and producing nuts to harvest, there is no reason why the farmer shouldn't succeed and become wealthy by rural standards.

One day, a group of macadamia nut farmers approached me. These particular farmers reported that they sold their nuts into
the Japanese market through a Kenyan processor and exporter, who did not appear to be corrupt. The nuts garnered a very good price per kilogram, and the farmers should have been earning a decent income. They were, however, unhappy. They explained that because there was so much potential money to be made in macadamia nuts, the farmers' neighbors, who were also farmers, had begun to steal them.

Macadamia nuts need to be fully ripe to be ready for processing, so farmers wait until they fall to the ground. However, the farmers told me, some people had started shaking the trees before the nuts were ripe. Then others had begun climbing the trees and picking the nuts before they were ripe enough even to be shaken from the tree. Finally, the greed had become so enormous that some individuals had simply crept onto the farmers' land at night, cut down the trees, and hauled them away, so they could harvest every single nut for themselves. Of course, because the nuts were not ready, the thieves needed to find ways to make the nuts look ripe. I was told they would boil the nuts with tea leaves to change their color. But when the nuts arrived at quality control in the market outside the country, they were discovered to have rotted, and the middleman told the farmers he didn't want any more macadamia nuts from them in the future.

When these farmers came to me with their story, they were desperate. When they told me why they had lost their lucrative market, I was astonished at the avarice and shortsightedness of some members of the community. I told them I would try to find another market for the nuts, although I didn't hold out much hope. “We can work on it,” I said, “but you have already killed the goose that was laying the golden eggs.” It was clear, I continued, that it was going to take much more effort to convince a new market of these farmers' reliability.

What needs to be realized is that the individuals who came to me were not what the industrialized world may think of as
farmers, with an understanding of agricultural inputs, international markets, and commodity prices. Indeed, like the individuals on the hillside in Yaoundé, these farmers were in fact little different from their neighbors who stole the nuts, since nearly everyone who lives in rural areas grows one crop or another on their land. They have little or no information about the product they grow; they have little or no formal education and therefore may be functionally or actually illiterate. If they
are
able to read or write, they do not have access to written materials or the Internet in order to inform themselves about the crops that are their primary source of income; and, in the case of the coffee and macadamia nut growers, they may never eat or drink what they harvest, since they do not process what they're selling.

This is why, even though the nut farmers may organize themselves, there is still a need for strong national leadership to make sure that they receive their due if they are willing to work hard, act responsibly, and not cheat the system.

In the cases of the macadamia nut and coffee farmers, however, the Kenyan government had made little effort to put in place an extension service to educate the growers, or to empower them to advocate for themselves, through a collective, in the international marketplace. I advised the macadamia nut farmers to form their own cooperative and work together to find out who owned trees before they were cut down, register them, and then determine who was selling macadamia nuts even though they didn't have the trees growing on their land. I also urged them to start again and instill discipline among the growers; this way, they would produce nuts of sufficient quality that they might ultimately be able to find another vendor who would process the nuts in their own region. This would in turn add value to their product before they gave the nuts to the middleman to sell to the exporter.

Unfortunately, I was voted out of parliament before I had a chance to help the macadamia nut and coffee farmers further. However, I was an MP long enough to see quite clearly that there was another problem that affected these farmers in addition to their ignorance about their own products, their lack of education, and the government's failure to support them in the way the Vietnamese government had apparently done with Vietnam's coffee farmers. What kept both coffee and macadamia growers in poverty, amid the manifold riches of the best coffee in the world and a valuable nut, was not only the failure of the government to protect them from local exploiters, but also their own failure to understand the consequences of their self-destructive actions. Instead of working together to further the common good of their communities, they pursued their individual interests, allowing greed and selfishness to thrive among them.

Since the macadamia nuts were already getting an excellent price on the market, the farmers could have pooled some of their earnings and made them available so more people in their communities could buy trees with a low-interest loan. This would mean more macadamia trees for the community to share in the wealth. It would, of course, have had to be a long-term strategy, since macadamia trees require time to grow, but it would have reaped dividends within a few years. However, the thieves wanted the money first, and they wanted it quick. Intoxicated with the expectation of selling the nuts, they not only were willing to ruin their prospects for further wealth by cutting down the trees, but also thought nothing of impoverishing their neighbors in doing so. Their actions made sure not only that no more nuts would come from those particular trees, but also that it would be many more years before they would be able to make money from macadamia nuts—if they could even find a market again.

