This is how America would tackle Africa

The Sunday Telegraph ^ | June 26, 2005 | Henry J Hyde

[MadIvan]

Throughout Africa, millions of people live in circumstances scarcely imaginable. It is too simple to lay the conditions of grinding poverty, failing institutions, rampant corruption, recurring conflict, starving children, and flagging economies all at the feet of some notoriously wretched leaders, although the continent has its share. Africa has also been the victim of good intentions. Decades of promises from Western donors have littered the landscape with half-finished projects that now stand as rusted monuments to the African miracle that hasn't happened.

We should all applaud Tony Blair for making Africa the centrepiece of the July G8 summit at Gleneagles Hotel, Scotland - and for moving other world leaders to the cause. However, the chief proposal being offered to address African needs is suspect. Gordon Brown is pushing for an "International Finance Facility", or IFF, that would use international bond markets to raise $50 billion in development funds for each of the next few years, with donors committing future aid budgets to pay off the bonds in the out-years.

The IFF has the feel of a new monument to unfulfilled potential and is probably best left for doctoral candidates to argue over what might have been. Indeed, the notion of mortgaging the future for an immediate and massive push for cash now that would magically push Africa over an imaginary barrier into a promised land of opportunity lacks the linkage to tie Western money to African outcomes. Raising the economies and reducing poverty in developing countries is extraordinarily complex and frustratingly elusive, but failing to obtain a result by writing a cheque is not necessarily remedied by writing more cheques.

Certainly, African leaders would accept an infusion of funds, if offered; those who rob Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul. However, not all African leaders are equal in their enthusiasm to use aid funds wisely, nor are their respective countries equal in their structural capacity to transform money into positive outcomes for their people and economies. In many parts of Africa, a $50 billion roll of the global dice to hand over truckloads of cash would merely fund ineffective projects and further entrench the elements of corruption, thuggery, and income disparity.

There are some advocates for African development who continue to assume such an equality of leadership, perhaps out of fear of offending those who are part of the problem. But doing so only undercuts those African leaders who are the quiet heroes labouring on an uneven playing field to promote transparency, good governance, reform, and economic participation.

We already have a framework for confronting Africa's ills. In Monterrey, Mexico, in early 2002, the developed nations agreed to a new bargain with the world's underdeveloped nations: donors would increase aid spending and the world's poor nations would carry out economic and political reforms to ensure that development assistance money gets spent effectively and achieves observable outcomes. Simple something-for-nothing handouts would end.

The IFF undermines the spirit of the Monterrey Consensus by focusing on the tin-cupping of financing the enterprise rather than crafting a strategy for achieving the desperately needed outcomes the enterprise is intended to provide. Given the servicing on borrowed funds, paying interest to investors, and the likelihood of decreased funding by donors after the big push, Africa will actually experience a net loss of aid flows in the long term.

Further, the concentration on a blanket call for aid funds creates a distraction from the sometimes painful responsibilities of developing countries to adopt the reforms, transparency, and capacity building necessary to enable a greater degree of self-sufficiency. Why should a country like Uganda, considered one of Africa's development success stories, take steps to trim any of its 70 cabinet ministries or other parts of its bloated public bureaucracy when international donors continue to pay 50 per cent of its national budget?

We must no longer treat Africa as a ward of the developed world. We must no longer espouse the welfarism of patting the continent on the head, muttering "poor Africans" while opening our wallets so we can sleep better at night thinking we've made a difference when we haven't. No nation ever spent its way out of poverty by cashing foreign aid cheques.

Instead, we should focus our partnerships on committed African leaders who are actively implementing the kinds of policies and actions necessary for home-grown economic growth and poverty reduction. African leaders genuinely concerned about the betterment of their country focus on trade, private investment, technology, democratic and economic reform, and other core drivers of lasting economic growth - and how to become less dependent on the whims of Western handouts. Such leaders and their countries deserve increased levels of targeted assistance to support them as they wrestle through their development challenges with their own solutions.

In Gleneagles, the Bush administration and the other G8 summiteers should hold fast to the principles of Monterrey and tie aid to policies that promote growth and democracy. The United States has already met its Monterrey pledge to increase official development assistance by 50 per cent by 2006, and the President's $674million aid package to Africa announced at the Blair visit, and the subsequent announcement to join the G8 to forgive $40 billion in debt to 18 mostly African countries are good steps forward.

These latest measures are on top of other recent initiatives by the United States, including the $15-billion, five-year effort to combat Aids globally, the multi-billion Millennium Challenge Account to spur economic growth in good performing countries, and the African Growth and Opportunity Act to provide trade preferences to 37 African countries.

The voices of political leaders, movie and rock stars, and the African poor are united in saying that Glen-eagles poses a great opportunity. Let us seek to ensure that the focus is on achieving outcomes for African people rather than creating new monuments to our good intentions.

Congressman Henry J Hyde chairs the House of Representatives' Committee on International Relations

[Mr. Silverback]

This is how America would tackle Africa

Low, close to the runner's center of mass, letting the shoulder pads take the brunt of the impact, like so:

Oh wait, that's not what you meant, is it?

[TAquinas]

"The best thing America could do for 'Africa' is to refuse to give them one more dime."

And I agree very strongly.

What this country is coming to!

In no time at all we will be in worse condition (culturally, economically, fincancially and healthwise) than the enemy countries we're helping.

Why is it that America must always help Africa. About for once Africa help us?

[TAquinas]

It was the not so distant 2005, just four years after 9/11/2001 and I could not believe the level of doublethink to which the American people had been sunk to, while it (America) continued in its unabated slide down the abysss of history at terrifying speed.

And that's the way it happened, children. America was no more.