"Stop Sending Us Aid!"
By dpayton Posted in Foreign Affairs — Comments (20) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
An Kenyan expert in economics, James Shikwati, was interviewed by the German magazine Der Spiegel. The interview got off to a quick start as Shikwati surprised the journalist.
SPIEGEL:Mr. Shikwati, the G8 summit at Gleneagles is about to beef up the development aid for Africa...
Shikwati: ... for God's sake, please just stop.
SPIEGEL: Stop? The industrialized nations of the West want to eliminate hunger and poverty.
Shikwati: Such intentions have been damaging our continent for the past 40 years. If the industrial nations really want to help the Africans, they should finally terminate this awful aid. The countries that have collected the most development aid are also the ones that are in the worst shape. Despite the billions that have poured in to Africa, the continent remains poor.
Massive injections of money, good intentions, and virtually nothing to show for it. Sounds just like the welfare state here. The journalist is confused, bewildered.
SPIEGEL: Do you have an explanation for this paradox?
Why is it a paradox if it simply a case of doing what doesn't work on a much larger scale? This exposes the incredibly simplistic assumption on the part of liberal ideology that throwing money a a problem really should work...in theory. As conservatives have been arguing for decades, however, an understanding of economics helps explain this "paradox". In answer to the question, Shikwati explains.
Shikwati: Huge bureaucracies are financed (with the aid money), corruption and complacency are promoted, Africans are taught to be beggars and not to be independent. In addition, development aid weakens the local markets everywhere and dampens the spirit of entrepreneurship that we so desperately need. As absurd as it may sound: Development aid is one of the reasons for Africa's problems. If the West were to cancel these payments, normal Africans wouldn't even notice. Only the functionaries would be hard hit. Which is why they maintain that the world would stop turning without this development aid.
Being taught to be beggars, dependence on government, dampening entrepreneurship, and government corruption involved in the cash transfer. Sounds just like the welfare...well, you get the idea.
Well, now our journalist is flummoxed. Doesn't someone have to help them? Shikwati slaps down this dependency thinking, and explains how food shipments both prop up corrupt governments and at the same time destroy the local economy's incentive.
SPIEGEL: Even in a country like Kenya, people are starving to death each year. Someone has got to help them.
Shikwati: But it has to be the Kenyans themselves who help these people. When there's a drought in a region of Kenya, our corrupt politicians reflexively cry out for more help. This call then reaches the United Nations World Food Program -- which is a massive agency of apparatchiks who are in the absurd situation of, on the one hand, being dedicated to the fight against hunger while, on the other hand, being faced with unemployment were hunger actually eliminated. It's only natural that they willingly accept the plea for more help. And it's not uncommon that they demand a little more money than the respective African government originally requested. They then forward that request to their headquarters, and before long, several thousands tons of corn are shipped to Africa ...
SPIEGEL: ... corn that predominantly comes from highly-subsidized European and American farmers ...
Shikwati: ... and at some point, this corn ends up in the harbor of Mombasa. A portion of the corn often goes directly into the hands of unsrupulous politicians who then pass it on to their own tribe to boost their next election campaign. Another portion of the shipment ends up on the black market where the corn is dumped at extremely low prices. Local farmers may as well put down their hoes right away; no one can compete with the UN's World Food Program. And because the farmers go under in the face of this pressure, Kenya would have no reserves to draw on if there actually were a famine next year. It's a simple but fatal cycle.
And it just gets better after that. It included an admission from a tyrant that they indeed waste the aid, a exposure of exaggerated AIDS numbers for profit, and an African biochemist stuck being a chauffeur to aid workers. You simply must read the whole thing. It really turns on its head the idea that huge amounts of aid helps a nation, or even a continent. Giving to the poor is one thing. Destroying the individual spirit by destroying their livelihood is entirely another. The interview concludes with the journalist, playing the part of the liberal to the hilt (and, based on the full interview, not really play-acting) asking in desperation...
SPIEGEL: What are the Germans supposed to do?
Shikwati: If they really want to fight poverty, they should completely halt development aid and give Africa the opportunity to ensure its own survival. Currently, Africa is like a child that immediately cries for its babysitter when something goes wrong. Africa should stand on its own two feet.
Rugged individualism, combined with personal, not massive, charitable giving. That is the responsible position.
Gave a couple of goats and some chickens last year for Christmas. Excellent charity.
but the impact of environmental restrictions on Africa due to overzealous environmental alarmists have made it near impossible for industry and technology to flourish there.
Founder and contributor to The Minority Report and Senior writer for The Hinzsight Report
It beggars the imagination. One wonders why Chris Matthews and Wolf Blitzer don't ask these types of questions to the Democrats (and the Republicans, too) during the debates.
