Newsweek - USA (2019-10-11)

NEWSWEEK.COM 13

Vehicles honked their way through

the crowd. It was deafening. 

We caught another minivan to an

outer suburb where we squeezed onto

a rickety bus. Thirty five people into

20 seats. Kids slept on the floor beside

wicker baskets holding chickens. My

legs were jammed into a space so

narrow one foot rested on top of the

other. It all stunk of sweat, bad food

and chicken droppings.

The bus wheezed slowly up hills,

stopping to disgorge or take on pas-

sengers. When it started raining, I

could feel the rear end sliding around.

A kid with a dirty rag wiped the con-

densation from the windshield in

front of the driver. It was one of

the worst journeys I’d ever taken—

uncomfortable, dangerous, intermina-

ble. It took 13 hours and nine vehicle

changes to get 200 miles, riding late

into the night, jammed into a swelter-

ing bus. But for poor people in a poor

country, it was just a typical day.

Nothing much had changed from

my Peace Corps days.

“this country has great potential.

Look at Singapore. It’s even smaller

and has no natural resources at all,”

a U.S. official told me. It’s a facile and

misleading answer, a bit like telling a
third grader anyone can be president. 
In the 1960s, Singapore and Sierra
Leone were at roughly the same place
economically. The smart money
would’ve been wagered on Sierra
Leone, not on Singapore, which
was fighting communism and had
just been kicked out of the Malay-
sian Federation. Sierra Leone had a
democratically-elected government.
Sierra Leone was rich in minerals.
Green Revolution technology prom-
ised to alleviate hunger and poverty.
But that didn’t happen. Singapore is
one of the wealthiest countries in the
world. The CIA Factbook ranks 229
countries by GDP per capita. Sierra
Leone is number 219.
Why did their fates diverge so
spectacularly? There are entire jour-
nals devoted to explaining why Sierra
Leone and other African countries
have fallen behind. The theories fall
into three buckets. It’s the fault of
Africans. It’s white people’s fault. It’s
nobody’s fault.
Some believe Africans and Afri-
can culture are to blame. A few come
right out and say it, like President
Trump, who wants more immigrants
from Norway and for outspoken Afri-
can Americans to go back where they
came from. Others tend to be more,
uh, diplomatic. But they get their
message across. In Commentary
magazine, Daniel Schatz attributes
the economic success of Sweden to
being populated with Scandinavians
who have a “Protestant work ethic.”
In other words: very white people.
A less detestable argument is that
Africans have chosen poor leaders
and built weak institutions. Many
African leaders follow the “big man”
model, lavishing patronage and refus-
ing to be bound by law or convention.
Factions swap control of the govern-
&+ ment, and when they are in power

5 ,
6 -

$&

.^6

21

ʔ*

(^7

7 <

GUINEA

LIBERIA

BOTTOM LINE

“I found a country

not a whit better

off,” says our writer,

“than the one I left

almost a half century

before.” Pictured:

view of Freetown,

Sierra Leone.

Freetown

AFRICA

Kailahun

SIERRA LEONE