Helping Africa
July 11th, 2007
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Professor William Easterly on how to help Africa,
The real Africa also has seen cellphone and Internet use double every year for the last seven years. Foreign private capital inflows into Africa hit $38 billion in 2006 — more than foreign aid. Africans are saving a higher percentage of their incomes than Americans are (so much for the “poverty trap” of being “too poor to save” endlessly repeated in aid reports). I agree that it’s too soon to conclude that Africa is on a stable growth track, but why not celebrate what Africans have already achieved?
Instead, the international development establishment is rigging the game to make Africa — which is, of course, still very poor — look even worse than it really is. It announces, for instance, that Africa is the only region that is failing to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs in aid-speak) set out by the United Nations. Well, it takes extraordinary growth to cut extreme poverty rates in half by 2015 (the first goal) when a near-majority of the population is poor, as is the case in Africa. (Latin America, by contrast, requires only modest growth to halve its extreme poverty rate from 10% to 5%.)
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I liked what the good professor said about countries not becoming rich with aid; for that you need trade and entrepreneurship. But why the naysayers? Well, Africa’s poverty keeps many rich. and that would be true for almost every developing country.
I especially find it appalling that many activists continue to appeal to the West on compassionate grounds as if Africans are beggars. I find this attitude extremely demeaning towards people who have been really victims of history. If these folks are really interested in helping Africans, then they should pressurize their governments to offer Africa market access.
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