A commenter asks a reasonable question:
You mention that the Congolese government is incompetent. I think we can all concede that -- although Kabila the Younger is, sadly, probably the best leader Congo's ever had (but, really, CALIGULA would be the best leader the Congo has ever had.) Based on your experiences in Africa, how does the Congolese government stack up against its continental compatriots -- is it the worst you've yet seen?
The short answer is, yes, it's the worst I've yet seen.
I do think Kabila Junior is an improvement over Kabila Senior, who was in turn a (modest) improvement over Mobutu. But that's not setting the bar very high.
But here's the thing: it's not really about Kabila. Kabila could be a rigidly honest, supercompetent workaholic, equal parts Nelson Mandela and Lee Kwan Yew, and Congo's government would still suck.
You have the godawful legacy of Mobutu, which involves stealing at every level and not paying government employees their salaries for months on end. You have the aftermath of war, which includes not only devastation but also a rickety coalition government staffed by Ministers who hate each others' guts and a bunch of rebel militias incorporated into a sullen, restive army that's more looming threat than protector. You have the trashed educational system, which is not producing anywhere near enough competent people to keep the lights on and the government running properly. You have the brain drain. And you have the fact that Congo is just a stupidly huge country, which would make it a challenge for any government. (It took me a while to grasp that yes, Katanga province really is the size of California.) It has sixty-five million people, four major languages and a hundred little ones, and virtually no functioning roads or railroads.
Mandela took over a country nearly as big, but it was a country with millions of university graduates, money in the bank, and a First World infrastructure. Lee took over a poor country, but it was tiny -- you can walk across Singapore in a couple of hours -- and almost everyone was literate and integrated into something like a modern economy.
So there are multiple things at work here: geography, history, deep structural factors. Some are probably fixable, given time. But at this point in Congo's history, a dozen years after the fall of Mobutu and just six years after the end of Africa's worst war ever, Congo is... well, stepping back and taking the long view, it's about where you'd expect it to be. Things could be better but, believe it or not, they could actually be worse. Somewhat.
Meanwhile, a few statistics. The World Bank ranks Congo 182nd out of 183 countries in ease of doing business. Transparency International ranks it 162 out of 180 in the Corruption Perceptions Index, while Reporters Without Borders ranks them 146th out of 175 on press freedom. The Economist's Democracy Index ranks them 154th out of 167.
Congo's government budget for 2010 is about $5.6 billion, of which about half is coming from donors. That works out to about $90 per Congolese. By way of comparison, the FY 2010 budget for the American state of Rhode Island (population just over 1 million) is about $7.8 billion -- and Rhode Island doesn't have to support embassies or an army.
The budget issue is relevant because part of Congo's problem is its continuing inability to perform two of the basic functions of government: collecting taxes and paying government salaries. Not only is tax dodging an art form here, but a depressingly high proportion of the money collected as taxes never reaches the coffers of the central government. Meanwhile, going the other way, money paid out as salaries tends to get diverted before reaching the intended recipients.
The most glaring example is the military. Huge masses of cash are flown in to pay soldiers' salaries, but the soldiers see little of it, and that very late; first the generals take their cut off the top, then the lower officers get theirs, and so forth. (This goes a long way to explain the spectacular collapse of Congo's military in the First Congo War, when Kabila Senior's ragtag band of rebels was able to march 1500 miles across Africa while repeatedly routing Mobutu's troops. You'd think that lesson would have been learned, but apparently not.) Various donors have pushed schemes to fix this, from electronic payments to sealed pay packets, but they've been fiercely resisted; the people in power are, by and large, the ones who are profiting.
The "Doing Business" ranking is also illustrative. Congo has been at or next to the bottom for three years now. The government professes to be Very Upset about this, and we met with a committee that's supposed to make a bunch of changes that will improve Congo's score.
Well... maybe. Next year's scores will be published in September, so we'll have to wait a while. But if Congo is still at the bottom, it will give an idea of just how seriously we should take this government's statements. I note in passing that Mobutu was astonishingly good at telling bald-faced lies to international institutions and getting away with it. Whether the current government shares that trait remains to be seen.
To bring it back to the beginning: having said that the government would still suck even if Kabila Junior were brilliant and diligent and honest, I have to say that it doesnt' look like Kabila Junior is particularly brilliant, diligent or honest. "Quite a bit better than Mobutu" is still a very low bar.
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