(4 of 9)
What happened to Zambia? Complex things, most of them bad. Kaunda took some principled stands against Ian Smith's white-dominated Rhodesia, which later became Zimbabwe, and against South Africa, but these acts vastly increased the cost of transporting Zambia's copper. In 1968 Kaunda announced the nationalization of 20 foreign companies; in 1969 he began a takeover of the copper industry. Nationalization undermined the confidence of private companies and discouraged foreign investment.
Assistant Secretary of State Cohen argues that African independence leaders were often close to European left wingers, "who implemented in Africa the biggest socialist fantasies that they weren't able to implement in their own countries -- mainly government ownership of everything and government engineering of the economy at every level." Here formed a destructive paradigm: the state came to own and manage 80% of the formal economy. Senior managers were appointed for political reasons, not for competence; the enterprises, incompetently run, lost money. Tribalism, provincialism and nepotism flourished and led to overemployment -- along with resentment and low morale. Kaunda, like other African leaders, used the bloated public sector to keep politicians happy and to balance rival tribes.
Then the arrangement began to collapse. In the early '70s OPEC multiplied the price of oil severalfold, and world copper prices tumbled -- a disaster for Zambia, since copper exports had never accounted for less than 90% of foreign exchange earnings. Foreign debt began to mount. In the end, copper production dropped from 700,000 tons at independence to less than 450,000 tons today, partly because of serious underinvestment; equipment is old and inefficient.
The Kaunda regime, for political reasons, neglected to diversify, especially to encourage agriculture. Today, with only 5% of its arable land cultivated, Zambia is still considered one of the world's few real farming frontiers. But to stay in power and appease the urban masses, Kaunda kept food prices low, thereby encouraging rural people to come to the towns while discouraging those who remained in the countryside from growing crops for sale. Result: Lusaka's population has increased tenfold to 1.2 million since independence.
In the Ivory Coast the surface is much different. For years it was one of Africa's success stories, an exception, President Felix Houphouet-Boigny's French-veneered miracle.
Step off a plane at Abidjan's international airport into the liquid heat of an African morning, and the veneer still seems to be there. An advertisement framed in a distinctive aluminum-and-glass case beckons: BENSON & HEDGES. decouvrez l'or. The two hands languidly reaching for a cigarette in the ad are white.
It is a glimpse of a country caught between Europe and Africa, with a certain dead-end, alienated aping of French elites, something that does not work anymore -- if it ever did. The Ivory Coast is still charming and agreeable, with an endearing -- to foreigners -- Frenchness. Almost everyone speaks French in Abidjan. Paris has Le Drugstore; so does Abidjan, along with a cafe named La Rotonde and the Charles de Gaulle Bridge.