AID TO AFRICA IS DOING MORE HARM THAN GOOD from Intelligence Squared U.S. on Vimeo.
AID TO AFRICA DEBATE NOTES
Intelligence Squared
The Question fro Debate:
“Is aid to Africa doing more harm than good?”
David Reiff: To paraphrase his statements: On balance, aid has done more harm than good…The problem, I think, is that the whole discussion of aid avoids the problem of politics. People are not saved from outside-people rescue themselves. They can be helped at the margins. If aid was less ambitious, I would support it, such as emergency relief. If it does as its meant to do, to offer a bed for a night, but not to hope to transform society, then the value of aid is indisputable. What is not indisputable is the idea that foreign institutions and governments know how to fox other people’s difficulties. The problem with aid is that it sets itself as the be-all and end-all. “The man with the gold makes the rules”…What you have, by definition, is outsiders telling people how to behave satisfactorily, then the aid will be withdrawn. By depriving people of their agents, aid does more harm than good. Moreover, the emphasis on aid is misdirected. We should be talking more about fair trade than about aid. What is impossible is the notion of aid as the centerpiece of development.
Gayle Smith: Aid is a very complex instrument that cannot be categorized together. There have been many successes, especially in health and education. Wireless access in Africa has had a huge impact on the local markets-this has come in part from aid. Microfinance has changed many lives, and a lot has come from aid. There is no question that politics has affected aid and has often been driven by politics. Aid needs to be elevated so it is on par with other institutions and protected from politics, ring-fenced against use for reasons other than development. At the end of the day, development matters. Development is a moral, economic, and security interest. What is the alternative? The military as our primary means to contributing to development?
William Easterly: There are two tragedies in this debate. The first is the unnecessary suffering in Africa-lives can be saved by a 12 cent dose of malaria medicine which is not being done. The second tragedy that we hear a lot less about is that we have already spent 600$ billion in the last 45 years, and children are still not getting those 12cent medicines. Aid would be great if it worked, but the sad tragedy is that money meant for the most desperate people in the world is not reaching them. Over the 45 years of aid, there has basically been a zero rise in living standards in Africa. Every generation calls for an increase in aid to solve the issues of their generation. Everybody calls for the doubling of aid to Africa, but what good does it do to focus on amounts when most of the money is not being used correctly. Most of it goes to corrupt and autocratic rulers. 2/3 of aid today still goes to corrupt rulers (see: Meles in Ethiopia). A lot of aid went into countries that have collapsed into anarchy, such as Rwanda, Congo, Somalia. Thus, aid worsens corruption, blocks democracy, and is an obstacle to getting rid of corrupt rulers. We must condemn the sorry record of aid as simply unacceptable, as making things worse rather than better.
John McArthur: If we think about what aid achieves and doesn’t achieve, we must caution against random correlations. When we look at statistical evidence, Africa grows on average 2% slower than other developing countries in the world, even with lower standards of governance and higher levels of corruption. Why do Ghana and Senegal, with higher Transparency International ratings, grow slower than China and India? This is because of disease, infrastructure, and lack of education that is a legacy of history. It is about much more than bad governance. Aid is about tackling the challenges of health, education, and infrastructure effectively. There has been successes. The eradication of smallpox by the UN. The fight against AIDS has brought retroviral medications to more than a million people which was considered impossible. Primary school enrollment rates are up 20%. Measles has been cut 90% in Africa. This has all been backed by aid. In Malawi aid has supported the national plan to get seed and fertilizer to farmers and the country has doubled its food production. Aid needs to build on success.
George Ayittey: The record of aid has been a disaster. If you want to better help the African people, you need to ask them what they want. Africans are interested in reform, not aid. Economic reform, political reform, and social reform. Corruption costs the continent over 140$billion per year.
