F.W. de Klerk was the president of South Africa from September 1989- May 1994. He is most well known for engineering the end apartheid in South Africa, as well as beginning the process for a new constitution to be drafted, enabling a one-person, one-vote system for all South Africans. He also won the Nobel Peace Prize, along with Nelson Mandela, in 1993 for his role in ending apartheid.

South Africa’s relationship with Africa is much like the United States’ relationship with Latin America: it is by far the biggest kid on the block. Its economy is more than three times as large as that of Nigeria, the next-largest African economy, and twenty times bigger than that of Zimbabwe. South Africans consume twice as much electricity as the rest of sub-Saharan Africa combined. With less than 7 percent of the region’s population it accounts for more than 27 percent of its Internet users.

Unfortunately, South Africa’s block — sub-Saharan Africa — is in the poorest and most troubled part of the global community. International perceptions of Africa are dominated by the bad things that are happening up the street in Darfur, Sudan, as well as by the serious trouble that has broken out recently in Kenya, which had been one of the neighborhood’s beacons of hope. Problems continue in Somalia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, although progress has been made in resolving conflicts in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Just next door, in Zimbabwe, President Robert Mugabe continues to smash the furniture as he presides over the systematic dismantling of his economy. However, the quiet and steady progress that many other African countries are making does not generate international headlines.

The perception is that Africa is lagging further and further behind in the global race. It is true that between 1960 and 2005 the human development index in the developing world as a whole increased from 0.260 to 0.691 on a scale where 1.0 represents the highest levels of development. However, in sub-Saharan Africa it increased only from 0.2 to 0.493. It is also true that between 1990 and 2005 gross national product (GNP) per capita income in sub-Saharan Africa grew by only 0.5 percent per year, compared with an average annual growth of 3.1 percent for the rest of the developing world during the same period. However, according to the World Bank, average growth in the region last year was an impressive 5.4 percent. Too often, the world is inclined to look only at negative developments in Africa, which leads to “Africa pessimism.”

However, if we look at Africa with greater discernment we begin to realize how unfair this perception often is. The countries that conform to the stereotype of poverty, conflict, and tyranny do so not because they are African, but because poverty, tyranny, and conflict go hand in hand throughout the world and throughout history — and not just in Africa. The ten countries that have experienced the bitterest conflict during the past decade have one thing in common: nearly all of them are all poor. The average per capita GNP income of these countries is less than US $370 compared with the average income for sub-Saharan Africa of $845.

Poverty and the state of political development also go hand in hand: the average per capita GNP income of the sub-Sahara African countries that are classified as “not free” is $352; that of the countries that are regarded as being “partly free” is $552; and that of the “free” countries is $2,115.

The problem, accordingly, is poverty — not Africa.

The challenge for the world — and most notably for Africa itself — is to address the root causes of the vicious cycle of poverty, conflict, and tyranny in the continent. It is a challenge that Africa has accepted. In July 2001, African leaders assembled at the 37th Summit of the Organization of African Unity and adopted the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) “to consolidate democracy and sound economic management on the continent.”

How has Africa progressed since then in achieving these lofty goals? The African Union, with strong support from South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki, has done much to address the remaining conflicts in the continent. It has achieved some notable successes, particularly in Sierra Leone, Liberia, the Ivory Coast, and southern Sudan. It continues to play a positive but less successful role in the Congo and Darfur but has, as yet, done very little to address the situation in Zimbabwe.

Africa has also achieved some success with NEPAD’s central goal of promoting democracy. Freedom House, a New York–based organization that monitors the state of civil and political rights in countries around the world, now classifies eleven of Africa’s fifty-two states as being “free” multiparty democracies (compared with eight only a few years ago); another twenty-three are regarded as being “partly free,” and eighteen as “not free.” Interestingly, despotism is not primarily a sub-Saharan phenomenon: four of the five countries north of the Sahara are classified as “not free.”

African governments also committed themselves in their NEPAD undertakings to creating an environment in which economic growth could take place. According to Tony Blair’s Commission for Africa, they needed to improve the integrity of their legal systems and upgrade their physical infrastructure. They had to address problems of poor governance and corruption and had to stop overregulating the private sector. They also needed to stimulate trade through greater regional integration and the lowering of tariffs and nontariff barriers.

How have they fared?

Corruption is still a major problem in most African countries. According to a survey conducted by Transparency International in 2006, 35 percent of Africans reported that they or someone living in their household had paid some form of bribe during the preceding twelve months. The comparative responses for North America and the European Union were 2 percent; for Asia and the Pacific, 7 percent; for the newly independent Asian and European countries, 11 percent; and for Latin America, 17 percent. Interestingly enough, the figure for South Africa was only 5 percent.

There are also continuing problems with macroeconomic policy and good governance.

According to the Economic Freedom Network’s 2006 report, Botswana has the freest economy in Africa. Nevertheless, it ranks only thirty-fifth in the world. Only three African countries are listed among the fifty freest economies. South Africa is placed at fifty-three. Nineteen of the world’s thirty least-free economies are in Africa. All this has serious implications for NEPAD’s commitment to good governance and to its goal of promoting development.

There are some facets of economic policy that African countries must address as urgently as possible. They must stop the flight of capital from the continent. Although Africa rightly complains about its crippling debt burden, the reality is that $285 billion left the continent between 1970 and 1996. Each year Africa loses another $20 billion, which means that for every dollar lent to Africa in recent decades 80 cents has returned to the developed world.

Africa must liberalize its own tariffs, which are among the highest in the world. It must expand intraregional trade, which now accounts for only 10 percent of its total trade compared with intraregional trade in Europe and North America, which accounts for 67 percent and 40 percent of their total trade respectively.

At the same time there is a great deal that the international community can do to make the economic playing fields more even.

Steps should be taken to increase Africa’s diminishing share in global trade, which has declined from 2 percent in 1980 to 1 percent in 1999. Although First World nations are quick to give lip service to the need to help develop African economies, they are often ruthless when their own interests are adversely affected. The tariffs that they impose on agricultural imports from Africa are four to seven times higher than the tariffs they impose on manufactured exports. More seriously, the developed countries continue to subsidize their farmers to the tune of $280 billion per annum. By so doing they make it difficult for Africans to compete in the one area where they have a competitive advantage.

Africa needs two things: a fair break from the rest of the world and the determination to address its own problems. NEPAD is designed to do precisely this. The challenge will be to give real content to NEPAD and to ensure that it does not deteriorate into yet another talk shop with a bloated bureaucracy.

One of the keys to Africa’s future success will be the development of strong, prosperous, and democratic hubs in its main regions — Nigeria in West Africa; South Africa in southern Africa; and Kenya in East Africa. However, the recent violence and failed election in Kenya show how very fragile this process can be.

Much will depend on the continuing success of South Africa — the biggest kid on the block. If it can continue to entrench its excellent constitutional democracy, if it can persist with the sensible macroeconomic policies that have brought 14 years of sustained growth, and if it can maintain harmony between its constituent races and communities, it will be able to play a pivotal role in promoting peace, development, and prosperity throughout its region — and ultimately throughout the continent.