A Marshall Plan for Africa

2009-04-14
By: Del Walters

“The Marshall Plan is very much a business plan.  At its root is an office and factory and warehouse job. The Marshall plan means work, and you will be one of the workers.”

This quote appeared in Kiplinger magazine, the bible of the business world following World War II, and the Great Depression.  The world then needed leadership to extricate it from its malaise. It describes a bold plan to rebuild Europe and Japan.  It was one of those big ideas people like President Barack Obama are calling for. 

So much has been written lately about the Great Depression, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal, but relatively little about the stimulus package that rebuilt Europe, The Marshall Plan.   The genius that led to the plan’s success was alive then, and, if awakened, now could lead to the greatest global economic recovery in history.  This time, however, the focus should be on another continent that is sorely in need of rebuilding - Africa. 

Let’s look back at the numbers following World War II.  By some estimates as many as 60 million people lost their lives during World War II, 20 million soldiers and 40 million civilians.  Cities across the European continent were laid bare and Europe was in ruins.  Japan, especially the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where the first two atomic bombs were dropped, was decimated.  Fields that once spawned fertile farms were littered with bombs, craters and tank tracks.  There was an estimated 500 million cubic tons of waste in Germany alone. 

People across the European continent wandered the streets.  There was no place to work. The factories were destroyed, bombed first by German forces and then allied planes. There was no place for millions to call home. Thousands who survived the war starved to death, others committed suicide.  It was at that time that the U.S. Secretary of State announced on the steps of Harvard University a bold plan. He unveiled “The Marshall Plan,” his plan to rebuild Europe.  There was but one major problem.  His plan called for rebuilding the homelands of the people we had just gone to war with.   Four years later, some 13 billion dollars in U.S. economic aid and technical assistance had flowed to sixteen European countries.
According to the U.S. State Department the plan worked for Europe and for America as well.  “During the program’s four years, participating countries saw their aggregate gross natural product rise more than thirty percent and industrial production increase by 40 percent of prewar levels.”

Here’s the question that demands to be asked now.  If a Marshall Plan worked then, why won’t it work now?  The world’s economy is in shambles. The U.S. is trying to jump start its economy, as is Russia, China, and Europe.  Manufacturing has ground to a halt because consumers no longer want to consume.  That is easy for those who have decades of consumption to look back on. 

Imagine what would happen to those who have been waiting for their chance to join the global community since the collapse of colonial rule. There needs to be a global kick start, something so large, and so bold as to defy the times and yet at the same time define it.  Why not rebuild Africa?

I think back to what Kiplinger  magazine said at the time.  The magazine reported then, that the Marshall plan was a jobs creation act.   “The Marshall Plan is very much a business plan.  At its root is an office and factory and warehouse job. The Marshall plan means work, and you will be on of the workers.”  

Why not utilize American know how to rebuild an entire continent. Midwest factories now idle that once made RV’s could be used to build temporary housing in the poorest of African countries.  Auto dealers with no market, would find growing demand where auto dealers are almost non-existent.  Imagine American-made trucks that once transported child soldiers, now carrying farm tools and building supplies. Midwest farmers with fertile land to till could find welcome mouths feeding the world’s hungry. Heavy machinery companies like Caterpillar and the like could dig new roads in countries like the Congo, where there are fewer paved roads in the entire country, than in the State of Virginia. The list goes on and on.

Even those who have profited from war would stand to profit from beating their swords into plowshares.   Some of the biggest names on the other side of the isle have made fortunes rebuilding countries after we have bombed them into the Stone Age.  Image the profit of operating without bombs falling from the skies.  Consider Iraq.  If we spent a fraction of what we spent on bombing Iraq, rebuilding Africa, the goodwill alone would be worth it.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the same earlier this month.  In his speech to both houses of Congress on March 4th, Brown also indicated that this may be the time for a new generation to be defined. According to Brown, “As we strive to spread the values of peace, political liberty, and the hope for better lives across the world, perhaps the greatest gift our generation could give to the future, the gift of America and Britain to the world could be, for every child in every country of the world, the chance millions do not have today; the chance to go to school.”

We should also be clear, rebuilding Africa is not charity but a moral responsibility to fix what the U.S. and its allies broke.  There is ample evidence to suggest that many of the ‘coups’ that topped African regimes and led to the destabilization of an entire continent had U.S. fingerprints on them.  ‘Joe from Paris’ was the name given to Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, the Culpepper, Virginia man the Eisenhower Administration sent to the Congo to assassinate Patrice Lumumba, by poisoning his toothpaste. That we wanted Lumumba dead is no longer conjecture but fact.  Do we not share some of the blame for the millions who have died in the Congo in the years since then?

Again the words of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, himself the son of a minister, “I keep returning to something I first learned in my father's church as a child. In this most modern of crises I am drawn to the most ancient of truths; wherever there is hardship, wherever there is suffering, we cannot, we will not, pass by on the other side.”Others, including U2 front man Bono and Hollywood actors from George Clooney to Angelina Jolie have called for much the same.  In 1972 the United Nations declared there should be a Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  Today an organization bearing the same name has launched a global campaign for that pledge to be lived up to.   If ever there were a time to rebuild Africa, now is that time.   So why don’t we?  Perhaps because it  is Africa.

For decades there has been, as they say so often in the movies, a sense of fatalism about the lives of Africans.  In the movie ‘Blood Diamonds’ Leonardo DiCaprio faces the camera and says, “TIA - this is Africa!”   In response I say,” TIA.  This is America”.  We are a country of dreams, and dreamers.  A Marshall Plan for Africa would work for Africa, America and the world.  It would be nice to see an African American president leading the way. Don’t look at it like we would be rebuilding Africa; instead let’s, as they did following World War II, focus on rebuilding the U.S. economy.  A Marshall Plan for Africa would be a jobs creation act.

Del Walters is the Producer/ Director of Apocalypse Africa made in America  and an Emmy award winning investigative reporter.