African Economist: PLEASE Stop Sending Aid

This is certainly a different take on the question of Western aid to Africa. It does make a certain amount of sense, though one wonders if it has a prayer of being heard in the halls of Congress.

Shikwati: Such intentions have been damaging our continent for the past 40 years. If the industrial nations really want to help the Africans, they should finally terminate this awful aid. The countries that have collected the most development aid are also the ones that are in the worst shape. Despite the billions that have poured in to Africa, the continent remains poor.

SPIEGEL: Do you have an explanation for this paradox?

Shikwati: Huge bureaucracies are financed (with the aid money), corruption and complacency are promoted, Africans are taught to be beggars and not to be independent. In addition, development aid weakens the local markets everywhere and dampens the spirit of entrepreneurship that we so desperately need. As absurd as it may sound: Development aid is one of the reasons for Africa's problems. If the West were to cancel these payments, normal Africans wouldn't even notice. Only the functionaries would be hard hit. Which is why they maintain that the world would stop turning without this development aid.

I am reminded of the "We Are The World" era in Ethiopia where millions of tons of grain were collected to help with the famine, and the government of Ethiopia allowed it to rot on the docks, rather than help out their starving subjects who, if fed, might revolt and threaten their power base.