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."
Jeffery Sachs is a POS and a commie liar!. This Scumbag needs to be sent to Africa and away from the US.
Tomorrow it will be: It's dire in Africa, and today must be Tuesday.
Why?
When you refuse entry to your home to strangers --- do you also lock out your children?
When you decide to stop feeding the bums on your doorstep - do you stop feeding your children?
Your position makes no sense at all....
Neither does sending more money to the corrupt bastards in Africa - through the corrupt hands of the U.N., or through the corrupt hands of all the NGA that are between the Africans and our money....
Resources are not limitless -- and charity begins at home - with friends, neighbors and allies....
Most of Africa fails that test, and they have failed to meet even the most minimal standards of decency and self control toward their benefactors over GENERATIONS.....
Semper Fi
They're gonna miss all the white farmers they massacred soon.
"Most of Africa fails that test, and they have failed to meet even the most minimal standards of decency and self control toward their benefactors over GENERATIONS....."
That's because we 'gave them a fish' instead of 'teaching them how to fish.'
They fail because of ignorance. And arrogance. The UN is just the icing on the cake. They'd fail even without the UN. Because the charity isn't charitable.
Thank about that.
I have to disagree - we 'taught the how to fish' they just never listened.
How many times do we need to teach them?
(and why do Americans have to be the teachers?)
Think about that...
Agreed. But see, the current crop of psychpopaths and murderers get a free pass, as they are the vestiges of colonialism, don't you see? I figure that Africa may make some progress in, say, two hundred years!
Good money after bad. The real problem is lack of recorded private property, not lack of public works projects.
Does anyone have a figure on the gazillions of dollars and aid that's been sent to Africa over the years, and has it done any good? No more for Africa!
It's because they have been brutally exploited by us greedy capitalist first-worlders for centuries! /sarc
I'm sure the Congolese who had their hands cut off by Belgian colonialists would appreciate the irony.
"Jeffery Sachs is a POS and a commie liar!. This Scumbag needs to be sent to Africa and away from the US."
All of that, and as well, Sachs is a phony humanitarian - he's an elite parasite. All the funds for so many years and no perceivable process except in corruption of the UN.
Oh boy now you've done it..... ;-)
"How many times do we need to teach them?
(and why do Americans have to be the teachers?)"
You just proved my point: "the charity isn't charitable."
Last time I looked, this was pretty much a Christian nation. Of course, if the Liberals have anything to say about it, that won't be the case in the forseeable future.
BTW, spiffy tagline. Whose side are YOU on?
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