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"For God's Sake, Please Stop the Aid!" The Kenyan economics expert James Shikwati, 35, says that aid to Africa does more harm than good. The avid proponent of globalization spoke with SPIEGEL about the disastrous effects of Western development policy in Africa, corrupt rulers, and the tendency to overstate the AIDS problem. SPIEGEL: Mr. Shikwati, the G8 summit at Gleneagles is about to beef up the development aid for Africa... Shikwati: ... for God's sake, please just stop. SPIEGEL: Stop? The industrialized nations of the West want to eliminate hunger and poverty. Shikwati: Such intentions have been damaging our continent...

We’ve tried charity, aid, loans, debt relief, international organizations, the U.N., the World Bank, peace forces, police forces, sympathy, threats, military involvement and disengagement. We’ve done it all. Everything, in fact, other than admit that if you really want to get something done properly than you have to do it yourself. Until we accept that the only people who can help Africa are the Africans, then we will continue to patronize them. We permit the rape and pillage of their ruling elites by doing business with them and by turning a blind eye to their misdemeanors. How can we even...

At the Group of Eight summit this week in Gleneagles, Scotland, the leaders of rich countries will be talking about how they can aid poor countries. That's a noble mission, but a remarkable new book argues that it misses the point. Treating the poor as wards of the global economy ignores the fact that they are a vast market -- and that companies can profit right now by serving their needs. "If we stop thinking of the poor as victims or as a burden and start recognizing them as resilient and creative entrepreneurs and value-conscious consumers, a whole new world...

It's G-8 time again — which means that President Bush is about to face concerted pressure... to see things their way on a host of issues. Not least of these is the question of financial aid to Africa — an issue buoyed by the recent publicity over the politically charged "Live 8" worldwide rock concerts (modestly praised by one performer as "the greatest thing that's ever been in the entire history of the world"), designed to "raise awareness" about Africa's desperate plight. Actually, it's not as if the G-8 leaders are unaware of the intense poverty and despair that has...

...Mr. Bush said the U.S. would "absolutely" drop its system of farm subsidies if the European Union eliminated its $40 billion a year Common Agricultural Policy. Now, that's a radical idea. It certainly trumps the calls by British Prime Minister Tony Blair and others to double official development aid to sub-Saharan Africa or to forgive more debt. Getting rid of U.S. and EU farm subsidies -- and the protectionism they entail -- would do far more to address what liberals like to call a "root cause" of poverty. Too many African exports, particularly farm commodities, are kept out of Western...

SIRTE, Libya (Reuters) - African leaders urged a summit of rich nations opening in Britain on Wednesday to cancel debt owed by African governments, reform international trade and increase aid to fight poverty on the continent. Heads of state of the African Union (AU), ending a two-day meeting in Libya, also pledged to step up efforts to end war and political instability

Help for Africa will be high on the agenda of the G8 summit in Gleneagles this week. But it is not clear that debt relief, or even substantially increased aid flows, will be enough to produce success where so many previous development efforts have failed “THE poor you will always have with you,” said Jesus. Few observers of global development policy would disagree. For decades, the international aid community has tried and tried again to find a way to lift the world’s poor out of destitution. And yet, innumerable aid programmes and billions of dollars later, the World Bank estimates...

Rush just a little while ago was talking about Africa and the effort to fix it. Talked about the live 8 concerts and how they got lobster and stake and got goodie bags with ipods etc. These kinds of things do nothing but help celebs feel better about them selves. There they are yelling at us to give money while they themselves are hording their money, why don't they give their money to Africa. Over the last 40 years the US has give over 500 billion dollars to Africa and what is there to show for that expenditure, nothing. Its...

Fifty years of aid has done little to lift Africa from the abyss. Despite an estimated $500-billion in international assistance, the continent continues to head the lists of poverty, corruption and disease. In the second of a three-part series, Peter Goodspeed examines how corrupt leaders siphon off foreign aid and their countries' own natural wealth, enriching themselves while their people suffer.- - - For decades, Africa's agony has been made worse by plundering politicians who have looted a continent that contains the richest concentration of precious metals and minerals on Earth. Africa has 90% of the world's cobalt, 90% of...

On the eve of the G-8 Summit, ex-president Bill Clinton is telling European audiences that the U.S. is stingy with its foreign aid dollars - and that Americans think they contribute more than they actually do. "In America, for example, we have always been hampered in getting adequate budgets for international assistance by the fact that the American people believe we give much more than we do," he told BBC Radio 4 on Thursday. "They think we give about 3 percent of GDP," the ex-president continued. "They think we give 10-15 percent of the budget. They think we ought to...

