The Kenyan economics expert James Shikwati, 35, says that aid to Africa does more harm than good. The avid proponent of globalization spoke with SPIEGEL about the disastrous effects of Western development policy in Africa, corrupt rulers, and the tendency to overstate the AIDS problem.

Some highlights from the interview:

Quote :

"Huge bureaucracies are financed (with the aid money), corruption and complacency are promoted, Africans are taught to be beggars and not to be independent. In addition, development aid weakens the local markets everywhere and dampens the spirit of entrepreneurship that we so desperately need. As absurd as it may sound: Development aid is one of the reasons for Africa's problems."

Quote :

"SPIEGEL: Even in a country like Kenya, people are starving to death each year. Someone has got to help them. Shikwati: But it has to be the Kenyans themselves who help these people. When there's a drought in a region of Kenya, our corrupt politicians reflexively cry out for more help. This call then reaches the United Nations World Food Program -- which is a massive agency of apparatchiks who are in the absurd situation of, on the one hand, being dedicated to the fight against hunger while, on the other hand, being faced with unemployment were hunger actually eliminated."

Quote :

"SPIEGEL: ... corn that predominantly comes from highly-subsidized European and American farmers ... Shikwati: ... and at some point, this corn ends up in the harbor of Mombasa. A portion of the corn often goes directly into the hands of unsrupulous politicians who then pass it on to their own tribe to boost their next election campaign. Another portion of the shipment ends up on the black market where the corn is dumped at extremely low prices. Local farmers may as well put down their hoes right away; no one can compete with the UN's World Food Program."

Quote :

"SPIEGEL: If the World Food Program didn't do anything, the people would starve. Shikwati: I don't think so. In such a case, the Kenyans, for a change, would be forced to initiate trade relations with Uganda or Tanzania, and buy their food there. This type of trade is vital for Africa"

http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,363663,00.html

It's worth reading the entire interview. The intentions behind these aid programs may be good, but the outcomes are not. According to James Shikwati, the best thing Western influences can do is stop trying to "help." Africa, according to him, needs to become self-sufficient to experience sustainable growth, and I agree. European imperialism ravaged the continent, and attempts to "make things right" are only enriching the politically well connected.

6/13/2011 2:14:10 PM

This is... kind of complicated.

I agree that the AIDS problem is often overstated. The statistic for transmitting it in regular heterosexual sex, for instance, is said to be something like 2 in 1000. But that's being unfair, since Africa has it's own strains of AIDS specifically mutated to effectively transmit between the people there. At its worst though, in places like Botswana, it tore apart societies, adult infection rates are still like 1 in 4, although there are probably people willing to disagree with this number. Either way, it played a large role in evaporating the dream of prosperity.

Foreign aid has problems, but advocates will turn it around and ask if one considers it a "net good" or a "net bad". There is absolutely no agreement on that, but it really doesn't matter since the decision is determined by the externalities. There are political externalities that cause governments to be more friendly to us. There's also the externalities that it f-ing costs us money in the first place, which I think sufficiently makes the Ron Paul argument. Who cares about the academic debate of if this is a net good or evil when we're going broke anyway? If it's obvious that the benefit is hotly contested then, speaking strictly fiscally, it seems like an easy decision to stop paying for it.

6/13/2011 2:26:26 PM

I agree, of course, that in the case of aid given by the U.S. government, we simply don't have the means to do it and should stop immediately.

An important thing to note, though, is that much of the aid provided to Africa is given on a voluntary basis. Massive amounts of food and clothes are donated to Africa by various European and American organizations every year. These donations are actually stunting the economic development of many African countries.

If true, this fact flies in the face of decades of U.S. and European doctrine: that development is a process that can be encouraged, or even initiated, by outside forces. This implies a top-down approach, rather than a bottom-up, "spontaneous order." In so many ways, our policies are shaped by this faulty logical foundation. Our military interventions aim to help nations "catch up" to us culturally, but have failed to do so in most if not all cases; the same justifications used for European imperialism were used for the war in Iraq. Our domestic policies aim to inject money where it's needed, yet we have a public education system that has failed spectacularly and a health care system where prices have exploded.

