101346
Emerging Hope in Africa, CARE National Advocacy Conference, George
Washington University, Washington, D.C.
Paul Wolfowitz
World Bank President
June 7, 2006
PRESIDENT WOLFOWITZ: Doris, thank you. Helene, you are a tough act to follow. I was noticing that
we had some common origins. We are both from upstate New York. We both have a close association
with Johns Hopkins University, some parts of it, and you are obviously going to be a great leader of this
great organization, so I hope I can follow in your footsteps in my own organization. It would be an
honor. It is an honor to speak to this group. I noted as, I guess, a couple of speakers have already, this
is the 60th anniversary of the first CARE Package. Stop and think about it: How many organizations
have entered the English language -- the phrase "CARE Package" is known to millions of people who
don't have a clue probably what the organization is. That is leaving a mark, an indelible mark.
And I'm told by Helene that there are some 400 some people are attending this conference today, starting
from I think just 10 people three years ago, all of you coming here on your own dime. That is an
extraordinary testimony to volunteer spirit and energy, and I'm going to say something more about that a
bit later, but I think it is truly one of the key factors of successful development. It is not what governments
do, but it's what individuals do with their own energy in their volunteer work. So, I want to congratulate
you and thank you for that work.
I had the privilege since I joined the World Bank of visiting 25 countries on five different continents, and I
talked with policy makers and entrepreneurs and civil society leaders, farmers, school children and many,
many poor people, and I have been increasingly convinced from those exchanges that we not only face a
daunting challenge to make poverty history, but, in fact, we also have an unprecedented opportunity to
make a difference.
In fact, the last 20 years or so, 25 years, represent perhaps one of the brightest periods in the history of
the fight against poverty, admittedly not a history with lots of bright periods, I would grant you that. In last
25 years, half a billion have escaped poverty, the largest single number inChina, large numbers in India,
large numbers in Latin America. It's demonstrated that reducing poverty is not just a hope. It can be a
reality.
Part of the bad news in that picture, though, is if we look at sub Saharan Africa, the trend is in the
opposite direction. Twenty years ago there were roughly 150 million people living in sub
Saharan Africa living in extreme poverty. I'm sorry to say today that number has doubled to roughly 300
million. Of course, it's not just poverty; it is terrible illnesses, malaria, HIV/AIDS. 10 percent of the world's
population lives in sub Saharan Africa, but 60 percent of the people infected with HIV/AIDS live in the
subcontinent.
I remember five or six years ago briefing then Governor Bush for his presidential campaign and going
through some shocking statistics about HIV/AIDS, including predictions that by the year 2005 there would
be as many orphans, AIDS orphans, in Africa as there are children east of the Mississippi. I checked with
my staff, since it was 2005 already last year, and yes, that terrible prediction has come true. There are
some 15 million orphans, AIDS orphans, in sub Saharan Africa. If you stop and think about it, that's as
many children as in these United States, more children than in Germany, more children than France,
more children than in the United Kingdom.
I suppose the good news is that life does not end because you are an orphan. We had an inspirational
performance at the Bank a few weeks ago by a group called "Children of Uganda," I think it is 22 or 24
orphans, most of them AIDS, some of them were poor orphans. I remember one young girl who lost I
asked her how many brothers and sister she had, and she said five, but it turned out, when I talked to the
sponsor, she had five; four of them were dead. Her parents are both dead. You would never know it,
though, watching her perform on stage in this inspirational performance of Ugandan song and dance. I
mean, these kids smile, and they are excited, they're happy. Yes, there is a huge sadness in their lives,
but there is also enormous love and care and success and ambition, ambition to be doctors and
teachers. It's interesting if you ask what you would like to be, some parts of the world, I'm sorry to say I
run into too many people who want to be movie stars or singers. These kids want to be teachers. It's a
wonderful story. It's a wonderful story about the ability of the human spirit to overcome diversity.