Robert Mugabe's purge of the poor, code-named "Operation Murambatsvina", which has cut a swathe of destruction across the country and displaced more than a million Zimbabwean's from their homes and workplaces, must rank as the greatest single terrorist act for which he is ultimately responsible after Gukurahundi - the brutal campaign of the mid 1980s led by the notorious Fifth Brigade which resulted in the slaughter of between 20,000 and 40,000 Matabele. ... As the horror of the Mugabe tsunami becomes clear for all to see, the question arises where is the Church in all this? Surely the Church has...

With President Bush's announcement yesterday of $1.2 billion for a five-year campaign against malaria in Africa, this mosquito-borne disease is finally getting the high-level attention it deserves. The wonder is that it took so long. This ancient scourge is so deadly and pervasive, and effective remedies are so cheap, that there is no justification for the world's past indifference. Malaria kills more than a million people a year, 90 percent of them in sub-Saharan Africa. Most victims are children under 5. Malaria sickens hundreds of millions a year, leaving many survivors with lifelong problems that impair their ability to work....

Last week we learned that the situation in Africa is significantly worse than we thought. I am not talking about poverty. I’m talking about theft. In Nigeria alone, some US $400 billion was stolen by that country’s leaders during the last four decades of the 20th Century, according to Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, Chairman of Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission. "We cannot be accurate down to the last figure, but that is our projection," said Commission spokesman Osita Nwajah. This staggering sum, equal to six times the amount that the Marshall Plan provided to rebuild Europe, was taken by Nigeria’s...

Poor African children benefit more from independent schools than government ones for a fraction of the cost, says James Tooley. Why are aid groups and pop stars against them? On BBC’s Newsnight last week the international development secretary Hilary Benn showcased free primary education (FPE) in Kenya — supported by $55m from the World Bank and £20m from the British government — as the shining example of aid to Africa not being wasted. He’s not the only one clutching at this example for reassurance: Bill Clinton told an American television audience that the person he most wanted to meet was...

The scale of the task facing Tony Blair in his drive to help Africa was laid bare yesterday when it emerged that Nigeria's past rulers stole or misused £220 billion. That is as much as all the western aid given to Africa in almost four decades. The looting of Africa's most populous country amounted to a sum equivalent to 300 years of British aid for the continent. Former leader Gen Sani Abacha stole between £1bn and £3bn The figures, compiled by Nigeria's anti-corruption commission, provide dramatic evidence of the problems facing next month's summit in Gleneagles of the G8 group...

<p>Six months after the Asian tsunami, a leading international charity says the poorest victims have benefited the least from the massive relief effort.</p>

Regarding Africa, did anyone see the PBS News Hour tonite? A black African author said repeatedly that the real problem is government corruption, while a white Ivy League professor insisted that the real problem is that President Bush won't give more financial handouts.

More babies, young kids going hungry in US Sat Jun 11, 11:00 PM ET An American butcher. Increasing numbers of young American children are showing signs of serious malnourishment, fueled by a greater prevalence of hunger in the United States, while, paradoxically, two-thirds of the US population is either overweight or obese(AFP/File/Stan Honda) BALTIMORE, United States (AFP) - Increasing numbers of young American children are showing signs of serious malnourishment, fueled by a greater prevalence of hunger in the United States, while, paradoxically, two-thirds of the US population is either overweight or obese. In 2003, 11.2 percent of families in...

DUBIOUS AID Friday, June 10, 2005 Over the past 50 years, foreign aid has largely been counterproductive: it has crowded out private sector investments, undermined democracy, and enabled despots to continue with oppressive policies, perpetuating poverty, says the International Policy Network (IPN). The reason countries are poor is not that they lack infrastructure -- be it roads, railways, dams, pylons, schools or health clinics. Rather, it is because they lack the institutions of a free society: property rights, the rule of law, free markets and limited government, says IPN: In a majority of poor countries, the average poor person is...

WASHINGTON — President Bush (search) and British Prime Minister Tony Blair (search) will announce a joint initiative Tuesday costing the United States $674 million to help an estimated 14 million people threatened by famine in Africa (search), the White House said. The announcement appeared intended to take the sting out of Bush's opposition to Blair's more expensive plan for doubling aid to Africa. The amount of Britain's contribution to the joint initiative was not disclosed, but it was said to be less than Washington's.