The cancer of corruption

The corruption in African countries, along with its massive population growth, also results in many thousands of people looking to the developed world for a better chance at life. Every year, thousands of refugees make the hazardous journey across the Sahara desert seeking freedom in other countries, and the demand will grow as Africa’s populations grow. These refugees are in addition to the already large number of people from the Middle East and Afghanistan also looking for refuge.

Why should the developed world (including Australia) worry about this? What can we do about it?

With the advent of the Pandora Papers, it seems obvious that the developed world needs to take more direct action in curtailing money laundering schemes, and the ease offered people from corrupt countries accessing tax havens. The secrecy provisions of Swiss bank accounts also needs to be examined. This should be done anyway, and not just to curtail corrupt transfers from Africa.

African governments also need to be persuaded to tackle the problem of unsustainable population growth in their countries. The population of Africa has grown from about 300 million in 1950 to 1.3 billion today, and it is forecast to grow to 2.5 billion by 2050.

In order to maintain a population (excluding immigration), a country’s fertility rate should be 2.1 children per adult woman; Africa has a fertility rate of 4.69. Compare this to the USA at 1.75, Europe at 1.64, and Australia at 1.8.

Traditionally Africa has always had a high fertility rate. This was because, prior to the introduction of western medicine, African life expectancy at birth was about 30. So in order for parents to have enough live children to care for them as they aged, the perception was that they needed more children – in the hope that one or two would survive. Actual population growth in Africa was close to zero before the advent of western medicine. However, African life expectancy is now about 65, so more people are surviving into adulthood and beyond, which is the major reason for the continent’s high population growth rate.

In any event, it is going to be very difficult for most African countries to seriously address the high birth rates – from a cultural perspective. In the past, many Africans saw the increase in local populations as a weapon against colonial domination, so high birth rates are seen as fundamental to their existence.

So what should be done? As has been suggested in a previous article, maybe a couple of countries with large populations could be selected (say, Nigeria and South Africa) and be ‘persuaded’ with aid packages to address the issues of population growth, and then corruption.

I’m not holding my breath that anything will be done. Western initiatives in Africa will continue to be sabotaged by other countries (such as Russia and China), and the last thing those other countries would want is for developed countries to curtail Africa’s corruption. Also, as has been the case in the past, it seems unlikely that developed countries will do anything substantial for Africa’s money laundering problems and practices leading to corruption, except perhaps window dressing.

The population issue will be put in the ‘too hard basket’, with a ‘let the Africans deal with their own problems’ attitude. Meanwhile the concept that ‘we are dealing with the pandemic and climate change, anything else can wait’ will prevail.

The consequences of this lack of action will be a massive increase in refugees trying to access developed countries. Already 80 million people desperately seek refuge every year, and this does not even include those trying to escape Afghanistan. This number has doubled in the last few years and it is likely to double again.