Capital flight: Eurocentric hypocrisies.The January issue of African Business carried as its prize-winning letter a missive from Dr Ian Taylor Ian Taylor may refer to;
Dr Taylor is, of course, absolutely right to raise the issue of waste, theft and 'flight capital'. But his analysis betrays classic Eurocentric hypocrisies. African elites, with their 'nice lifestyles' are a fact of life, but they are a fact of life only because there are Western elites who are prepared to conspire con·spire v. con·spired, con·spir·ing, con·spires v.intr. 1. To plan together secretly to commit an illegal or wrongful act or accomplish a legal purpose through illegal action. 2. with them. By 'Western elites' I mean all the bankers and investment consultants that provide the professional services (job) professional services - A department of a supplier providing consultancy and programming manpower for the supplier's products. to facilitate money being spirited out of Africa to languish as nest eggs Nest Egg A special sum of money saved or invested for one specific future purpose. Notes: Examples of the purposes for which nest eggs are usually intended include retirement, education, and even entertainment (vacations and cruises). in our elites' bank accounts in the West. This has been going on now for so long that you might think, as Dr Taylor seems to, that it will do so for the foreseeable future. But I would point to the very real recent progress that Africans themselves have made to fight the foreign corrupters that would come to help exploit ordinary Africans. Look at Kenya where the new government is taking a robust attitude to fight corruption--I am fairly sure that there are few transnational companies that would baulk at investing in Kenya today because of fears over corruption. Or take the case of Lesotho. That country has successfully prosecuted and fined 18 foreign companies for paying bribes linked to the award of contracts for the Lesotho Highlands Water Project The Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP) is an ongoing water supply project with a small hydropower component, developed in partnership between the governments of Lesotho and South Africa. . I think that even Mr Taylor would have to agree that foreign companies will now be thinking twice about paying bribes to corrupt African elites to secure business contracts. Now, if Mr Taylor had argued that the current trend to fight corruption in Africa was actually bad for foreign investment, because companies like a business environment where they can pay a corrupt elite to be able to get their own way, then that might have some validity. But implying that it is somehow an African fault that we do not have, nor are attempting to foster, an attractive business environment is a very narrow viewpoint. Ngoni Ngubana, Blantyre, Malawi
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