It's not as bad as this article says, but almost. Some roads in Douala have been fixed, some new roads have been paved. I didn't see a working telephone line, but several competing mobile phone companies are doing a good job of connecting almost everybody.
The corruption is still there. My stepmother lives in a new house without running water. My wife has paid all the fees to have water months ago, but no one from the water company ever came to do the work. Obviously,a bribe has to be paid to someone, but we don't know whom. A distant cousin claims he knows someone at the water company, but the close family doesn't know the cousin well enough to trust him. The hope that the privatisation of the water company would lead to a rooting out of corruption by its new american owners has faded long ago.
However the railroad seems to have taken steps to root out corruption by making every employee wear a uniform with his name on it, and putting posters in the train station to ask people do denounce bribery. This was a good surprise. Before that I couldn't even imagine anything that could be done to fight corruption. I don't know how well this works, but we had no trouble when taking the train.
The north of the country, which is mainly muslim, seems to be less corrupt. A christian told me he wished the president was a muslim because it would reduce corruption.
Several unconnected people also told me about something else than corruption that slows down private initiative. They speak of jealousy. Apparently when someone succeeds, many of those around him get so jealous they try to make him fail. I don't know what to make of this. I also heard a lot about sorcery.
I live in Cameroon for three years as a child around the ages of five. In a town smaller than Douala. I was small, but I don't remember it being bad.
There was a country resort down the street which I used to bike to and go swimming in their gigantic swimming pool. I was allowed to bike everywhere in the city by myself.
The food was insanely fresh having been killed and cooked hours before you ate it.
We always had water, and called home long distance pretty regularly. When my brother broke his arm, he had a local doctor in the hospital put a cast on it, and then saw it off.
I may have been too small to experience the corruption first hand, but everything seemed fine to me.
I don't buy the corruption thesis for explaining lack of development. New York in the late 1900's was unbelievably corrupt, yet it had one of the fastest growing economies in the history of the world. Read this book if you want to read how corrupt it was: http://books.google.com/books/pdf/Satan_s_Invisible_World_Di...
The same applies for modern China. It is very corrupt. Greasing palms and making connections is mandatory. Property rights are still quite shaky. Yet it is growing at a stunning rate.
Bribery is not a huge obstacle to a determined entrepreneur. You just pay it like any other tax.
> Bribery is not a huge obstacle to a determined entrepreneur. You just pay it like any other tax.
But it's not just bribery. It's about being in or out of favour. It's about irrationality and lack of transparency.
If you know that the current telecoms company has the brother-in-law of the president on the board, do you think that paying some bribes will be sufficient to allow you to enter the market?
How about if you don't know whether that's the case, but you do know there's a reasonable chance that your startup business will be blocked for a "non business" reason like that?
All of these factors act to reduce the likelihood of return on investment and increase risk.
I imagine also that bribes also fluctuate a lot with regard to frequency and amount. That makes them hard to plan for.
"New York in the late 1900's was unbelievably corrupt, yet ..."
New York in the 1900's may have been as corrupt as Cameroon today, also the development of New York at that time may be comparable as the development of Cameroon now days.
And it's not the level of development that's the issue, it's the rate of growth. 1900's New York was getting much richer every year. The African countries are almost all either stagnant or actually getting poorer.
Competition is the solution for corruption. Privatization often helps in fostering competition. But a private monopoly does not seem better than a public one.
In most industries, a private monopoly can't exist without State sponsorship. That'll mean it's corrupt from the very start. Exceptions perhaps being "natural" monopolies such as water mains.
Look at the cell phone industry in Canada, there are 3 companies all of which no one in the western world has heard of. There's the good (rogers) the not so good (telus) and the outright bad (bell).
Bell was state sponsored and still has all the protections of it. Last year they sent out 'free' wireless router-modems, however if you didn't subscribe to the service that gave you it for free then you'd get a bill essentially saying 'pay us $200 or send back the modem, or we'll take you to court'. The multiple late payment notices requiring payment 3 days before the bill could even be paid was the last straw, our phone and internet is being switched and bell can go stick their modem up their corrupt and incompetent asses.
Rogers seems to be the only competent cellular company in Canada. This is probably because it was independently owned from the beginning and the original founder apparently kept a lot of influence until late into the game (he died like this week). They didn't hike their SMS charges (bell and telus doubled it by charging for incoming messages), however I can't speak for the quality of their other services as I have a Rogers cellphone, which is because when I came here with a T-Mobile UK phone it switched to Rogers and they seemed competent enough... I was really vindicated in my decision when the competitors hiked their prices, however mocking my wife for it wasn't a wise choice.
I didn't dispute that State sponsorship may contribute to a private monopoly. I pointed out that corruption may add to the barriers to entry which would help a private monopoly persist, i.e. state sponsorship is not a necessary requirement for a private monopoly.
Your example also seems to demonstrate that state sponsorship isn't sufficient to grant a private monopoly.
I was thinking more the other direction. Corruption acts as a additional barrier to entry (will I get that contract? I can try and pay more money/bribe the right people, but even if I do that maybe there's a family connection I don't know about). This reduces competitive pressure, making monopoly more likely.
I'm not sure that increasing competitive pressure would decrease corruption. I can see how it might help, but it might also hurt.
e.g. a previously minimally corrupt business owner finding it harder to compete succumbs to temptation to join in the game due to increasing competition. So I think that part of it could go either way.
The question now is "what is the solution for corruption?"
Human nature is selfish, which leads someone with power and authority to abuse it for their own personal gain. The solution lies in providing the most reward to people with the authority when they make the "ethical" decision.
*I quote "ethical" because it's never as simple as A is ethical, B is not. I use ethical as meaning not corrupt - which also needs a better definition.
It's not as bad as this article says, but almost. Some roads in Douala have been fixed, some new roads have been paved. I didn't see a working telephone line, but several competing mobile phone companies are doing a good job of connecting almost everybody.
The corruption is still there. My stepmother lives in a new house without running water. My wife has paid all the fees to have water months ago, but no one from the water company ever came to do the work. Obviously,a bribe has to be paid to someone, but we don't know whom. A distant cousin claims he knows someone at the water company, but the close family doesn't know the cousin well enough to trust him. The hope that the privatisation of the water company would lead to a rooting out of corruption by its new american owners has faded long ago.
However the railroad seems to have taken steps to root out corruption by making every employee wear a uniform with his name on it, and putting posters in the train station to ask people do denounce bribery. This was a good surprise. Before that I couldn't even imagine anything that could be done to fight corruption. I don't know how well this works, but we had no trouble when taking the train.
The north of the country, which is mainly muslim, seems to be less corrupt. A christian told me he wished the president was a muslim because it would reduce corruption.
Several unconnected people also told me about something else than corruption that slows down private initiative. They speak of jealousy. Apparently when someone succeeds, many of those around him get so jealous they try to make him fail. I don't know what to make of this. I also heard a lot about sorcery.