At a recent international biofuels conference1 held in Cape Town a British businessman stood up and declared, “Sub-Saharan Africa has the potential to be the middle-East of biofuels.”

He bases his claim on soil analysis which demonstrates that less than 20% of some of the best agricultural land in the world is currently under plough.  And all this land lies in a broad swathe across Angola, Zimbabwe, Malawi, , Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania and Mozambique.  Most of the agricultural land in South Africa is already farmed but the country, with its deep-water ports and good infrastructure, would be a perfect gateway for agricultural manufactures to the rest of the world.

Instead of accepting this information gleefully and rushing off to grant investors concessions to set up biofuel farms, the Minister of Energy from Malawi said, “We don’t understand this technology.  Please can you donate funds to help us?”  Sounding less like a savvy business environment and more like a basket-case.  This statement would be echoed, one way or another, by other African leaders during the event.

The image of Africa as some sort of delinquent and addled idiot-savant is epitomised in an advert from the Kamitei Foundation,2 a development organisation specialising in education in rural Tanzania:  “We have riches but we’re too stupid to use them on our own.  Please come do it for us.”

The South African government is attempting to go it alone but have adopted completely the other extreme.  They refuse international assistance to the point of making investment almost impossible.  The same British businessman who was so excited about the potential of Africa was less than excited about South Africa.  “I am very impressed with Mozambique and will definitely be investing there,” he said to me.  “But South Africa is impossible.  Full of businessmen and politicians who talk big and then stand in the way doing nothing but demand hand-outs.”

It is, therefore, with a great degree of optimism that I observe the actions of the new Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-Moon, former foreign minister to the Republic of Korea.  He has expressed outrage at events in Darfur and a vigorous interest in Africa.  South Korea has gone from third-world kleptocracy to first-world Asian Tiger in only a generation.  He is unlikely to view the mewling pleas for continual aid from Africa with any sympathy.  After all, South Korea has become wildly successful without massive foreign aid, but with lots of investment.

Whatever its failings, the United Nations is still the best hope for international cooperation and Africa is the world’s difficult child that just doesn’t seem able to kick some vile habits.

I hope that Ban is able to bring a little tough-love to bear on this troubled continent.