I consider actions like these a form of corruption. It is no different from a minister demanding a kickback before he gives out a license to harvest trees in the forest. It expresses the same unwillingness to work for what one earns and the same willingness to cheat the system. It flies in the face of common sense and collective will. It also helps to create a stereotype that discourages those who are genuine and compassionate in committing their money or expertise to helping Africa. The result is that communities end up dealing with governments or companies that are mainly interested in taking advantage of this vacuum created by the culture of corruption to extract as many resources as possible. By exposing their own greed and selfishness, the people are easily bought, exploited, and victimized, thereby working against their own interests.

When all these forms of corruption, along with the more usual graft and theft, become embedded, the societal machine grinds to a halt. I'm not so naive as to believe that personal and collective corruption can ever be wholly eliminated; it will exist as long as there are selfish people and money to be made. But there are concrete measures that governments could take to bring about the needed revolution in ethics, if they were committed to it. An important element would be for Africans to understand collectively that the current situation wasn't always so perilous—that the majority of their forebears were honest, fair, and just, and that their societies were functional and people's basic needs were met—and challenge themselves to emulate some of these values. Part of the tragedy of Africa is that ordinary Africans don't, for the most part, remember and take pride in this history. But this history is part of who they are, and it needs to be taught and celebrated. If they did this,
they could celebrate themselves, too, and not trust so much in those who mean them harm.

Another component in this revolution is for Africans to recognize that, while they may think they are “better” than their ancestors by being educated and literate, and living in an age with motorized transportation, computers, and some modern amenities, if those ancestors were to rise from the dead, they would look at them and wonder why so many contemporary Africans apparently have scorned justice, abandoned fairness, stolen from each other so freely, and let those among them who are cheats and rogues not only go unpunished but indeed be rewarded, while the weak and vulnerable are left unprotected.

While Africans cannot change the past, they can try to mold the future. One measure to which I would give priority is for children throughout Africa, from the first grade of primary school through the last year of secondary school, to be taught the values of hard work, honesty, justice, fairness, and accountability as part of the normal curriculum, so they might grow into the leaders and citizens that Africa needs. A number of leadership initiatives already exist for Africans primarily in their early twenties to mid-thirties, both within African countries and abroad; it is my hope that each of them includes as a core matter the issue of ethics.

The aim here is not education, per se: it is not as if the leadership in Africa hasn't had its share of highly educated individuals. The point is to recognize that, just as one develops new technologies and expands the potential for breakthroughs in computer science and engineering through technical colleges, so advances in leadership and the application of values must receive similar impetus.

I don't believe that the peoples of Africa are more accepting of corruption than those in other nations. As the
matatu
passengers
confronting the policemen showed, people can spontaneously rise up and demand an end to inappropriate behavior. However, they will want to know that if they stand up or speak out, everybody else will do the same—especially their leaders, who should be at the forefront of this revolution in ethics.

Civil society also has a vital role to play. On the one hand, it should ensure that the government is held accountable to the needs of the people. On the other, it can also communicate to the people when the government is adopting beneficial policies. This is especially important in a developing country where people at the grassroots, because of their lack of education or exposure, can be very localized in their way of thinking.

Civil society in Africa is still not fully developed, although regional differences exist in strength and organization. In most countries, civil society remains relatively small and comprised of individuals and groups, not the mass of the people. If it were the latter, more African capitals would see protestors in their streets rallying against governmental injustices and inequities and demanding greater accountability and responsibility. But in many African countries today, governments can still ignore civil society fairly easily.

A challenge to strengthening civil society in Africa lies in the fact that since the majority of African leaders have at least accepted the concept of democracy, the international community is more interested now in fostering the government and its institutions than in fostering civil society. This is understandable: what could take years for a voluntary organization to accomplish can be done by a government in months; indeed, that is why I wanted to enter parliament. Once the government demonstrates its commitment to a policy, it's easy to move that policy through the system. Nevertheless, what the international community would do well to appreciate is that issues of values and leadership are subtle—leaders either may not be
willing to admit there are problems (because they are part of them!) or may consider them a waste of time. Therefore, a strong civil society is necessary to advance them.