But there is diversity. In sub Saharan Africa, to give you one more dismal statistic, 35 percent of boys
don't finish primary school, and 45 percent girls don't finish primary school. It's bad for boys and worse
for girls. But there is some good news even in that picture -- and it's even, I would say, surprising good
news. Gallup surveyed last year 50,000 people they surveyed around the world, simple question: You
expect 2006 will be better or worse than 2005? It's not even a surprise even to me, and I had learned
enough by now about Africa not to be totally surprised. Africa came out as the most optimistic area in the
world. 57 percent of Africans believe this year will be better than last year, followed closely, I guess
statistically it's a dead heat, 54 percent East Asians think that this year will be an
improvement. Europeans are more prosperous but less optimistic, and Americans fall somewhere in
between.
But why is that? How can Africans be so optimistic in the face of all these gloomy statistics? I think the
answer is there is more going on in the subcontinent than just a gloom, and some of it is recent, and good
news doesn't travel terribly well, and recent good news travels less well, in my experience.
The fact is, in the last 10 years, the 15 top performing, non-oil producing I want to carve out the oil
producers because that's a separate story, and growth through oil isn't necessarily growth -- have had
growth rates 4 percent and higher, median practice is 5.33 percent. The leader of the pack, believe it or
not, is Rwanda. You probably heard about what happened in Rwanda 12 years ago. 950,000 people
slaughtered, basically one at a time with machetes. It's hard to imagine a country recovering from that
kind of tragedy. Rwanda has not only recovered, but it's been growing a 10 percent a year since then.
Admittedly, you could say starting in the basement it's easier. I would disagree. Starting in the basement
is even harder. Mozambique, another country that was ravaged by civil war, has been growing at 8
percent a year in the last 10 years. Maybe that explains some of the optimism.
In fact, Ghana, Mozambique, Uganda, those are three countries where the percentage of people living in
poverty has come down by 10 percentage points or more in the last 10 years. Primary school enrollment
has increased substantially in Africa, from above 90 percent now. I'm not sure why the completion rates
are as low as they are, but that's obviously something that needs to be worked on.
Something else that has definitely improved, a number that has gone from 16 to 6, that number is the
number of active wars in Africa. Six is still way too many, but going from 16 to 6 is enormous progress.
Stop and think about it. I am assuming many of you have followed the news about Liberia over the last
number of years. That country was almost destroyed by horrible civil war, horrible misrule. Fortunately, I
guess about 18 months ago, through the intervention first in the United States and then the African union,
their African peacekeeping forces now in Liberia, that war has ended, but that's not the only good
news. Liberia held its first free election at least in a very long time. There were two candidates. One was
a soccer star, the other, I'm proud to say, was an alumna, if we could call her that, of the World
Bank. She worked with us for a number of years. An economic reformer named Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
She's now the first woman president of an African country, so give some credit to the Liberian voters, not
just Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. And I'm also proud to say her Finance Minister is young, at least by my
standards I guess she's past 40, but that's pretty young also a former World Bank staffer. In fact, she
was a World Bank staffer until just this March when she quit her admittedly comfortable job with us to go
and be the first Finance Minister in Liberia. She's a single mother. Her son, who is about to start college,
said, "Mom, my aunt and uncle will take care of me. If you don't take this opportunity, you will never
forgive yourself." So, she left the Bank and she's the Finance Minister in Liberia. Let's do everything we
can to help those women.
There are improvements in Africa in what we call the area of governance. Sometimes we are a little
blunter about it when we talk about fighting corruption and all those bad things. I could give you a fairly
long list by now. Nigeria -- by the way, there is a Finance Minister there who is also a woman who also
came out of the World Bank, and she's leading a fantastic economic team which, with great leadership
under President Obasanjo, is among other things taking on a corruption fight. The former inspector
general of the police is in jail on corruption, two other very high officials are in jail on corruption. Putting
people in jail isn't the only part in fact, it's not the most important part of fighting corruption, but it certainly
shows that you are serious.
By the way, President Obasanjo, I think, had some ambitions to run again, but the Senate of Nigeria said
no, term limits apply. He's accepted that verdict.
