Posted on 01/09/2006 12:29:21 PM PST by libertarianPA
NAIROBI, Kenya - Promises of aid to Africa must be kept in 2006 or millions of people will die needlessly, the top U.N. adviser on poverty said Monday while insisting that every penny must be accounted for to ensure it is used properly.
Jeffrey Sachs, who is director of the U.N. Millennium Project and special adviser to Secretary-General Kofi Annan, called 2005 the year of promises, after the leaders of the world's wealthiest countries promised to double aid to Africa.
"2006 has to be the year of real action on the ground," Sachs, an economist who teaches at Harvard University, told The Associated Press.
"Significant, targeted investments (aimed) at raising food production in Africa, at addressing urgent health needs, at making investments in water management would allow an escape from what is now a seemingly endless cycle of disaster."
But donors will condemn millions to death if they again fail to deliver on their aid pledges, he said.
"This missing aid, which was promised by donors for so long but not yet delivered, is really a life and death issue, nothing less than that," he said.
Critics have said that aid to Africa has been largely wasted through widespread corruption and that there is no reason to believe new aid would not also be misused. Sachs argued that rich countries have themselves misspent aid money and have never lived up to their promise, made in 1970, to spend 0.7 percent of their gross national products to help poor countries.
"If they follow through on that, there is enough (money) to overcome the hunger deficit; to fight malaria, AIDS, tuberculosis and other killer diseases; to build basic infrastructure and to enable impoverished countries to start climbing the ladder of development," he said.
Sachs cited a project he has been directing in Kenya called the Millennium Village Project as an example of how aid can be successful, if a comprehensive and accountable approach is taken. He said food production had risen more than 300 percent and the village was working its way out of absolute poverty.
His stop in Kenya was part of a six-country African tour promoting the Millennium Village approach with the goal of instituting it elsewhere.
"If we take a proper, hardheaded and businesslike approach to the issues of disease, poverty and hunger, there are practical solutions," Sachs told the AP.
"They don't involve blank checks coming from donor countries to poor countries, they don't involve the other side haranguing poor countries about their poverty."
Sachs said most Americans vastly underestimate how much the U.S. government spends on aid to poor countries.
"The United States, for all of Africa, is spending something like $4 billion this year, and a lot of that is on American consultants, so most of that doesn't really reach Africa," he said. "That is for a $10 trillion economy."
He said that if the cost of food purchased from American farmers and money spent within the United States is subtracted, less than one penny out of every $100 actually makes it to Africa in aid.
"We should not be giving aid when it will not work, we should be giving aid when it is going to be managed transparently, fairly and accountably," Sachs said.
"We should not give blank checks and we should not believe we run other people's countries."
oil for food
Doogle
The best thing we can do for Africa is introduce democracy and capitalism.
It seems like the only thing that can save Africa is a form of Neo-colonialism whereby western powers take over and create new coutries and gov't from scratch.
I don't know. But whatever they're doing is not working at all.
Life can be a bitch....when one allows themselves to be ruled by racist thugs.
If it were up to me ----- a LOT of Africans will die.
One of the surest signs of insanity -- is to repeat an action and expect a different result....
Semper Fi
"Significant, targeted investments (aimed) at raising food production in Africa, at addressing urgent health needs, at making investments in water management would allow an escape from what is now a seemingly endless cycle of disaster."
I notice there's no mention of the fact that Mugabe has destroyed one of the breadbaskets of Africa. Why would the UN believe the rest of the world should come to Africa's aid without demanding accountability from it's own governments?
Five or six two-bit thugs need to be shot in the head in 2006, or millions of people will die needlessly.
Jeffrey Sachs, who is director of the U.N. Millennium Project and special adviser to Secretary-General Kofi Annan, called 2005 the year of promises,
***PROMISES!?!? Years of corruption!
after the leaders of the world's wealthiest countries promised to double aid to Africa. "2006 has to be the year of real action on the ground," Sachs, an economist who teaches at Harvard University,...
***REAL ACTION?!?!? Surreal crap! A pox on Annan and his U N house.
The best thing we can do for Africa is to quit giving them aid. There's enough natural resources in Africa that *we* should all be dependent on *them*, not the other way around.
This year! and last year, and the years before - we've been pouring money into the black hole of Africa.
Far too much.......in today's reality....
Feeding corruption and folks that want us dead.
Let the oil rich Muslims support their brothers....neighbors and former slave dealing partners.
Semper Fi
Having one of the major continents on the face of the earth and all its natural resources: vast mineral deposits, seacoasts, petroleum and agricultural lands at the disposal of the populations without colonial interference whatsoever, one wonders why this continent needs any aid at all from other continents, having far less natural wealth and sustinence at the disposal of their populations?
Tell me: what will happen when we pull the plug on all of it? Because if we stop helping Africa we have to stop helping everyone else.
What then?
The best thing we can do for Africa is introduce democracy and capitalism....Nice sentiment, but it'll never happen for ten generations. Tribalism is the root of most of Africa's ills.
Who helped them in the 1600's, 1500's, or even the 1700's? No longer our problem. They either step up to the plate and help themselves or return to caves.
They could also keep their pants on and just say no to endless reproduction of children to die in poverty, disease and endless tribal warfare and slaughter.
You suggest taking away the poor's favorite form of entertainment? [/sarc]
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