Mark Steyn as usual makes some valid points…
[quote]It’s hardly news that Western pop stars are so deeply concerned about Africa that they’re willing to climb into wacky gear and caterwaul geriatric rock hits in a stadium for a couple of hours every decade. But would they be prepared to outsource the book-keeping for their music publishing to a guy in Ouagadougou or Niamey? That’s tougher than another spasm of feelgood agitprop aimed at that brave band of guilt-ridden Western liberals who got such a frisson out of wasting their money on the tsunami appeal they’re itching to waste a ton more. (One quarter of all the tsunami aid sent to Sri Lanka has been sitting on the dock at Colombo since January, unclaimed and/or unprocessed. Maybe St Bob could do Sitting on the Dock of the Bay for his next charity single.) As long as Western progressives are divided into those who wish to keep Africa in a backward subsistence agriculture economy and those who wish to keep Africa in a backward subsistence agriculture economy.
According to the World Bank’s Doing Business report, in Canada it takes two days to incorporate a company; in Mozambique, it takes 153 days. And Mozambique’s company law has been unchanged since 1888. In the midst of the unending demands that Bush do this, Blair do that, do more, do it now, would it be unreasonable to suggest that, after 117 years, the government of Mozambique might also be obligated to do something about its regulatory regime? Meanwhile, next door in Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe’s government is being given hundreds of thousands of tons of emergency supplies from the UN’s World Food Programme. At the press conference, James Morris, head of the WFP, was at pains to emphasise that the famine was all due to drought and Aids, and certainly nothing to do with Mr Mugabe’s stewardship of the economy. Some of us remember that during the 2002 G8 summit, also devoted to Africa, Zimbabwe’s government ordered commercial farmers to cease all operations. But still neither the UN nor his fellow African leaders will hear a word against Mr Mugabe. The issue in Africa in every one of its crises - from economic liberty to Aids - is government. Until the do-gooders get serious about that, their efforts will remain a silly distraction. [/quote]