The President of South Africa, President Mbeki, whom I visited in June, just a few days I saw him
coincidentally fired his Deputy President -- not because his Deputy President took a bribe, but because
the deputy's financial advisor took a bribe, and Mbeki felt that made him politically accountable. I am sorry
to say that the bribe was offered by a company from a developed country, and as far as I know, no action
has been taken against that company. Bribery and corruption are not just the problem of poor countries,
not just a problem with developing countries. Every corrupt transaction has at least two parties,
sometimes unfortunately multiple ones, and very often the bribe giver comes from the rich countries, and
rich countries need to do something about it.
But there is progress being made. People, leaders are submitting themselves to elections that are
accepting results of elections, they are stepping down. It is by no means a perfect picture; I don't mean to
leave you with that impression. But it is not as bleak a picture as you will too often hear. A few years
ago, I think exactly two years ago, The Economist, a famous British news weekly, had a cover story,
"Africa: The Hopeless Continent." Last June, National Geographic had a cover story, "Africa: Whatever
You Think, Think Again." I think that captures the reality of today a little bit better.
The challenge of poverty isn't only in Africa. We have in the World Bank something we call "middle
income countries." I'm not quite sure where the middle income starts. I think it's around $2,000 per
capita income, goes up to and includes countries like Mexico with $7,000 with per capita income. Most
African countries look at that and are green with envy, but those countries taken together have nearly half
of the world's poor. I visited Brazil, I visited India, and I visited China. Those three countries together
have more people living in extreme poverty than all of sub Saharan Africa.
So, there is a huge challenge there as well. The difference, of course, is that these countries, because
they're being successful economically, have resources to address their own problems in a way that no
African countries have, with the exception perhaps of South Africa. So, they need less help from the rest
of us, but they do need help. They still are roles for institutions like the World Bank to play, and I'm quite
certain, especially in places like Brazil and the slums ofDelhi, that organizations like CARE have a huge
role to play.
When you are talking about the extremely poor countries and it's not only sub Saharan Africa, by the
way, there are quite a few elsewhere in Latin America and the Pacific -- there are many factors at work in
successfully meeting the challenge. I want to talk about four briefly this afternoon. We could talk about
more, but I will be brief.
One is gender, which is really the subject of your conference. Judging from the audience, let's say
“women” rather than gender. I don't know why we can say "women" straight out. My guess is that three
quarters of this audience are women. I want to talk about civil society, and CARE is part of what we
mean by civil society. I want to talk about education; I want to talk about jobs. I will do each of those
reasonably quickly.
First, we talk about women. Women are one of the most important factors in development. How
important? I would say at least 50 percent. Maybe a lot more than 50 percent when you start to think
about it. I hate to say it, but there are differences between men and women when it comes to things like
taking care of money and taking care of children. We don't always do so well on our half of the
equation. It's simple arithmetic. This is not a matter, as I have to explain that some of my shareholders,
of somehow imposing American or Swedish or other cultural standards on the Middle East or
on Africa. No, there is more than one way, I believe, to deal with gender relations, but you could tell when
women are denied equal opportunity. And when they are denied equal opportunity, the whole society
pays a price for it, not just the women.
I won't forget the occasion about 10 years ago I was in Malaysia at a conference with then then-deputy
Prime Minister, who is a wonderful human being and a real hero who was later thrown in jail basically on
political charges, although it became something else, Anwar Ibrahim, who started his career as a Muslim
student leader, a kind of Muslim radical. I asked him what his view was of Islamic politics, and this part of
the answer I have never forgotten. He said, "I have no use for countries who call themselves Islamic and
then deny basic rights to half of their population." His wife, whom is covered, is an active woman, a
pediatrician, I believe -- she's a doctor of some kind. She sustained his political party while he was in
jail. She's definitely 50 percent of that extraordinary couple.
