Africa needs reform not more aid

[quote]Rock legend brands Mugabe a thug
Mon 4 July 2005
JOHANNESBURG - Irish rocker Bob Geldof fired a broadside at President Robert Mugabe at the weekend branding the Zimbabwean leader

Agreed. I’ve always wondered how successful countries could go to pot so quickly, but history has many examples. And now the USA is also an example of a successful prosperous state which is on the road to ruin due to a delusional whimsical leader. And the masses cheer him on as he leads us straight to hell. Heartbreaking for sure.

For of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, “It might have been.”

  • John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892)

A good African friend of me once spake these words upon seeing the gobsmacked, flabbergasted look on me face upon my arrival in the former Zaire, the now DRC (or has the name changed again?).

“the sights, and smells, and sounds, and looks of freedom in Africa.”

I was about to brand him a fuc*ing racist, but then remembered he is a Black African himself. No wonder he was ‘removed’ by the rebels {or should I say the “liberators of the people of the DRC”} a couple of months later.

To cut a long story short: Is there really anyone out there with a solution for Africa? I don’t think so… me thinks African leaders really despise interference from outsiders, especially if they’re White and/or former colonialists. However, it does help on the level of tolerance for outsiders if you enclose a few billion with your passionate-fall-on-deaf-ears red envelope specially for the poor and needy in outer-fucki^& Liberia for that matter.

Stanley says: If Nelson Mendela can’t sort out the shit in Africa, nobody can.

[quote]Stop begging, Africa leaders told
A delegate in a hallway of the Sirte conference centre observes a billboard with Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi .
The summit is being held in Gaddafi’s home town of Sirte
Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has told other African leaders to “stop begging” for Western charity.

He was speaking at the start of an African Union summit ahead of the G8 summit of the world’s rich and powerful nations in Scotland.

Africa’s leaders are expected to set out their views on trade and aid.

“Begging will not make the future of Africa - it creates a greater gap between the great ones and the small ones,” Col Gaddafi said. (Read the article…)
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4647579.stm[/quote]

[quote][quote]fred smith wrote:
Zimbabwe is one of many examples of a successful prosperous state ruined by the delusional whims of whatever Big Man is refusing to leave. Whack Mugabe though and nothing is left.[/quote]

Agreed. I’ve always wondered how successful countries could go to pot so quickly, but history has many examples. And now the USA is also an example of a successful prosperous state which is on the road to ruin due to a delusional whimsical leader. And the masses cheer him on as he leads us straight to hell. Heartbreaking for sure.[/quote]

:laughing: :unamused: :smiling_imp:

It always cracks me up how delusional whimsical people manage to draw a connection between Bush and the likes of Mugabe, Stalin, Hitler or Saddam for that matter.

I am no Bush supporter, but I do believe the world is a better place without Saddam’s despicable rule. Whether that was enough reason to justify a war in Iraq is another issue. But I digress (in response to the previous poster seizing the opportunity to bash Bush).

What doesn’t make me laugh, however, is that these flippant, over-the-top comparisons make light of the memory of the MILLIONS who suffered death at the hands of Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot etc, and of the suffering of the millions going hungry and being tossed out of their homes in places like Zimbabwe.

Oh yeah DSN? What about the Patriot Act? haha

Among Ordinary Africans, G-8 Seems Out of Touch

[i]By Emily Wax
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, July 3, 2005; Page A01

KOMOTHI KIRATINA, Kenya, July 2 – Peter Kanans, a coffee farmer whose house has no running water and a leaking roof, said he had a message for the leaders of the world’s richest countries who will meet at the G-8 summit next week: Unfair trade practices are enriching African officials and international coffee chains while village farmers grow steadily poorer.

“Like many hardworking Africans, I have a serious bone to pick with the G-8,” said Kanans, a slender man of 60 who has a college education but wears shredded flip-flops. This year, Kanans said, his crop netted about $300 – less than his brother in Delaware spends in two months on takeout cappuccinos.

“Even if they cancel the debt, even if they give our governments aid money, ordinary Africans will not benefit,” he said. “That money will only make the corrupt people richer and Africans international beggars for decades to come.”[/i]
washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co … rrer=email

Thanks everyone for the articles/URLs. The solutions to world (African) poverty are not simple, indeed. This is yet another recent article discussing the problem of corruption in Africa and how it relates to poverty and disease there.

Bodo

On cue, Newsweek has published this: Africa Leaps Forward: Forget Tony Blair and Live 8. The really amazing story is that Africa is starting to recover on its own.

[quote=“Tom Masland, Newsweek”]Africa can seem hopeless. The continent’s 850 million people are poorer today than they were 25 years ago. Largely due to AIDS, average life expectancy and the rate of infant mortality steadily worsen. Even nations like Zimbabwe and Ivory Coast, which thrived after European powers pulled out in the 1960s, have fallen apart. Who can gainsay British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has made aid to Africa a centerpiece of the G8 summit of industrial powers this week, when he calls Africa a scar on the world’s conscience?

Behind the headline chaos, however, there is a more promising reality. Democratic elections have swept Africa. Thirty years ago the continent had only three elected heads of state; now there are 30. The International Monetary Fund says a core group of 25 nations representing three quarters of the continent’s population has been steadily moving ahead economically, and asks, “Is Africa turning the corner?” The IMF predicts overall growth this year of 5.4 percent (chart), driven by often painful economic reforms that began more than a decade ago in South Africa and have since spread widely among its neighbors.[/quote]

The immediate question to mind is, so there are 30 democratic countries in Africa, that’s progress? Hm…

Rather than try to persuade governments to up taxes on us working stiffs to hike foreign aid, why doesn’t McCartney hand over his $500 million US?