When dealing with extremely complex and chaotic systems such as human civilization, we have to make a distinction between immediate, observable effects, and long-term, harder-to-discern effects. Policymakers are typically unwilling to consider the latter.

[Edited on June 13, 2011 at 3:20 PM. Reason : ]

6/13/2011 3:12:05 PM

Part of the reason for foreign aid isn't humanitarian. It's to minimize power vacuums so we don't end up with places like Somalia to cause us problems with pirates and terrorists and shit. If we can have the powers that be also forced to hold our pocket, sit down to pee whenever we say so, and not be aligned with our rivals, then that's useful, too.

6/13/2011 9:29:32 PM

Signed.

6/13/2011 9:41:37 PM

agreed

6/13/2011 10:32:52 PM

Do we bear any responsibility if, in the course of preventing these "power vacuums," we severely hinder the progress of other cultures, or do we truly live in a dog eat dog world, where any action that protects our national interests is permissable?

In any case, the kind of aid I think you're referring to is not exactly what's being discussed in this interview. I used military intervention as an example of where we attempt to "help" other nations skip major steps in their development, but always fail. It's part of a broader argument that real, lasting societal change comes about from within.

6/13/2011 10:58:12 PM

Quote :

"Do we bear any responsibility if, in the course of preventing these "power vacuums," we severely hinder the progress of other cultures, or do we truly live in a dog eat dog world, where any action that protects our national interests is permissable?"

Of course we would. Just as we would if we decided to pretend as if we could not help impoverished and/or oppressed societies due to financial constraints.

Quote :

"I used military intervention as an example of where we attempt to "help" other nations skip major steps in their development, but always fail. It's part of a broader argument that real, lasting societal change comes about from within."

The suggestion that military intervention (or economic intervention, for that matter), always fails is flat out inaccurate. Even favored examples like Iraq and Afghanistan do not bear this claim out. Not to mention the entire continents and regions throughout the world that are absolutely flourishing thanks, in a very large part, to US intervention. You're right that societal change must ultimately come from within, but this truth does not preclude the potential for positive intervention. For one thing, societies are not very likely to change when totalitarian regimes have both the means and the intent to keep their countries in a state of tyranny and, by the way, as is always the case, beggary. There is not a society on earth as thoroughly beggared as North Korea.

[Edited on June 14, 2011 at 9:56 AM. Reason : ]

6/14/2011 9:51:50 AM

Foreign aid is a great idea. Government to government transfers are always a terrible idea. As such, why the hell are government to government transfers the only thing that is classified as foreign aid?!?!

If the federal government stopped paying a penny to other governments, our foreign assistance would still be on par with other countries.

[Edited on June 14, 2011 at 9:59 AM. Reason : .,.]

6/14/2011 9:58:36 AM

Quote :

"For one thing, societies are not very likely to change when totalitarian regimes have both the means and the intent to keep their countries in a state of tyranny and, by the way, as is always the case, beggary. There is not a society on earth as thoroughly beggared as North Korea."

I don't completely disagree on this point. If change cannot come purely from within, it should at least come from nearby, and not from some faraway country that is kinda there for humanitarian reasons, but mostly there to secure natural resources and shut down regimes that are perceived as a threat by TPTB in the United States. With the example of North Korea, it would make much more sense for China to intervene, and believe it or not, I think they eventually will. If, by chance, a military dictator took over in Canada (lulz) and had expressed the willingness to use nuclear weapons on us, we would have a responsibility to intervene.

I think in our case, we need to seriously reconsider our laws and allow the free market to flourish in North and South America. There's so much that could be done on this side of the world, and a lot of it wouldn't cost money, it would just involve removing trade barriers and harmful laws. This discussion is tangential to the purpose of the thread though, and it was not my intention to go in this direction.