I was in Burkina Faso, a country I had never been to before, and didn't know much about it. I was told
before I went it was a country with an enormous sense of nationalism, with great pride in being
Burkinabe, so I was assuming they must all speak the same language, have the same
religion. Wrong. Thirty seven different ethnic groups split roughly between Christians and Muslims, but
for some reason, united through history, I think part of it because first they fought off Arab invaders, and
then they fought off French invaders, and they were briefly colonized byFrance. I went to a small village
in a very barren part of Burkina. It was explained to me that my guide in the village, a Muslim village,
would be the Secretary of the village, because she is the only person, adult at least, who taught herself to
read. I asked her along the way, if it was hard to be elected secretary of the village in a Muslim village,
and she said, very confidently without missing a beat, she said, "There is no way we are going to develop,
if women don't have equal rights."
One more similar story, one of my favorite anecdotes. In speaking with some villagers in Pakistan where
the World Bank had done a very successful community development project, I asked one of the women
leaders I can't remember the leading question, but I remember the answer. She said, "Development is
like a cart with two wheels: men and women. If one of the wheels isn't turning, the cart isn't going to go
anywhere." A beautiful metaphor.
But it's not just a women's issue. It's a development issue. It's a men's issue. Just think about this
statistic. We love doing these kinds of studies in the World Bank, and I think they've been pretty powerful.
[A statistic] that shows that the chances of a baby surviving are 20 times higher if the mother is literate. It
doesn't matter if the baby is a boy or a girl. The chances of survival are much higher if the mother is
educated.
In Pakistan, there was a very enlightened law passed that requires 30 percent of all the members of the
national and local legislatures to be women. The problem initially was getting women to run for office at
all. There is a Foundation, I think it's called the Rock Foundation, and I met the head of it, and I may
have her name slightly wrong. I think her name is Nikara. She organized a nationwide movement to get
women to run for office. It wasn't just a matter of getting volunteers, but it was also a matter of getting
over all the legal obstacles to register as a candidate. She said she got an organization of lawyers put
together, and I asked, were they all women? She said no, two thirds were men. So, I would say it was a
good thing for the men ofPakistan. The result was 97 percent of the seats reserved for women had
candidates. It was pretty remarkable.
I want to give you one more story. One of the most remarkable days I spent in this year in the job was
visiting a government run program in the state of Andhra Pradesh in India. This is a state in India –this
one is 78 million people. It's bigger than every country in Europe exceptGermany and Russia, I
believe. But this was a program organizing what they call self help groups. A lot of it revolves around
microcredit -- you probably have heard about microcredit, where the record is pretty extraordinary all the
way around the world and successful inIndonesia. I saw it there 20 years ago. Spectacularly successful
in Bangladesh, not run by government but by nongovernmental organizations. This particular one is run
by the state of Andhra Pradesh, focused mainly on what they call marginal groups, particularly what they
euphemistically call "schedule caste" which refers to the untouchables. They give them a small amount of
money as a loan. The rate of repayment on the loans is spectacular it is on the order of 98 percent and
it changes people's lives. It doesn't just change people's lives in a material way, although it does
that. The first stop on this remarkable day was to visit a family that had benefited from this
program. There was a husband, wife, and five children, and they were untouchables. Before this
program had come along, they never spent more than two months in one place because they were
migrant farm workers, so the kids never went to school. Now they owned a little bit of land, they owned a
little bit of livestock. Husband even had a telephone, cell phone. I though, wait a minute, wife works,
husband has the phone. He assured me that the phone is a business proposition; he uses it and shows
me how he uses it, to get market prices so they don't have to walk six miles to the market and six miles
back in order to know what's going on. The kids were now in school. The kids were healthy. One of
them seemed to have suffered probably from the earlier experience.