With money still pouring in, he’d hardly notice his assets had been depleted. Indeed, why don’t all these filthy rich ‘stars’ put their money where their mouths are instead of trying to soak the rest of us for dough.

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.

The truth, as Goodspeed and others have noted, is much of the foreign aid ends up in the Swiss bank accounts of the continent’s dictators, or to build up their military machines. A lot more is used to build lavish palaces such as the one for Zimbabwe’s president Robert Mugabe.

More goes to line the pockets of other corrupt officials.

As the Sun pointed out in its editorial “Live 8 flat notes” (July 2) if we are going to help Africa, we shouldn’t be transferring vast sums of money to that continent’s governments.

Rather, we should be backing reputable aid organizations such as World Vision, CARE, the Red Cross, Samaritan’s Purse and my own favourite, Street Kids International.

Free trade – despised by the hypocritical New Democrats – has done marvels to pull poorer countries out of the depths.

Just check the label on the next few items of clothing you buy. Over the past decade, for the first time, a middle class has been created in Mexico because of free trade.

Killing agricultural subsidies to farmers in Canada, the U.S. and Europe would immediately open up production and markets for peoples in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

As with free trade, which dramatically brought down the costs of consumer products, it would also dramatically lower the cost of the food we put on our tables and eat in restaurants.

Western Europe, the U.S. and Canada didn’t become wealthy and prosperous because of handouts. Nor, obviously, will Africa. So, no, I didn’t get misty-eyed over Geldof’s conscience-stricken carnival, and neither should you have.

canoe.ca/NewsStand/Columnist … 17766.html

[quote=“Chewycorns”]Killing agricultural subsidies to farmers in Canada, the U.S. and Europe would immediately open up production and markets for peoples in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

As with free trade, which dramatically brought down the costs of consumer products, it would also dramatically lower the cost of the food we put on our tables and eat in restaurants. [/quote]
I agree with the parts of your post that I deleted 100%. But about free trade. The idea of being dependent on another country(s) for my wheat, sugar, etc. concerns me. What do you think about the importance of maintaining some key industries (agriculture) in one’s home country? It seems akin to being completely dependent upon another country for say . . . one’s oil - that’s not something I’d want to see.

Bodo

Bodo:

I believe that fear of being dependent on other countries for not just agriculture but cars, computers, you name it is often fanned by corporate PR departments keen on maintaining support against changes that directly affect their bottom lines. Agricultural subsidies are hugely wasteful and benefit mostly corporations not individual family farmers. In fact, I would argue that the heavy subsidies of corporate agriculture have given them an edge that has ironically driven more family farms out of business because they cannot compete. Agrobusinesses have better access to credit and long-term loans to buy machinery and farmland and economies of scale that allow them to get better prices on equipment and machinery and for this they need to receive 80 percent of the subsidies paid out? Also, most of the subsidies do not go to wheat but to sugar, peanuts, cotton, I believe tobacco and one other crop, soybeans? Anyway the vast bulk is severely skewed to only a few crops. Sugar, cotton and peanuts are the most notorious. The whole thing is a corrupt, bureaucratic, patronage system that really needs to be whacked once and for all. Bush’s proposal to Europe to end our subsidies completely if they get rid of their $40 billion Common Agricultural Policy payments is a fantastic offer. It is also a good way to point the spotlight directly on those nations (FRANCE) who are gumming up the system.

Africa will never change as long as the G8 people can make profits.

monbiot.com/archives/2005/06 … orruption/
The G8

Paul Theroux presents an interesting take on the problem in his book “Dark Star Safari”. Basically, he pins the blame for Africa’s present situation partially on the aid itself; the whole system, he says, in which Africans are barely involved if at all, has created an attitude of entitlement, and coupled with massive corruption that could also be a result of the aid process, no will to solve any problems. The saving grace in all of this, Theroux claims, is that Africans can at least fall back on subsistance farming, which has gotten them through many hard times in the past.

Having never been to Africa, I don’t know half of the story, but it’s an interesting read in any case.

This myth that Africa is poor because of exploitation by the G8 is not based in any form of reality. Where US companies are most active, and own the most property: Europe and East Asia, the standards of living are the highest. The US and Europe are least present in Africa and Africa is the poorest continent. If foreign-direct investment was bad and about exploitation, why are so many governments so desperate to attract it? Think.

Yes, this book seems to have done the Forumosan circuit. I borrowed it from Mr He who probably got the tip from the Comrade Stalin thread on current reading.

An expat like us, but in Africa for a time. He sheds light on the situation from the same angle we could manage to discuss our take on problems in Taiwan of whatever nature.

Seems aid is holding them down to some extent.

Aid is still needed but let’s be smarter about it. Let governments spend money to fund a drug to prevent malaria or provide greater protection from the disease. Let rich nations open their markets and cut their agricultural subsidies. Help fund training programs for African workers. All of this would be much better than sending expats to run these programs at high cost. Turn over the responsibility but also keep oversight.

I have been reading this womans web site for a couple of years. She was a Mugagbe supporter who has learned 1st hand what life is like under this Marxist ANC despot.
If you have an interest in how the “Breadbasket of Africa” has been turned into a hell on earth in a few short years, here is a class in reality.

africantears.netfirms.com/thisweek.shtml

[quote=“kim du Toit”][b]So here