After $1 trillion in aid, African countries are still worse off

The Times(UK) ^ | 05/26/10 | Johathan Clayton

[TigerLikesRooster]

May 26, 2010

After $1 trillion in aid, African countries are still worse off

Johathan Clayton: commentary

Most Africans are poorer today than they were 50 years ago. This may not prove that aid does not work, but it poses some very difficult questions: why is it that a continent that has attracted about $1 trillion in assistance is much worse off than at independence about 50 years ago? Then, countries such as Sierra Leone and Ghana had GDPs the same size or even larger than South Korea or Vietnam. Why is it that an idea that seemed so right, giving help to the poor, has proved so wrong?

[my small voice]

Quick...send another trillion! Great fiscal policy!

Hurry up so Mugabe can cash his checks and inhale it up his nose!!!

[Red Badger]

Corruption..............

Foreign Aid: Poor people in wealthy countries giving money to wealthy people in poor countries.............

[Tarpon]

yeah, but who would allow them to build an electric power plant ... Liberals are so into keeping their slaves on the plantations.

[TexasFreeper2009]

Welfare NEVER works, never has never will.

It doesn't matter if it's a person, a country, or even the church that receives it. It's a slow cancer that eventually kills the recipient.

[4rcane]

the same reason why it fail in first world countries as well. Subsidizing doing nothing at all, does not bring prosperity

[ClearCase_guy]

Compare with the blacks in America. Almost 50 years of the Great Society, perhaps a trillion dollars spent here at home, and what do we have to show for it?

They were probably better off before we started to enslave them with government handouts.

[jagusafr]

Foreign Aid: Poor people in wealthy countries giving money to wealthy people in poor countries.............
______________

Ouch. Too damn true, RB.

Colonel, USAFR

[RightOnline]

They were FAR better off, actually...and for a host of reasons.

[MrB]

No amount of $$$ will change the character of a people.

[C19fan]

Miss me yet??? hee, hee

[ken21]

fdr’s and lbj’s

democrat plantation

ruined american inner cities too.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Imagine you're a dirt-poor farmer in Sierra Leone.
You have taken out a loan to buy seed and fertilizer, and using borrowed tools, you've put in a crop.
Working every day for 70 or 80 days, you raise a crop and put a price on it to cover you loan, seed, fertilizer and a little bit of profit for your family.
Just as you go to market, the UN or some do-gooder agency arrives with free food.
What happens to your crop and the value of your work ?

[YankeeReb]

Why is it that an idea that seemed so right, giving help to the poor, has proved so wrong?

Why? For the same reason bailouts to failing companies or state governments here don't work. If you subsidize bad behavior you get more of it. With no bailouts these entities are forced to clean up their act or go under.

[Poison Pill]

After $1 trillion in aid, African countries are still worse off Johathan Clayton: commentary Most Africans are poorer today than they were 50 years ago. This may not prove that aid does not work....

Ummm actually, yeah, that's exactly what it proves.

[cardinal4]

Uh..most of the “leaders” that led Africa away from colonialism were educated at Patrice Lumbaba in Moscow..

[Leisler]

Aid is to benefit the aid agencies. To keep the agencies going, it is important that they ruin, destroy, distort the local economies.

[STONEWALLS]

“....Most Africans are poorer today than they were 50 years ago.”

...my neighbor went to Africa about 50 years ago as a USDA advisor...this was shortly after the white colonials pulled out...everything was fine for a while...then the electricity went off...then the roads didn’t get fixed...then the water supply got unsafe...then crime grew...you know the rest of the story...it continues to this day.

[Little Ray]

Well, yes.
All that free food put the folks actually growing food out of business, created a bunch of aid-dependent sloths, financed a bunch of warlords and kept kleptocratic governments in power.

That was the plan, right?

[Anitius Severinus Boethius]

Why is it that an idea that seemed so right, giving help to the poor, has proved so wrong?

At least the question is starting to be asked.