
Stop Aiding Africa - The Daily Beast  - bramanga
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-03-26/stop-aiding-africa/
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samueladam
Africans are very creative and resourceful people.

Children are building their own toys, mechanics can repair any car or engine.
If they are missing some elements, they will be built.

With so much ingenuity, it's hard to believe they need aid.

I really think the author has a good point, aid for Africa has always been to
tell them how to do instead of letting them do it their own way.

Colonialism (and its newer version, aid) has had a bad impact in a sense that
they've been taught to imitate the occidental world.

The culture and the people are different, the solutions must be different.

~~~
johnnybgoode
Although colonialism and aid might appear to be similar on the surface, there
are big differences between the two. The motives were not at all the same, and
they had very different results.

~~~
samueladam
Of course, they are completely different. Some of the guilt of colonialism has
been transformed into aid.

I was referring to the influence both have on not considering Africans as
people who can handle themselves. It will take time, trial and error, but
those can't be avoided.

~~~
johnnybgoode
I agree. They certainly can handle themselves.

~~~
eru
Yes. I guess corruption, not material needs, is the big and hard to tackle
problem for most of Africa. We like to complain about our civil servants and
politicians in the rich world, but we have more than a head start in this
regard.

(Perhaps someone should export honest and competent civil servants and
politicians. Perhaps the Swiss can be coaxed to spare some? Italy would
certainly benefit from an influx, too.)

~~~
vidarh
Actually, the UN does have a program for "exporting" competent and honest
civil servants and politicians, or rather of paying to repatriating well
qualified expats that could otherwise not afford to move back.

A recent example was one of Nigeria's previous ministers of finance who was
paid by the UN to move back from the US. Nigerian ministers were at the time
paid only ca $6000/year - no wonder corruption is high in many of these
countries when these same people often could make hundreds of thousands, or
millions, in the private sector.

See: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ngozi_Okonjo-Iweala>

In her case it didn't go down to well with the other ministers, and that's
likely a problem. A solution might be to set up a fund to provide better
salaries in return for the government agreeing to regular independent audits
of ministers finances and publishing the findings (... we saw how much fun
that could be even in a country like the UK).

Of course many governments would decline, but some at least seem to want to
clean house. It's a lot easier to clean house if the financial situation
doesn't provide ridiculous levels of temptation on a daily basis.

~~~
eru
Interesting. Thanks. I remember I even watched some TED talks by Ngozi Okonjo-
Iweala earlier.

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vitaminj
I was rather underwhelmed by this book, which has somewhat blunt policy
prescriptions (eg. stop accepting foreign aid, take chinese money, issue
bonds, etc) for what probably deserves a more nuanced and considered approach.

I think Shanta Devarajan's assessment of the book is spot on (this guy is the
chief economist at the African world bank) -
[http://africacan.worldbank.org/a-partial-defense-of-
dambisa-...](http://africacan.worldbank.org/a-partial-defense-of-dambisa-
moyo%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%9Cdead-aid%E2%80%9D)

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joel_feather
Aid to Africa is minimal. Compare the GDP of Sub-Saharan Africa. excluding
South Africa to the amount of Aid received - it's minimal and insignificant.

~~~
CWuestefeld
Citations, please?

It seems I'm always seeing celebrities pontificating, news stories mentioning
doctors donating time at African clinics, and media spectacles like USA for
Africa. We see articles about programs aimed at reducing suffering from
malaria, and at AIDS education.

It thus appears to me that much investment is being made. Can you
quantitatively show otherwise?

~~~
joel_feather
Look it up. 700 million from the US to Africa. GDP of a country like ghana is
20 billion. Look up the rest of the numbers yourself.

~~~
CWuestefeld
> Look it up. No. You're making an extraordinary claim; the responsibility is
> yours to demonstrate its veracity.

> 700 million from the US to Africa Define your terms. I suspect that you're
> talking about one very specific type of aid from one very specific entity,
> e.g., direct economic aid from the US government itself. But what about aid
> in the form of charity from US citizens, or donated work by doctors? What
> about indirect aid, such as the way the US supports the UN (and other
> organizations like WHO), which in turn do a lot of work in Africa.