Anyone want to bet that the points raised in this interview will never be discussed as questions in any of the Presidential debates this election cycle?
It's a simple but fatal cycle.
'Nuff said...
I recall that Bush got bashed for cutting off aid to some African governments when the real story is he has given more than anybody. The difference was countries with severely corrupt government weren't going to get any since little or no help would get through the corruption to those that needed it.
Ask not what you can do for your country, ask what your country can do for you. Washington Elected Elite
I remember thinking at the time that it would be more efficient to simply wire the money into the Swiss bank accounts of the various Hereditary Presidents for Life around the continent.
If we want to help people succeed, we will buy the stuff they make.
In order to avoid harming this effort, the US govt should eliminate trade barriers and eliminate govt subsidies on our home grown products.
In other words, fair competition.
I meant what I said and I said what I meant. An elephant's faithful 100 percent.
end all of our wasteful agricultural subsidies which dump cheap food into world markets.
"Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty"
Kyle
SPIEGEL: Would Africa actually be able to solve these problems on its own?
Rather condescending, don't you think? "Do you poor, dumb schmucks really think you can survive without the help of us superior Europeans?"
this racist moron couldn't have said a more racist commit with saying,
"N__S can survive without the Ayran Race?!"
It really amazes me just how racist these "liberals" really are.
As a Jersey boy, I must say the Libs up here are the most racist condescending bigots I've ever met.
Obviously Black people never met real liberal White Democrats in their McMansions with their Mexican houseslave.. I mean maid, oopps. Well, my WASP neighbor seems to be a lot more satisfied with Maria(since she can be deported if the pay is not enough for her), after all no self self-respecting liberal wants some uppity black person wandering around their house without supervision.
Not to say their are some ignorant conservatives out there but, conservatives(and Republicans) seem to care a lot more to finish the job Lincoln, Douglas, and King started. As for Africa, let the people not the state rule.
Liberty or Death!
all your years of do-gooding and you only made poor people worse off.
"Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty"
Kyle
Cut off the gravy train and they'll be forced to change their ways and become prosperous and self-sustaining. Ditto Central America.
If you want to ruin a nation, export liberalism. If you want to save a nation, export capitalism.
but as William Easterley pointed out in his super The White Man's Burden it needs to be limited and targeted, and these wealthy do-gooders still have yet to answer for the fact that dismantling the CAP and America's retaliatory barriers could do more for a number of these countries than any wealth transfer.
Precisely. Many on the Left, and much of the Religious Left, seems to thing that just the act of giving works good. It's a overly simplistic view of the world. Yet giving is an imperative that, from my perspective, Jesus gave us. It's the old "too much of a good thing" adage that is lost on them. "If a little giving is good, a boatload of giving is better."
Not always. One must engage the brain.
Franklin Stoves- or to be specific they need a blacksmith trained in how to make Franklin Stoves.
Why we continue to insist on giving them money is beyond me. It's as if liberals actually think the solution to poverty is money- Silly liberals- everyone knows the solution to poverty is either Yankee ingenuity, Western rugged individualism, or some combination of the two.
George W. Bush: He's A Folder ... Not A Fighter.
African aid isn't a left or right issue. Don't forget that decades of "aid" that wrecked Africa was doled out by administrations of both stripes fighting the Cold War by proxy. Pinning the problem solely on liberal do-gooders or euro-weenies is nonsense.
The U.S. and Soviet Union both spent years using cash, armaments, and works projects to prop up a parade of scumbags that each side considered expedient in their great grapple for world control. And the Big Men of Africa played both sides to shake loose whatever would keep them in their pleasures. Then as now, we sought to fight wars over there to not fight wars over here. Liberals did not create Mobutu or Mengistu or Savimbi...they were products of bare knuckled geopolitics played without thought of local consequences. And humanitarian aid certainly didn't wreck Nigeria or Angola...oil money was sufficient for that.
Africa can still use aid, just not stupid aid, like ammo and indigestable milk powder and commodity dumping that wrecks local markets. They need small-scale lending, training, local infrastructure improvements with local labor, accounting oversight, economic diversification, and access to first world markets. Unfortunately, it looks like the Chinese have stepped up to fill the void of doling out Bad Money to Bad Men. Bono can't possibly compete with the PLA, so don't blame his sort.
If tomorrow, Bush suggested exactly that, which political party would scream loudest against it, preferring the PR of being able to say "we care" over the long-term good of Africa.
John Stossel has a free video for teachers and others concerned about education, which includes a five minute clip upon this subject. If you are concerned about someone’s education then you might want to order a copy.
http://stosselintheclassroom.org/
...a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right...
---Thomas Paine---
"You never need a firearm,until you need it BADLY!"