My first reaction was, okay, fine, I had seen this kind of thing in Indonesia when I was Ambassador. It's
easy to do anything on a small enough scale. You put all the effort into making one family work, making
one village work. In the course of the day, we went from the family to the sub-village to the village to the
district. Finally, we got to the capital, Hyderabad, and I was introduced to an assembly of some 200
women representing 8 million families. Remember: This is a state of 78 million people 8 million families
from around the state of Andhra Pradesh. These were women who were mostly untouchables, some of
them tribal, some of them Muslim, who are also marginalized. I asked later: Would any of these women
have been willing to speak in public two or three years ago? The answer was that probably none of them
would have been willing to say a word to you even if you tried to shake their hands.
Well, not only were their lives changed materially, but they were transformed spiritually, psychologically. I
asked if one of you would be willing to describe for me the difference this program has made in your lives,
and I would say 150 hands shot up in the air. They were practically fighting for the microphone. I have to
say that once they had the microphone, they would speak for a while. They were speaking, I guess Hindi,
I'm not sure, but it was incredibly articulate and translated. It's just incredible empowerment.
I'm told, in fact, they not only have been able to send their kids to school, but they have been able to take
on the temple priesthood which excluded untouchables. And they have even taken on the city's practice
of giving over daughters to the temples as concubines. They made a real difference. It's remarkable.
I guess this brings me to civil society. In some respects, these are perhaps two sides of the same
coin. So much of civil society organizations depend on the energy of women, but it is men as well. I still
think that one of the best books that have ever been written about a developing country was written 180
years ago by a French man named Alexis de Tocqueville; it is called Democracy
in America. The U.S. was a developing country then. One of [the book’s] major themes is that if you
want to understand the success in the United States, you have to understand what is called the American
tendency to form associations. Modern political scientists call it “interest group politics” and pluralism,
and we call it organizations like CARE. People getting together not because they have to, but because
they want to -- because they have a common purpose.
It's a huge factor in development. It's a factor missing, unfortunately, in a lot of countries that are lagging
behind. Sometimes it's missing because government doesn't like it. After all, if you have a free civil
society, it may have independent ideas. In fact, they usually do. So, one of our big challenges actually is
encouraging the growth of civil society. It's unquestionably a major factor in the development
experience.
[Civil society] is often the best vehicle for delivering government assistance. Government doesn't always
do well for a number of reasons. Bureaucracy is one, corruption is another. These Children of Uganda,
the ones I described, were not the beneficiaries of government assistance -- although the Government of
Uganda has performed pretty well in general -- but they are the beneficiary of some church groups with
some support from outside.
But it's not just [civil society’s] contribution in helping education and health and development, it is also the
contribution to helping hold governments accountable. Civil society is an important element, a very
important element, for preventing corruption and promoting accountability.
And, as I said earlier, corruption and bad governance is unfortunately one of the reasons thatAfrica has
lagged behind, and also fortunately one of the things that is changing. I've recently become friends with
Bono and I am a very big fan of his. I like him not only because he goes out and raises consciousness
about poverty and raises money [to fight against] poverty, but he also understands that if we are going to
do something about poverty, then we need to do something about governance. On his recent trip
to Africa, he said the small “c” in corruption is a plague as deadly as the HIV virus, and it's not just the
businessmen. The ones that are hurt the most are always the ones that have nothing.
Let me say a few words about education. I said I'm going to get through four [issues], I'm going to try to
do it fast. I was just in Korea, which is a spectacular demonstration of [the power of education]. Back [in
the 1960s] around the time I was writing my dissertation about desalination, you could read accounts of
Korea that said it was a hopeless basket case, no natural resources, with a Confucian ethic that teaches
the gentlemen not to work and they wear white clothes and grow their fingernails long for them to
demonstrate their contempt for manual labor.
Now, if you had read the development literature recently, you will notice that people say the Confucian
ethic is the reason for the success of Korea and China and Singapore and Hong Kong. It's not
culture. It's human energy and government policy that allows that energy to succeed.
And it's education. And the Koreans have done spectacularly in the area of education. It is the most
wired country in the world. I think a 100 percent of the Korean schools are hooked up to the Internet. The
statistics which I saw when I was there on the growth in first primary and then secondary and then
university education -- I think more Koreans go to university percentage wise than Americans. It's a big
part of the reason they're doing well.
