Dagobert Duck and Africa

Recently I read a newspaper article about a book that would give the answer to the question why Africa remained a poor continent and will remain so for many decades in the future. Unfortunately (people who know me will confirm that I 'm sometimes forgetful) I don't remember the book nor the author. But the content of the book was very enlightening. The reason why Africa remained poor despite all efforts to establish industries and commercial activities, is a cultural one. For instance, if you have a small company in the Netherlands, you are not obliged to give your product or service for free to family and other community members, but in large parts of Africa you are, so almost every starting company is deemed to go bankrupt (in the theory of this book, at least). If you are gifted with capabilities to complete a university study as a second or third son in your family, and your eldest brother is not, it is not uncommon in Africa to quit the university in order not to "trespass" him. Also, people who are rich and influential in Africa are far more obliged to share their wealth and influence with family and community (mostly the village or area where they were born) than they are in Europe. If they fail to fulfil this duty, then a curse will follow them over the world wherever they might go to escape. This theory of what I call "dominance of community relations over individual choice" is illustrated in the book by numerous examples of "unfair" behaviour.
Before we have our judgment ready about this theory, let's look at an example of the way we, as rich Westerners, award initiative and "rich" behaviour.

Donald Duck's rich uncle Dagobert is on his way to his work and passes a flower girl along the pathway. The flower girl kindly asks him to buy some flowers. When I read this, I immediately thought: that scrappy Dagobert will of course find buying flowers a waste of time and money. But on the other hand, what does a flower girl in the story, so I turned the page to see the rest of it. Dagobert "awards" the commercial initiative of the young and inexperienced entrepreneur by buying all flowers she has. The girl was of course very pleasantly surprised and says: Oh sir, how can I thank you? And Dagobert replies: By hard work! You have to sign this contract (he puts a contract under her eyes, pointing a pen with the back of it in her direction), and you will get 10 cents an hour from me, at Sundays 20 cents. The girl thinks: he buys all my flowers, and gives me money for my selling work on top of it, how can I refuse? And she signs. Then Dagobert puts a sign in the bottom next to her flower stand saying: "HELP THE POOR FLOWER GIRL" and replaces the price sign. The girl sold her flowers for 50 cents a bunch, from now on it was 2 Euro a bunch.

This little Donald Duck story was of course a series of comic drawings, but now that I read the story in words, it could very well have been a modern parable from the New Testament, encouraging Jesus' disciples to think about how the Lord would NOT treat His children, or how a rich man should behave to be sure NOT to gain eternal salvation. But in fact, this kind of conduct is completely legal in our culture, and many crooks use it to get rich in a "honest" and "respected" way. Many people familiar with business management will recognize it as "franchising" (however not thinking of this conduct when they negotiate franchising contracts).

When I read this little story, I couldn't help thinking of the African theory I read a few days before. I must admit that some of the darkest prejudicial little devils had a party in my mind when I read that newspaper book review. But, because I was grown in the best liberal traditions, next door little angels bumped on the door that they had to stop the party noise: was our business-oriented culture better than theirs? We as Westerners may get upset when we hear about "their" family and community traditions, which we find totally obsolete and unfair. We call their mutual support "corruption" but we forget that they are simply obliged to it. If Europeans are corrupt, it's always mere greed and despise of legal rules that has lead to it. There are almost no career opportunities over there outside family and community support.
On the other hand, we are always pleasantly surprised by African hospitality and social conduct. It seems as if Africans know what "love their neighbour" entails, and that we forgot about it, because we think that the state and the charity organisations will take care of the poor. Or, we are all little Dagobert Ducks and kill initiative by buying it.