Africa: More Money is not the Answer

Fire of Liberty
Paul Jackson has a good column in The Calgary Sun noting how the celebrity filled lovefest known as Live 8 is just one more example of how the elites feel they can solve any problem by throwing money at it. It's great that people and governments are willing to send more money to feed the starving children of Africa but it only tar-papers over the problem creating a mere temporary fix. You only have to look at Jackson's column to understand how such generosity can go array:

Before getting all weepy-eyed over the Live 8 stunt, I'd advise everyone to read Peter Goodspeed's probing series on Africa in the National Post. Few will be enthralled with the Live 8 circuses after that.

Goodspeed points that out over the past several decades, the western industrial democracies have poured $500 billion in foreign aid into Africa. Totalled with loans, which are frequently written off, the sum is a staggering $1 trillion U.S.

Yet, despite this largesse, Africa has become steadily poorer. In sub-Sahara Africa, the number of poor increased from 164 million in 1981 to 316 million in 2001. In 40 years Africa's share of world trade fell from 6% in 1980 to 2% today.

That's despite, Goodspeed explains, Africa having 90% of the world's cobalt, 90% of the world's platinum, 50% of its gold, 98% of its chromium, and 64% of its manganese. It has one-third of the world's uranium, and, Alberta's oil sands aside, more oil than North America. It is, in short, a fabulously rich continent.

Realistically, it shouldn't need foreign aid or the current write-offs on $40 billion in loans.

The Economist itself notes the so-called crushing interest on foreign-aid debts is fiction.

Madagascar, for instance, receives 14 times the amount in foreign aid than the yearly interest it pays on its debts.

Until their is a complete reform of the political system of these nations, more free trade which provides readily available markets for their goods, and donations to private charities rather than the corrupt governments of Africa, and the elimination of malaria via insecticides the nations of Africa will continue to stay on the "Highway to Hell" that they've been traveling down all these decades. We need to prescribe the theory of "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime," to these nations rather than throw tons and tons of money towards some absurd boondoggle.

If you want to learn more about how this theory can be applied to the rescue of Africa, just check out Marvin O'Lasky's The Tragedy of American Compassion, P.T. Bauer's Reality and Rhetoric: Studies in Economic Development as wwell as George Ayittey's Africa Unchained: The Blueprint for Africa's Future. Instead of falling back on the old standby of "more money," these individuals are focusing on the problems and coming up with policies that actually solve the problems at hand.