Israel's Stake in Black Africa

WHEN a cholera epidemic broke out recently in Kenya, the Ministry of Health decided that the entire country would have to be immunized. But where could so much vaccine be obtained in a short time? Unhesitatingly, the Kenyans turned to Israeli Ambassador Reuven Dafni for help. Dafni cabled Jerusalem, and within two days 1,000,000 doses of vaccine had reached Nairobi. Eventually, 300,000 more doses were sent. By last week the epidemic, after claiming 47 lives, was over.

Mass vaccination of Kenyans was one of the more spectacular examples of Israel's foreign aid operation in Black Africa. The program has been functioning for a decade and, despite its relatively small scale, is one of the world's most effective. Though Israel's war machine eats up 40% of the $3.8 billion national budget, the nation's Foreign Ministry has earmarked $10 million for foreign aid this year, and half of that will go to Africa. The program has been highly cost-effective in winning diplomatic friends, as indicated by Foreign Minister Abba Eban's scheduled trip this week to seven Black African countries (Ghana, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Sierra Leone, the Congo, Cameroun and Kenya).

Nation Builders. Under the aegis of the ministry's Department of International Cooperation, 250 government technicians will be working in 30 African nations during 1971 to guide 70 different aid projects. About 500 Africans, 15% of them women, will go to Israel at the same time for specialized instruction in everything from microbiology and urban planning to kindergarten teaching and union leadership. In the past decade, 6,200 Africans have received such training. "We Israelis are experienced nation builders," says Shaul Ben-Haim, Ambassador to Malawi. "That experience is about all we have to give, but it is gladly given and accepted with appreciation."

Not rich enough to provide development loans as does the U.S. --whose African aid program is 30 times as large as Israel's but not necessarily more effective--Israel asks aid recipients to share the cost: African trainees who fly to Tel Aviv usually pay their own fare and at least part of their living expenses.

The emphasis is on technical assistance in agronomy, water and soil development, highway planning, port development, fish breeding, sewage disposal, nutrition and handicrafts. Israeli experts have established citrus plantations in Madagascar and Uganda, a steamship line and a 16,000-acre cattle ranch in Ghana, a beekeeping industry in Senegal and massive poultry farms in Zambia and the Congo. In Togo, Dahomey, Upper Volta and Ghana, the Israelis have shown fascinated governments how to operate national lotteries.

One mark of the projects' success is that they have survived the worst of Africa's political upheavals. In Ghana, for instance, Israelis began working during the regime of Kwame Nkrumah, continued under the military government that toppled the dictator, and are now cooperating with the civilian government that succeeded the soldiers.

In Zambia, President Kenneth Kaunda regularly sends foreign visitors into the northern forest to visit Kafulafuta and Kafubu, twin settlements where 500 Zambian families are living on chicken farms patterned after the Israeli rural cooperatives known as moshavim. With help from a team of nine Israelis, the two cooperatives have reached a point where they now produce 500,000 eggs monthly.

Israel ties no strings to its aid packages, but it obviously counts on harvesting good will. Says International Cooperation Director Shimon Amir in Jerusalem: "We hope that the Africans will see us as we really are and not as Arab propagandists paint us." Apparently the hope is realistic. In the United Nations and the Organization for African Unity, Black African delegates pay only lip service to Arab-sponsored resolutions that call on Israel to return captured territories.

To the irritation of Arab diplomats, even some Moslem Africans are friendly to Israel. Says a foreign ministry official in Senegal, which is 85% Moslem: "Israeli aid is the cheapest and least conditional there could be. Saudi Arabia offered us aid with so many strings that we had to do without it. Generally speaking, the possibilities of the Arab countries are too limited for them to be able to give us any aid."

People of the Book. One spin-off from the programs is a broader African market for Israeli products. Exports to Africa have risen in a decade from $11 million to $40 million. There is also added opportunity for private ventures. The Parliament of Madagascar last year voted to allow an Israeli company to explore for oil, the first such opportunity anywhere on the continent for Israel. Israelis are also building a new highway linking Ethiopia and Kenya and have just completed a 15-story office building that is Nairobi's tallest.

In the Ivory Coast, Developer Moshe Mayer is now busy with a $2 billion complex including hotels, marina, animal park, convention hall and housing area for 60,000 that by 1980 will transform a 10,000-acre jungled seaside strip south of Abidjan into "the African Riviera" (TIME, March 15). Mayer says he has invitations from 20 other African nations, including Kenya and Madagascar, to build similar tourist centers or hotels. Architect and City Planner Thomas Leitersdorf has planned new housing and roads for the Riviera project in such a fashion as to provide a gentle transition to urban life for the 7,000 Ebrie tribesmen who now live in overcrowded farming villages nearby.

Israel's image in Africa is varied, to say the least. To Bible-reading Christian converts, the Israelis are the people of the Book. "So nice to meet you," said a Congolese warmly to one Israeli official visiting Kinshasa. "And how is King David?" In Ethiopia, Uganda and the Congo, where Israel's defense forces conduct military training and operations, Israelis are also the people of the gun. In Ethiopia, they have trained the country's entire security force, including commando units operating against Eritrean rebels hostile to Emperor Haile Selassie. Israeli agents in southwestern Ethiopia direct airdrops to southern Sudan's black rebels in their fight against the Arab-run Khartoum government.

The military aid has also made friends for Israel. President Joseph Mobutu of the Congo received his paratroop training and wings in Israel; Uganda's General Idi ("Big Daddy") Amin recently overthrew President Milton Obote with Israeli-advised armed forces. Occasionally, however, such programs give rise to ironic situations. When Arab leaders visit Addis Ababa to attend meetings of the Organization for African Unity, for instance, they are closely guarded by Ethiopian security men who received their training in Israel.

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