I have been ignoring this topic deliberately until I recently stumbled on "The Bottom Billion - a book by Paul Collier who rightly says that about 70% of the poorest people in the world live in Africa.
An emotional must read, the book defines the bottom billion as people who live on less than a dollar a day, people who coexist with the 21st century, but whose reality is distinctly 14th century. Their lives are surrounded by civil war, plagues and ignorance. They are concentrated in Africa and central Asia with a scattering elsewhere. They live in Chad, Haiti, Bolivia, Cambodia and North Korea.
Fine, I concede that along with other like minded individuals who show much compassion for Africa, Collier may be right but questions still abound as to what is the right formula to change the situation in Africa.
The writer goes on to say that ," The 21st century world of material comfort, global travel and economic interdependence will become increasingly vulnerable to these large islands of chaos, which may become havens for terrorism or destabilising civil war. Bean-counting poverty simply misses the point. Even if poverty declines in these societies the conditions for social explosion will mount unless the current situation is reversed. That is the coming challenge of development: rescuing - or containing - a group of countries that for 40 years have been shearing off from the rest of us and must start to catch up. Africa has been a hot topic at all major international discussions and conferences, interviews, books and recently concerts all geared towards creating awareness about the unfortunate plight of Africa."
Got that? Rescuing or containing - a group of countries that for 40 years have been shearing off from the rest of us and must start to catch up????
Everyone has their ideas about the way forward. For example James Shikwati director of a Kenya think tank (Inter Region Economic Network) IREN Kenya, detests the idea that African and other poor countries must receive foreign aid in order to develop. He supports instead the creation of business and trade models that would boost development in Africa, employing the populations and creating real and lasting wealth. With these in mind, Mr. Shikwati has been consistent in his call for an end of aid to Africa, his constant voice promulgated worldwide through interviews in major global publications. Needless to say, his views have not been kindly received in many quarters.
Jeffrey D. Sachs, the director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and the author of "The End of Poverty." thinks that what Africa needs is assistance in the form of aid to be able to achieve the millenium development goals - the most basic requirements for reduction in Third World destitution. Sachs believes that anti-aid arguments like Shikwati's "have slowed life-saving interventions." Other critics of the Kenyan economist include Peter Smerdon, a spokesman for a United Nations food program who said that the policies Shikwati was promoting would "kill millions of people." Irungu Houghton, an Oxfam official in Nairobi, said they would consign poor Africans to "a major death sentence."
Bono (Paul David Hewson) lead singer and principal lyricist of the Irish rock band U2 is another vocal proponent of the idea that aid works, criss-crossing the globe on a crusade to persuade the global north to increase its aid remittances to Africa.
On the other hand, William Easterly in his "White Man's Burden" lampoons Sachs as a modern version of a 19th-century utopian, ridiculing the idea that the elimination of African poverty can be achieved through 75 billion US dollars a year in Western aid and state planning, i.e. tasking all governments with the improvement of agricultural technology, provision of antimalaria bed nets, treatment of diseases like hookworm and the distribution of antiretroviral treatments to the H.I.V.-infected.
What do Africans think of all this? What will work in Africa, Aid or Trade?
To learn more about this author, visit Ken Teyie's Website.
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