Developmental Aid Workers Are Killing Africa

Spiegel ^ | 06/05/2008 | By Thilo Thielke

[DeaconBenjamin]

No one has to starve in Africa. Hunger there results from the failures of unscrupulous rulers -- and their friends in the West. Paradoxically, it is the aid workers who are standing in the way of progress.

If you follow the reasoning of the United Nation's World Food Program, then Kenya is a unique region when it comes to hunger catastrophes. In this east African country, a popular vacation destination with 32 million inhabitants, UN workers hand out more food on an annual basis than they do in southern Sudan, which civil wars have ravaged for decades. But is Kenya really dying of hunger?

If that were the case, Africa's prospects of ever being able to feed itself would look really dismal. Take a look at a map and you'll see that Kenya lies on Lake Victoria. It's really much more like an ocean than a lake, despite a constantly sinking water level. This inland sea connects Tanzania and Uganda with Kenya. Covering an area of 68,000 square kilometers (26,250 square miles), it's Africa's largest lake. And it is full of freshwater.

For Kenya, the question -- which also applies, incidentally, to Malawi, about which there are regular reports about hunger emergencies -- is really this: Can you starve if you live right next to such a gigantic freshwater reservoir?

* * *

Whatever surplus is produced in the western part of this blessed country only needs to be to be delivered to the north and sold. That would give the farmers more incentive to produce more. And producing more means earning more, which in turn also means that more tax money would pour into the government's coffers and could be used to make improvements to the country's disastrous infrastructure.

[Former Proud Canadian]

Excellent post.

[DeaconBenjamin]

I was amazed that Der Spiegel would run such an article.

[Nat Turner]

Shhhhhh dont say that too loud...LOL < /sarcasm off >