Dr. Craig Richardson is an associate professor of Economics in the WSSU School of Business and Economics. But, did you know that through his experiences, he has become an expert on the affairs of the African nation of Zimbabwe? He recently shared how that happened.
I began my interest in Zimbabwe in 1992, working for a summer as a research assistant at the World Bank, while I was completing my Ph.D in economics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. That summer, I was assigned the project of writing a large background paper on Zimbabwe, a country I knew nothing about, and also unrelated to my dissertation. However, the thought of learning so much about a country in Africa certainly intrigued me, so that summer I learned all about the history, culture, economics and politics of that country. Zimbabwe was doing relatively well then, called the “jewel of Africa” for it fed itself, and exported grain to the rest of Africa.
Craig Richardson (left) with U.S. Ambassador for Zimbabwe, Christopher Dell. Richardson was invited to Zimbabwe by the U.S. Embassy in 2006 & 2007 for meetings with government and business executives, as well as a presentation at their annually sponsored conference.
Then I took a job at Salem College and basically that paper went into a file drawer, where it remained for a good ten years. However in 2002, as I began reading with increasing interest how this former jewel of Africa was now collapsing at an astonishing rate, I resolved to dust off that paper and take a sabbatical to learn what had happened. The result was a book, published by Edwin Mellen Press, in 2004, titled, The Collapse of Zimbabwe in the Wake of the 2000-2003 Land Reforms.
The book’s central thesis was that the government’s intention to redistribute lands from a small minority of wealthy white farmers to a majority of black farmers may have had admirable intentions, but in practice it was a ruthless way for President Mugabe to hand out wealth to his friends, cronies and military heads, in order to stay in power. Few poor blacks benefited, and more than a million lost their jobs after the thousand acre commercial (and world class) farms owned by the white farmers fell into disuse, since the people who replaced them lacked the skills to farm. The white farmers fled to neighboring countries, and set up business there.
This book ended up getting quite a bit of attention from think tanks in Washington, and I was invited to give presentations for government officials, scholars, and the press in 2005 and 2006. Then word reached the United States Embassy in Harare, Zimbabwe, and I was invited to Zimbabwe in October 2006 to present my findings to more than 300 top-level executives, government officials and heads of non-governmental organizations, at a business conference. That conference was attended by people from South Africa, Zambia, Mozambique, as well as Zimbabwe. Although controversial in some ways, I presented a lot of empirical evidence showing the country’s collapse. One research finding I showed was that when the commercial farms owned by the whites were confiscated, this caused a complete loss of borrowing power on the part of the new farmers, since the titles were revoked. No longer could the farms be used as collateral to buy tractors, outbuildings and irrigation pipes. Sales of tractors went from 5,000 to 8 in one year.
In addition, I used Google satellite photos to show the before and after effects of the land reforms. There was simply no arguing with these photos.
My research aimed to show that the government’s claims, that the economy’s collapse was due to drought, was simply a myth, concocted to lay blame on others.
I was very fortunate to also have been invited to speak in other far-flung places, such as University of Gloucestershire, England, and Institute for Liberty and Democracy, Peru.
In October 2007, I was again invited back to Harare for the same business conference and this time tried to present a more positive approach, by contrasting Zimbabwe’s catastrophic collapse with its northern neighbor, Zambia, which is having very strong economic growth now – not coincidentally – also respecting the rule of law, property rights and opening up their markets to international trade. The point was to show there are some positive success stories in Africa, despite what we read in the press. In fact, all of Zimbabwe’s bordering neighbors (Botswana, S.A., Mozambique, and Zambia) are growing quite positively.
Zimbabwe remains such a compelling story because it is a country really hinging on the possibility of a dramatic turnaround. I have hope for Zimbabwe, even though inflation is now 10 million percent per year. The good news is that regime change always follows hyperinflation.
May I also say that my interactions with the Zimbabwe people have been nothing short of extraordinary. I have been welcomed into homes of complete strangers, wherever I went. By and large, they are a gentle, well-educated, charming and wonderful people, who patiently wait for better times. We should note that despite a stunning collapse, there have been virtually no riots, and people quietly wait in line for hours to get food and money. This peaceful nature, respect and kindness for others will go a long way towards the rebuilding of the country. Indeed, Zimbabwe’s people are one of the country’s finest invisible assets.
