Regards, Ivan
Posted on 06/26/2005 12:27:23 AM PDT by MadIvan
Throughout Africa, millions of people live in circumstances scarcely imaginable. It is too simple to lay the conditions of grinding poverty, failing institutions, rampant corruption, recurring conflict, starving children, and flagging economies all at the feet of some notoriously wretched leaders, although the continent has its share. Africa has also been the victim of good intentions. Decades of promises from Western donors have littered the landscape with half-finished projects that now stand as rusted monuments to the African miracle that hasn't happened.
We should all applaud Tony Blair for making Africa the centrepiece of the July G8 summit at Gleneagles Hotel, Scotland - and for moving other world leaders to the cause. However, the chief proposal being offered to address African needs is suspect. Gordon Brown is pushing for an "International Finance Facility", or IFF, that would use international bond markets to raise $50 billion in development funds for each of the next few years, with donors committing future aid budgets to pay off the bonds in the out-years.
The IFF has the feel of a new monument to unfulfilled potential and is probably best left for doctoral candidates to argue over what might have been. Indeed, the notion of mortgaging the future for an immediate and massive push for cash now that would magically push Africa over an imaginary barrier into a promised land of opportunity lacks the linkage to tie Western money to African outcomes. Raising the economies and reducing poverty in developing countries is extraordinarily complex and frustratingly elusive, but failing to obtain a result by writing a cheque is not necessarily remedied by writing more cheques.
Certainly, African leaders would accept an infusion of funds, if offered; those who rob Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul. However, not all African leaders are equal in their enthusiasm to use aid funds wisely, nor are their respective countries equal in their structural capacity to transform money into positive outcomes for their people and economies. In many parts of Africa, a $50 billion roll of the global dice to hand over truckloads of cash would merely fund ineffective projects and further entrench the elements of corruption, thuggery, and income disparity.
There are some advocates for African development who continue to assume such an equality of leadership, perhaps out of fear of offending those who are part of the problem. But doing so only undercuts those African leaders who are the quiet heroes labouring on an uneven playing field to promote transparency, good governance, reform, and economic participation.
We already have a framework for confronting Africa's ills. In Monterrey, Mexico, in early 2002, the developed nations agreed to a new bargain with the world's underdeveloped nations: donors would increase aid spending and the world's poor nations would carry out economic and political reforms to ensure that development assistance money gets spent effectively and achieves observable outcomes. Simple something-for-nothing handouts would end.
The IFF undermines the spirit of the Monterrey Consensus by focusing on the tin-cupping of financing the enterprise rather than crafting a strategy for achieving the desperately needed outcomes the enterprise is intended to provide. Given the servicing on borrowed funds, paying interest to investors, and the likelihood of decreased funding by donors after the big push, Africa will actually experience a net loss of aid flows in the long term.
Further, the concentration on a blanket call for aid funds creates a distraction from the sometimes painful responsibilities of developing countries to adopt the reforms, transparency, and capacity building necessary to enable a greater degree of self-sufficiency. Why should a country like Uganda, considered one of Africa's development success stories, take steps to trim any of its 70 cabinet ministries or other parts of its bloated public bureaucracy when international donors continue to pay 50 per cent of its national budget?
We must no longer treat Africa as a ward of the developed world. We must no longer espouse the welfarism of patting the continent on the head, muttering "poor Africans" while opening our wallets so we can sleep better at night thinking we've made a difference when we haven't. No nation ever spent its way out of poverty by cashing foreign aid cheques.
Instead, we should focus our partnerships on committed African leaders who are actively implementing the kinds of policies and actions necessary for home-grown economic growth and poverty reduction. African leaders genuinely concerned about the betterment of their country focus on trade, private investment, technology, democratic and economic reform, and other core drivers of lasting economic growth - and how to become less dependent on the whims of Western handouts. Such leaders and their countries deserve increased levels of targeted assistance to support them as they wrestle through their development challenges with their own solutions.
In Gleneagles, the Bush administration and the other G8 summiteers should hold fast to the principles of Monterrey and tie aid to policies that promote growth and democracy. The United States has already met its Monterrey pledge to increase official development assistance by 50 per cent by 2006, and the President's $674million aid package to Africa announced at the Blair visit, and the subsequent announcement to join the G8 to forgive $40 billion in debt to 18 mostly African countries are good steps forward.
These latest measures are on top of other recent initiatives by the United States, including the $15-billion, five-year effort to combat Aids globally, the multi-billion Millennium Challenge Account to spur economic growth in good performing countries, and the African Growth and Opportunity Act to provide trade preferences to 37 African countries.
