On 1% eating half the global cake

Honourable Folks,

when I first heard about one percent of the world population owning half of the global wealth, leaving 99 percent to scramble for the other half, I seethed like a vindicated Marxist die-hard.

I said this only attests to the fact that capitalism is inherently evil despite that it creates jobs, produces inventions and exports aid, investment and philanthropy to poor countries such as Malawi.

But having mulled over the issue a little longer now, I realise that the world’s capacity to generate wealth won’t end with the likes of Bill Gates, Carlos Slim, Warren Buffett and the other folks in the ultra-rich club.

Neither will my poverty be reduced or eradicated, if they were made to lose their billions. As poet Taban Lo Liyong opines in his book Another Nigger Deadnationalisation, considered the socialist way to go by Africa of the pre-multi-party era, ended up with nationalising poverty.

If you asked me, African billionaire Aliko Dangote made Nigeria richer than the other way round. People have to creatively add value by processing resources then generate wealth by selling goods and services. Governments become richer by taxing businesses and their employees.

That said, the world where only one percent has 50 percent of the cake is a dangerous one. Those that live on crumbs will be tempted to sail dangerously across the high seas so they can gate-crash at the dinner table of the ultra rich.

A hungry man is an angry man, so they say. Those angered by the injustice of living in deprivation while fellow humans have more than what they can eat in a hundred life-times have nothing to lose. They will try to create hell where they can burn together with the rich.

World peace and stability depends of balancing the interest of ultra-rich for peace and stability with the interest of the ultra-poor to walk out of excruciating and dehumanising abject poverty. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair was driven by this understanding in his noble crusade to help Africa walk out of poverty.

While the ultra-rich may have the wherewithal to generate more wealth, spreading wealth to the poor of the world requires the ingenuity of the public sector.

It is an idea imbued in the UN Millennium Project which sought to reduce by half world poverty by 2015. Well, we’re there already but are yet to see if the millennium project goal has been achieved. What is already known at the onset of 2015 is that the ultra-rich who make up just 1 percent of the world population have half the global cake all to themselves!

All the more reason, I believe, why the G8, BRICS, the United Nations and other multilateral organisations should not ditch honest efforts to reduce global poverty after the UN Millennium Project. If Africa is experiencing economic renaissance, it’s because good indigenous public sector policies met with a combo of aid and investment from “development partners” on the way to the goal of reducing poverty by half by 2015.

Malawians know that we are suffering now largely because our captains of the public sector chose the path of confrontation with “development partners” after the 2009 general elections. Otherwise, the good relations that were there between 2005 and 2009 made wonders happen to our tobacco-driven economy—it grew by 7.5 percent on average, peaking at over 9.7 percent!

What is hardly acknowledged, though, is the fact that the development partners, too, goofed by taking advantage of Cashgate to ditch a well-established and tested channel for remitting aid — government. Consequently, they argue that their aid is still quite substantial, estimated at 25 percent of the budget, yet on the ground life is getting tougher, especially for those living on less than a dollar a day.

Reason: NGOs through which aid is being channelled tackle specific areas and in targeted districts. Most of them may not even have the capacity to manage big sums and their governance record—transparency and accountability—isn’t any better, either.

The only coordinator of all efforts to reduce poverty and improve living standards is government. Its weaknesses in public finance management—and they indeed make us, taxpayers, feel like throwing up in disgust—should spur development partners into establishing a “net with a finer mesh” for protecting any investment in poverty reduction agenda.

Walking out on government after investing so much in 50 years is damn and counterproductive. Poverty may eventually force the people to try their luck at the high seas so they go overseas to snatch the morsel from the mouth of the ultra-rich. That won’t make for the better world the ultra rich yearn to spend their sweet lives in, will it?