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This week, U.S. Secretary Janet Yellen is in Senegal, Zambia, and South Africa on a mission to bolster America’s reputation on the continent. On the heels of December’s White House summit, this is part of an acknowledgement that America has lost ground to China and Russia in the contest to develop Africa. The administration pledged $55 billion in support for health, climate adaption, and development. Not included: addressing poverty directly.
The United Nations committed to ending extreme poverty by the end of this decade, a target certain to be missed. While the percentage of the extreme poor in sub-Saharan Africa is lower than it was in 1990, the absolute number in extreme poverty is 100 million people higher. During a period in which the world has become three times wealthier, hundreds of millions of people remain unable to feed, clothe, or shelter themselves. By 2050, the continent will be home to a quarter of the world, and we’ve failed to ensure they won’t be born into extreme poverty.
Some of the blame for our failure, of course, lies with corrupt local governments, decades of exploitation and underinvestment stretching back to the colonial era, and the catastrophic impact of COVID-19 and the Ukraine-Russia conflict. But much of the blame must rest with the way that the U.S. and its allies have spent trillions of dollars in international aid over many decades. And I personally, as the U.K. Secretary of State, responsible for an overseas aid budget of almost $20 billion a year, was complicit in much of this failure. Whatever we have been doing, it has not made enough difference to poverty in Africa.
China has deftly stepped into this void, propping up local elites and lending hundreds of billions of dollars in sub-Saharan Africa with almost no benefit to the extreme poor, plunging Africa into a debt crisis. In the process, China has built political influence and…
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