Quote :

"Foreign aid is a great idea. Government to government transfers are always a terrible idea. As such, why the hell are government to government transfers the only thing that is classified as foreign aid?!?! If the federal government stopped paying a penny to other governments, our foreign assistance would still be on par with other countries. "

I think it's one of those things where the leaders of the countries in question won't allow aid unless it goes through them. Then, they exploit the aid for political gain.

I agree that much of the problem is aid going to corrupt leaders, but that's not the entire problem. It's really a question of, "Does welfare work?" According to Shikwati, aid (even if very helpful in the short-term) is preventing Africans from becoming self-sufficient, which is keeping their society from being able to develop at a normal pace. We see this domestically, where generations of people rely on welfare, and never make any real attempt to do better for themselves. Even when observing the family, we see that children of wealthy parents are often given everything growing up. Those children often take their family's wealth for granted and do not develop robust work ethic as a result.

6/14/2011 11:44:16 AM

Quote :

"It's really a question of, "Does welfare work?""

It's really not, it's a lot more complicated than that, but continue being blinded by your political beliefs.

6/14/2011 11:59:15 AM

Quote :

"Not to mention the entire continents and regions throughout the world that are absolutely flourishing thanks, in a very large part, to US intervention."

Woah Nelly!

---
On the bigger picture.... I think it's obvious that half of the world being well-off helps the other half of the world achieve a desirable prosperity, but beyond that point I think we'll be mostly picking at economic theories for which every one of them could be wrong. Economic opportunity will eventually flourish due to the 2-pronged reality of global trade which is the availability of sophisticated manufactured goods and the ability to undercut prices in labor-intensive production activities.

Foreign aid is funny, since it gives them buying power but deprives them of production power as well. China offers a case to say that it's more important for such a nation to produce than it is for them to consume, but they might have been perfectly wrongheaded in their policies the lead to the ballooning trade imbalance.

Who knows?

6/14/2011 1:15:53 PM

This time, this time, I agree with the OP

6/15/2011 9:41:08 AM

Quote :

"Woah Nelly! ---"

Why is the US always looked to first to provide aid in light of some kind of crisis, be it political or natural? And why does someone always criticize the US for not doing or giving more at that time?

Who has ever come to our aid? Katrina? The gulf oil spill? No one comes to mind off the top of my head.

6/15/2011 10:14:17 AM

multiple countries aided with the gulf coast spill.

6/15/2011 10:30:13 AM

Quote :

"This time, this time, I agree with the OP"

I bet that feels dirty.

Quote :

"Why is the US always looked to first to provide aid in light of some kind of crisis, be it political or natural? And why does someone always criticize the US for not doing or giving more at that time?"

There's a complex answer for that question, but I would say that people expect the United States to do as it has done in the past. The United States became the de facto leader of the world after WWII, as we were about the only ones with an advanced infrastructure still in place, and of course, we had a strong military to back it up. That translated into economic might, and we conned the world into accepting fiat currency that wasn't tied to any kind of hard asset in 1971. That gave the U.S. government a lot of freedom to throw its weight around, and that is exactly what has happened. We do favors here and there, but we expect favors in return.

[Edited on June 15, 2011 at 11:23 AM. Reason : ]

6/15/2011 11:16:19 AM

It sounds like the problem isn't really the existence of aid to Africa, but the form that it generally takes and its administration, which is more a lifeline rather than a step ladder to development; as well as allowing too much leeway in how it's spent by local politicians. Increasing aid in areas like roadbuilding, well-digging, agricultural mechanization, broadband, and other infrastructure would enable self-sufficiency and growth without pricing out local markets.

Quote :

"Who has ever come to our aid? Katrina? The gulf oil spill? No one comes to mind off the top of my head."

Many countries did in both of those situations, but you wouldn't know that off the top of your head because you apparently don't pay attention to useful news sources.

Here's a list for Katrina http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_response_to_Hurricane_Katrina


[Edited on June 15, 2011 at 12:56 PM. Reason : link]

6/15/2011 12:50:37 PM