The Africans are not alone in being puzzled by this one. Yeseterday the sound bite on ABCNews Radio was of Will Smith from the Philadelphia concert bloviating on about how the G-8 leaders could eliminate poverty in Africa with a stroke of the pen.
I'm sorry, but that's just stupid. Africa has serious problems, and the G-8 has nothing to do with it. And if folks want to lock the Continent in concrete, they should demand debt relief. No lender, international busybody or otherwise, will ever lend another dime to Africa if they are to be let off the hook every 20 years or so. And no African country will ever invest another dime toward the repayment scheme if they know they can just steal the money today and be relieved of the burden down the road.
Soft loans are the baby steps of economic development. If Africa does not take these steps, it is doomed to be an economic backwater in perpetuity.