This article in today’s New York Times offers a superb analysis of a big part of the reason why so many Africans remain mired so deeply in poverty.
Here’s the punchline:
Since 1981, the United States Agency for International Development said in a troubling report in September, outsiders have sought to fix Malawi’s ills through more than 20 economic adjustment programs devised by the World Bank and eight related loans from the International Monetary Fund. International charities poured in countless private dollars. Overseas development assistance – foreign aid – totals about $35 per person, and makes up $8 of every $10 spent on economic development.
Yet despite that, the report states, only Yemen, Ethiopia and Burundi have worse rates of chronic malnutrition than does Malawi, where 49 percent of all children are stunted. Moreover, that rate has not improved for 15 years.
My only real disagreement is with the theme, expressed well in the article’s title: "Amid Squalor, an Aid Army Marches to No Drum at All."
The problem isn’t that the legions of "aid" dispensers and foreign "experts" aren’t well-coordinated with each other. Instead, a far worse problem is that the U.N., the World Bank, other "aid" agencies, and the governments in Africa together prevent individual Africans from marching to their own drums — or, more precisely, from developing their own drum beat out of their own bits of local knowledge and individual preferences.
Hat tip to Karol.
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I think another interesting – though minor – bit of the article was how many, once trained in skills, leave Africa for the First World. Some western governmental health services actively recruit sub-Saharan trained nurses into the West, which is disgraceful: all the aid money in the world isn't going to cure Africa of diseases and malnutrition if the same governments have flown out their skilled professionals for cut price labor.
Tom is mostly right. I'm afraid the NHS is one of the worst offenders.
However, when trained proffessionals move to the West they tend to send money home, which is usually much better spent than aid money.
I think it was a WHO report (my apologies for no link but it was a long time ago that someone told me about this) found that the average death in Africa could be prevented for $10 whereas the average money spent per life saved in Africa was $50,000.
Perhaps African countries should concentrate less on training highly skilled medical proffessional (who are likely to get poached) and instead try to train greater numbers of basically trained medical workers.
I find it instructive that some people see the free movement of professionals across borders as "disgraceful".
Mies.org has a couple old articles on this topic, I'll try to dig them up.
What I suppose is disgraceful is the fact that although we allow professionals to move across borders, we do not allow other workers the same free movement. Thus they are not able to share in the benefits of free movement of peoples.
Managing immigration works a lot like managing trade and this is essentially a form of protectionism. It hurts us but it hurts the poorer countries more.
As I mentioned before, interfence in the health care market does not help. In Africa, the governments try to build up Western style health systems before addressing the basic needs of their peoples. In Europe, government mismanagement of nationlised healthcare creates periodic shortages and surpluses of health workers.
I am certainly not saying free movement of peoples is disgraceful. What I am saying is that attempts to manage healthcare and the movements of people has been detrimental to both the West and sub-saharan Africa.
I am of the opinion that what Africa needs is a little anarcho capitalism. And it cant do any worse than their present system. The failure of governments in Africa is so bad that I have a hard time believing that it is actualy real.
Really the problem lies in the corrupt government and the mass of "international agencies" who do nothing more than prop up said corrupt government. As our mayor of New Orleans is finding, it is difficult to remain in power when there is no one to steal from. And Westerm aid merely ensures that there is a continuing pool of victims.
Ba humbug!
Aid distribution amounts to a centralized rationing scheme. The economic and material effects of such a scheme are quite well known.
When there is ample theoretical and empirical proof, why do governments continue to pursue failed economic policies?
It is maddening.
Africa is a mess. Perhaps a lost cause. Without political stability and a rule of law, only the warlords, despite what they may call themselves, actually benefit. Besides, throwing money at problems never works. Observe the welfare state here in the USA. Breeding more of itself and crime too. Forcing our system and bringing "order" via troops clearly doesn't work either. Observe Iraq. Not real PC, but perhaps a die-off makes sense. Population dynamics have been violated by our species. AIDS drugs for a continent? The idea that six billion and growing people can all have a car and air conditioning is preposterous.
There is an animated graph at http://gapminder.org/ that shows the relative wealth and health gaps between nations.
It's interesting because the ill effects of the "population bomb" are absent. Way to go Julian Simon.
Another interesting thing, almost all countries have much better health and wealth than they did 30 years ago. Of course, the people of gapminder.com are only interested in the "gap" between rich and poor countries.
I would have liked to see a graph that also shows relative freedom and stability of the countries, but that might cut against gapminder.com's agenda.
The elephant in the room is of course "if aid has been pouring into these countries for decades, why are they still so poor?"
To address the elephant, a couple of reasons are:
(1) Aid is slightly deceptive, as it is normally given in the form of goods and temporary services rather than money: and these are normally bought in the donor's country. So when a Western country says it's giving, say $30 million in aid, it means it's investing $30 million in its own economy, (which also buys less than it would than in a third world country). A better way of distributing aid would be to order goods from third world producers, thus boosting fledgling industries and still avoiding corrupt governments siphoning from the donation. An argument against this could be that Western industries can respond more quickly to produce extra goods in emergencies; but a solution would be to exercise foresight and store emergency tents, grain etc, produced by the third world, and distribute them as needed. As I say, the money would also go further than it does currently.
(2) We don't really have "free trade" and the West sets high import tariffs while not allowing poorer countries to do the same. Most poor countries pay many times more annually to gain access to Western markets than they receive in nominal aid from Western governments. Not very helpful giving them less than we take, even as we preach the benefits of free trade to them.
I'm not going to say these are the only reasons, as I suspect some people might cite others as a tricksy way of dismissing these: but these are our fault, and something we could do something about.