Many moons ago I did a politics degree and one of the units I most enjoyed was development studies. I was taken by the various theories of under development and believed (as did the vast majority of students) that all of the third worlds problems (LDCs) were due to the actions of the terrible exploitive developed world. This is of course the same misguide view that Guadianistas still hold.
Time, travel and of course observing what is really happening in the world has shown me that the lack of development (or positive reversal) in most of Africa is not caused by the malicious actions of the wicked West taking all of Africa’s resources and robbing them blind. In reality the West has furnished untold billions in aid but instead of making the situation better it has made it worse by encouraging dependency and facilitating corruption and patronage by the power elites. Africa has had many times more money in aid (in real terms) than Europe had from America after the 2ndWW in the Marshal Plan and aid continues to pour in. Yet the continent is in the main going backwards in development terms.
A new book by Paul Collier explains it really well; it starts with the positive news on development (it’s going really well on a global scale despite what Saint Bob says) with a drop from 40% of the world population being in absolute poverty in 1981 to less than 20% now. However there is a hard core 1b people living in about 50 failing states that are literally going backwards and the bulk of these are in Sub Saharan Africa. In 1981 10% of the worlds poor were in SSA, it is now 50% and rising and the area has 2/3 of all the world’s aid cases.
The reasons are varied for the abject failure, over dependence on a few natural resources, poor governance, wars etc etc. However the biggest problem is Corruption and he quotes the World Bank report that African Elite hold $700bn-$800bn outside the continent and every year $150bn leaves in illicit capital flight. This is far more than the total aid sums and “Corruption cuts tax revenues by at least half”. If good governance could be achieved there could be anything up to a 3 fold increase in GDP and aid would largely be made irrelevant.
The problem is of course that it is impossible to achieve good governance by exhortation or worthy reports. No Western Government will interfere militarily (imagine the Guardianista response and post Iraq NO ONE wants to know) and the answer from Africa’s Political elite to any complaints from the Aid Donors re corruption is to shout racism and imperialism.
Thus the situation will get worse and more illegal immigrants will flood into Europe. Civil strife in Africa will increase and absolute poverty will rise. The West will pour in more aid which will primarily help Swiss Banks and luxury goods manufacturers (without Western Aid would Mercedes Benz go Bankrupt?).
Has anyone got any answers??????????????????????
