Posted on 08/21/2010 2:09:38 AM PDT by Cardhu
Development aid to Africa has been flowing for decades, but the results have been paltry. Instead, recipients have merely become dependent and initiative has been snuffed out. It is time to reform the system.
Development aid to Africa is a blessing for all those directly involved -- both on the giving end and on the receiving end. Functionaries on the donor side, at least those abroad, earn good money. Many of those on the receiving end, for their part, know how to organize things in such a way that their own personal interests don't get short shrift.
There is no reason for these two groups to be interested in changing the status quo. Yet even so, some within their ranks are starting to suggest the situation as it stands cannot continue. The development aid of the past 50 years, they say, is hardly justifiable given the disappointing results. Even individual donors, who know little about how development aid works in practice, increasingly sense that something might be amiss.
They're right. The aid has failed to a large extent.
We have taken on too much responsibility for solving African problems. We have essentially educated them to, when problems arise, call for foreign aid first rather than trying to find solutions themselves.
This attitude has become deeply rooted in Africa. This self-incapacitation is one of the most regrettable results of development cooperation thus far. Poorly designed development aid has made people dependent and accustomed them to a situation of perpetual assistance, preventing them from taking the initiative themselves. It is this situation which represents the greatest damage done, far worse than the enormous material losses engendered by failed aid projects. And there are many. Africa is strewn with idle tractors, ruined equipment and run-down buildings.
(Excerpt) Read more at spiegel.de ...
free aid was and remains fundamentally wrong........................... But its the Liberal thing to do. Gotta keep people happy on other people’s labor.
Even GW wanted to throw away $15B for malnutrition, er, AIDS.
The Kenyan won't cut aid to his kinsmen.
yitbos
Because the dictators stole it all? Duh!
The aid has helped in one respect... it has lowered the death rate considerably... but this has just caused the population to skyrocket... making all the other problems worse.
True in Africa, in Detroit, in welfare plantations all over America. True of too big to fail banks.
Funny to read conservative principals in a German magazine. However the Germans did not do a Bush/Paulson/Fwank/Obama bailout, and their economy is taking off.
Human genome upgrade urgently needed. And if we had a commonsense upgrade, we could use it in Foggy Bottom.
This is an excellent article, although all it really does is show the welfare state in general writ large. The same exact effect is found upon the recipients of “free aid” at home, whether in Germany, the U.S. or wherever.
That said, as the economy squeezes countries, we may in fact see nations willing to take the PC hit for standing up and saying we are no longer going to participate in the harmful scam that is “development aid.”
This attitude has become deeply rooted in Africa. This self-incapacitation is one of the most regrettable results of development cooperation thus far. Poorly designed development aid has made people dependent and accustomed them to a situation of perpetual assistance, preventing them from taking the initiative themselves.
Sounds like a description of the welfare system in America.
Remember hurricane Katrina?
End Liberal Free Trade Globalism...and you end all this developmental aid to Africa
Liberal Free Trade Globalists will never end aid to Africa...no matter what they claim. Taking American money and redistributing it around the world is the modus operandi for Liberal Free Trade Globalists
Unintended consequences. The more people the greater the problems. We do no favors to these people.
Africa is Africa...nothing will ever change there.
When they are Christians, things will change.
We all know why the billions and billions flowing into Africa have actually made the situation worse instead of better but no one in a position of authority has the guts to stand up and admit it.
Within the next 2 hundred years all remnants of colonialism will have disappeared and the great middle of Africa will look just like it did 300 years ago. The rest of the world should get out of middle Africa and stop polluting it with a lifestyle that is totally foreign. The native africans were magnificent people one million years ago and they will be so again one million years from now. But only if we butt out!
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