The voices of political leaders, movie and rock stars, and the African poor are united in saying that Glen-eagles poses a great opportunity. Let us seek to ensure that the focus is on achieving outcomes for African people rather than creating new monuments to our good intentions.
Congressman Henry J Hyde chairs the House of Representatives' Committee on International Relations
Regards, Ivan
Ping!
So, I guess that means that I disagree with my Congressman.
L
Yes, Hyde is actually my Congressman.
In general, yes I agree.
America has the appropriate approach to giving Aid to Africa, e.g., we will no longer fund governments who are aligned against the US. To support our friends is the appropriate response; and by extension we will no longer fund those countries who vote with the French or Chinese. Let the French and Chinese "buy" their own allies and let them bring their own brand of failed social-democracy. For those who support America, we can build ajoining societies who trade and support one another and as the light shines bright in these countries it is my hope that many other countries would one day allow their people to throw off the ilk of European Colonialism as practices today. Wouldn't the world be a better place:)
Amen....
The Zillions poured into that rat hole has only made the most brutal or corrupt rats, fat.
Semper Fi
PAPER: £220bn - THE AMOUNT STOLEN OR MISUSED BY CORRUPT NIGERIAN RULERS... £220bn - THE AMOUNT OF AID DONATED BY THE WEST TO AFRICA IN 40 YEARS...(Drudge headline)
http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/06/25/wnig25.xml
Using an analogy...let's get the tub plugged before trying to fill it with water again.
And who would that be?
I disagree. Handouts are the problem, not the solution. I think we should write off the current debts; they'll never be collected. Then we should eliminate the agencies that made the loans; they've proved themselves incompetent and corrupt. There should never be another government-to-government loan or international handout organization.
African nations or companies can look for private loans or investment (unsecured by any government - none of this bail-out-the-banks hooey). If they institute rule of law, freedom of contract, guaranteed property rights, low taxes, and stable currency, they'll get private loans and investment. Investors aren't stupid (well, mostly) - they'll take large risks to make big money.
Everyone knows what makes for a growing economy and a functioning society, but governments aren't willing to do it. It's no fun to let people make livings, raise families, and help their neighbors with no government interference! It's long past time for our government (the only one I can influence in the slightest) to stop subsidizing those who refuse to do what we know works.
Lets first ask the question are there any models in africa run by africans?( yes I know africa is a continent with hundreds or ethnic groups and countries?)
Here is the problem, they need infrastructure and private industry. But if some country sends private industry there just to have a Mugabe show up and declare that corporate property should go to native africans then it will never happen.
I think what no one is talking about and it should be addressed is what happened to south africa. Yes apartheid had to be stopped there is no doubt about that. But that country has turned into a violent, rape surrounded sewer. Some would say... well it is going through growing pains, while others see what is happening and are leaving or have left.
I would like to see the existing models of effective leadership innovation and progress that is happening in Africa and study that rather than pouring umpteen billions of un controled cash into the hands of those that are causing the problem to begin with.
Africa has no such foundation to attempt this. As I understand it, with the fall of apartheid, even South Africa has regressed towards corruption, tribalism and the type of thinking that has lead to so many centuries of societal self-destruction. I hear this much from South Africans who I know personally. They've sacrificed much to become Americans to get away from what they see as a bleam future there.
Africa is a money-hole in which to burn the hard earn, hard-paid tax dollars of any naton so foolish as to throw money into it.
It will take major work to eliminate the part of African society that preys upon itself and continues the cycle of perpetual degraderd and despair that consumes the majority of the African population. Sure, there's some exceptions here and there, but there simply isn't any sufficient foundation that can shine a light for the rest of the continent to follow.
Unless some sort of comprehensive effort is made, any venture to resolve the issues that exist by throwing money at them are doomed.
I hear the Chinese have a long term plan, but the future doesn't involve a free democratic Africa. Yet I can express my disdaine for their current state by suggesting that the Chinese solution would be an improvement.
I agree with the Monterrey principles, but they do not guarantee that any given State will reform itself. Mugabe for example clearly won't participate. But the only other viable alternative is re-colonization and nobody has a taste for that.
Fully second the poster #3.
Send Sharpton and Jackson over there and don't let them back until things have improved as a result of their actions.
I vote for letting them help themselves out of this one. Not one dime of my tax dollars, not one little cheerio. Let the live or die on their own. If we help them, the need is never ending.
Nope! Africa is a lost cause, impossible to recover from decades of graft, extreme poverty, AIDS epidemics and stupid governments. How many billions have we poured into African nations only to see it stolen or squandered? Even when they have natural riches, like Nigeria, they can't make it work. It's a hopeless cause, but wait and see---we'll pour in more millions only to see it disappear too. The libs and the NAACP will see to it that the millions will be donated whether the public agrees or not.
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