Like Pouring Water on a Drowning Man

Johno Johno

A Kenyan economist, in an interview with Der Spiegel, says “Stop it with the aid and the money and the hurting, ‘n’ d’hoy glavin, Mr. money people!. Well, he didn’t actually say it in the style of Professor John Frink, but he did say, and I quote, “For God’s sake, please stop the aid!”

A couple weeks ago my esteemed coblogger Patton observed that much or even most of the money sent by wealthy nations to help in Africa ends up doing much harm by enriching bad men. Now an actual African economist from a nation who has a lot of problems that it would seem like giant piles of money could help solve says, please stop.

Two instances do not an argument make, but they are food for thought. Sometimes asking people to get their own shit together is a heartless abdication of humanitarian responsibility. But sometimes it is the right thing to do, especially if it means less money for plutocrats to buy AK-47s, gold toilets, and abbatoirs for their dissenting citizens. Maybe giving money to some African nations is, in the words of the great Otis Rush, pouring water on a drowning man.

Posted by Johno Johno on   |   § 4

§ 4 Comments

1

This week's [url=http://www.economist.com/printedition/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=4129031…] contains a leader on African aid.

Among the many cogent things it says:

The aid sceptics—some of them veterans of the industry, their palms calloused from many previous bouts of hand-wringing over Africa—have all the best lines in the debate. Everything has been seen before, they say, nothing has worked. But what do they mean precisely? Do they mean that the World Health Organisation should abandon its efforts to put 3m HIV-carriers on anti-retroviral therapies? Perhaps those already on the drugs should hand them back, lest they succumb to “dependency”. Should Merck stop donating its drug, ivermectin, to potential victims of riverblindness? Let Togo reinvent the drug itself! Perhaps, in the name of self-reliance, Tanzania's government should stop giving pregnant women vouchers to buy mosquito nets. Get sewing, ladies!

No one should be naive about aid. It cannot make poverty history, and it can do harm. But to say that nothing works is wrong. Cynicism is only the most common form of naivety.

So I've worked hard at tempering my cynicism on this topic. There's a way to "do aid right", but the second largest problem (after the first - having given the money to bald-faced thieves) in past aid attempts has been too-high expectations.

Me, I'm tickled pink to hear the prospect, however thin, for cancellation of protectionist agricultural policies here and in Europe, with particular focus on France. Chief among others, cotton and sugar producers in the US, as well as just about all farmers in Europe, should have to compete fairly with their African counterparts, and if they are compelled to do so, a large step toward societal and economic health in Africa may well have been taken.

Patton Patton

2

Patton, that's deep. Intuitively, I tend to put more faith in the abilities of organizations like Doctors Without Borders to actually create positive changes in the world than I do in the ability of crates of cash to do the same. And it would be smart not to throw the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak.

Johno Johno

3

I'll take rule of law and free trade over charities any day of the week. Unfortunately, large chunks of Africa have none of the above right now. Pouring money into those areas is a complete waste.

Bram Bram

4

Bram: I'm right there with you, particularly on the free trade part of the equation, although my aversion to all forms of aid might be a bit less than yours. The health-related examples in the article excerpted above are hard to argue, leaving only the matter of their proper implementation. Which is no small matter, I'd agree.

Numerical examples of the damage done by protectionist trade policies abound, and are perhaps the most troublesome thing to see ignored in favor of just pouring more money on the problem. To wit, related to only one commodity, sugar, again from the Economist, in a June 23 article on modifications to one of the EU's commodity distortions, entitled "Beet a retreat":

Michael Mann, spokesman for Ms Fischer Boel, hopes that America and Japan, both generous sugar daddies in their own right, will now follow the EU's example. The stakes are quite high. In 1999, Brent Borrell, of the Centre for International Economics, an Australian research institution, and David Pearce, now of University College, London, calculated that unhindered and unsubsidised trade in sugar would improve the world's lot by the equivalent of $4.7 billion each year. And according to Donald Mitchell, of the World Bank, net imports by Japan, Europe, America and Indonesia would increase by 15m tonnes a year, creating almost 1m jobs in poor countries. In western Europe, sugar prices would fall by 40%.

But the commission's sugar reform will leave a sour taste in the mouth of 46 African, Caribbean and Pacific-island nations that now enjoy privileged access to the EU's sheltered market.

To which I say all the beneficiaries of protected sugar markets can kiss my big white ass. Increasing aid as an alternative to fixing the market failings that seem to cause a lot of poverty is really not much different than our aid money going straight to the sugar producers.

And that, I think, is an unmitigated shame.

Patton Patton

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