Finally, a word about jobs. We talk a lot about the Millennium Development Goals, and Dr. Gayle did as
well. I am sorry to say there is one that's missing. There is no Millennium Development Goal for
jobs. There should be, because it's part of what contributes to all the others. And you need a population
that's empowered. You need a population that's educated, but you need employment, and sustainable
employment doesn't come from government. It comes from the private sector. And there is a lot that
needs to be done in this area, and that's another reason why Africa has some problems.
In a report that the Bank does called Doing Business we rank 155 countries in the world [on their climate
for business]. Burkina Faso, which I mentioned, which has a lot going for it and has done pretty well – but
when it comes to doing business, if you want to start a business, in Burkina Faso it [costs] close to one
and a half times per capita income just to pay registration fees. Now, as some might quickly point out,
per capita income is only $500, and for Exxon or IBM that's just an expensive business lunch. Sorry, for a
woman in Burkina who is trying to start a business, it's one and a half times her annual income. It
probably means she won't start it. Or if she starts it, she won't register it. Or if a man starts it and starts
employment, he won’t be following labor laws; he won't be able to export. In a country of 12 million
people, there are only 50,000 people working in the formal registered business sector. The rest are in the
so called informal, illegal kind of work. That needs to change. But it can change, I believe it is
changing. In fact, the reason we publish this report is not as a guide to foreign investors. It's a guide to
governments on how they could do better, and a lot of them are doing better.
A few months ago I had a visit from a Finance Minister from a Latin American country which was ranked
well below the middle of our 155 countries. My staff told me he may complain to you about their
ranking. He thanked me for the report. He said I took this report to our Congress, and I got some laws
changed because I was able to show how uncompetitive we are.
Let me conclude on a note about partnership, because development is a team sport. The President of
Botswana has summed it up pretty well. He said that the good thing about development is that so many
people want to be helpful. The challenging thing about development, he said, is that so many people
want to be helpful. And you in this room are a living demonstration of people wanting to be helpful, and
it's a wonderful thing. But sometimes I'm not quite sure whether and I'm now speaking about the
development community—whether they understand what it is to play a team sport. I'm old enough to
have kids who have played soccer, and when they were six, seven, eight, and the ball would go to one
part of the field and all 22 players, including both goalies, would chase the ball. That's not the way to get
the job done. You have to cover all the positions on the field. We need to try to do it in as coordinated a
way as possible, but we can't all do everything.
And frankly, there are a lot of things that are not done very well by governments, but the World Bank
primarily works with the government and also with private businesses through our private sector arm
[IFC]. We also are able to do a little bit with civil society, and to work with the governments on some of
their policies to create a better climate for civil society [engagement]. But there are things that [CARE] can
do as a civil society organization that [the World Bank] can't possibly do.
Of course, there are things we can do that CARE can’t do, like building roads and dams, and hopefully we
will do it the right way. If we do it the wrong way, part of your job is to tell us that. And there are things
that we could do together, and I welcome such opportunities.
One such opportunity came to me not long ago -- I think, Helene, it was before you were officially head of
CARE. Ambassador Andrew Young and former [CARE] President Peter Bell and Helene Gayle came to
me and talked about an exciting proposal to engage directly with the City of Kumasi in Ghana, which is
one of the good performing African countries. The idea is to partner between Atlanta and Atlanta based
foundations and private sector organizations with similar organizations in Kumasi. This is one example of
a possible private public partnership we are keen on supporting. I want to thank you and Peter Bell for
bringing it to me. I can't quite yet promise that we can do our part of the funding, but I think by the end of
this month I will give you a positive answer. So thank you for that.
So, we welcome lessons from you. We welcome criticisms, especially if they are constructive, from
you. We welcome support and advice. And I want to figure out how I can get 20,000 people to help me
with our cause [like CARE was able to do together with the ONE Campaign to get Congress to provide
$100 million for the Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria]. Thank you very much.