Forty Years of Misdirected Aid to Africa
The international development community seems unmindful of past evaluations of aid to Kenya. For decades, three countries in Africa were designated sites for aid from Denmark. Then in the late 1990s, Kenya was finally dropped because of its poor human rights record. In 2007, the Canadian Senate conducted a two-year review of its aid agency, CIDA. It concluded that Africa is the only continent in the world not to have benefited from the last forty years of significant global growth, and that CIDA has failed to make a foreign aid difference in Africa.
Many aid organizations are based on the aspiring premise that aid monies affect health outcomes. However, empirical studies by the World Bank, WHO, and the International Monetary Fund negate this assertion. In 2007, the IMF determined that “despite the vast empirical literature considering the effects of foreign aid on growth, there is little systematic evidence on how overall aid affects health, and none at all on how health aid affects health.” Policies dependent on the assumption that aid monies can have a positive effect on Kenyan health needs totally ignore past experience.
Today, Kenya’s per capita income is $1,600; it is $27,600 in Korea. Korea has entered the OECD community of donor nations; Kenya is a wholly owned subsidiary of the donor community. If the donor community is to overcome its 40 years of failure in Africa, then it needs a new business model. It needs to enable governments to lower the cost of doing business and create environments that are attractive for private sector growth and investment. It also needs to increase institutional infrastructure.
The example of Kenya and South Korea reveals aid organizations’ failure to properly evaluate what has worked and what doesn’t. There needs to be more analysis and reporting on evaluating international aid assistance. The world can not rely on international aid agencies repeating past mistakes. The international development community needs to respond to President Obama’s challenge and understand its mistakes. It needs to begin to look at success models and replicate what has worked, not what continues to fail.
The entire history of sub Saharan Africa, soon to include South Africa, is one of failed economic initiatives, political corruption, and brutal suppression of political opposition. This is due in large part to corrupt United Nations management of development aid but can also be traced to Cold War attempts by both West and East to curry favor with dysfunctional governments or revolutionary movements by giving them financial blandishments and weaponry in order to gain their support.
The culture of corruption and oppression is so deeply ingrained in sub Saharan Africa that I doubt the miserable inhabitants there will ever enjoy a decent standard of living or even the most basic human rights.
Spend a lifetime in so-called under-developed countries, and you will see that government “aid” and NGO “assisstance” has always been just a way for the pinstripe crowd to get sex and drugs.
They never helped anybody but themselves.
Meanwhile, bare knuckled capitalism and western industry’s self-interest created the five “Tigers” in Asia.
The pseudo altruists stultify Africa with PC “understanding” of primoridial tribalism.
Think the following: one nerdy graduate student seeking a grant with one thin shelled eagle’s egg in Florida Bay went on to murder 90 million with malaria when his “study” was used to ban DDT.
The authors laid out nicely how the USAID money was earmarked for useful and effective initiatives in South Korea, and they laid out the results in Kenya, but I didn’t see any discussion of how the USAID money was actually used in Kenya. Is it the nature of expenditure which is the problem, as the piece hints at the outset, or is it the nature of the recipient and its native corruption, as the article seems to point to at the end? If the latter, then no amount of aid or change in type of expenditure could help, so long as politicians and military forces continue to divert aid from their people to their personal war chests.
As has been stated in the other comments the failure of africa is directly linked to commie/socialist ideology and the groups that push/allow(UN pushing/US allowing) this ideology to stay firmly in control.
One could argue that much of the aid sent to SK was also a failure but we exported the ideology of capitalism which of course leads to economy success…
We should spent less time sending money and more time sending education… however being that our current group of leaders hate capitalism africa has pretty much not hope of a future for some time to come…
I think you can find that the success of south korea and the failure of kenya (or all of africa) is more to do with education (both the control and development).
why this is, is just as complicated but imho it is part PC part tribalism part racial (and attitudes towards, both from the giver and recipient of the aid) and part “professional victim hood” which is enabled by the giver and encouraged by the receiver.
The answer to the question top of page is… dare I say it? …sure, why not. In the year Obama was born the British were still in charge in Kenya.
Wherever you go in Africa plenty of older people will say that for ordinary people life was better under the colonial powers.
That does not make colonialism right but it does put a different perspective ogn the sentimentalised fairy tales of Black American preacher – politicians. The notion that Africa was some kind of utopia until the slave traders arrived is ludicrous. Long before the trans Atlantic slave trade began Africans were involved in slave trading and two hundred years after the trade was abolished, a hundred and fifty after slavery was ended in the USA, there is still a slave trade in Africa. Last year a case came before the international courts concerning children from rural areas of West Africa being sold into slavery by their own families Landmark ruling – hope for thousands
The answer here is simple. SAME RULES APPLY! If nations seeking aid do not meet certain standards in protecting the liberties of their citizens they do not qualify for the handout.
During President Obama’s visit to Ghana, he commented to that country’s parliament about unfulfilled promises in Africa,
the unfulfilled promises are on the part of the recipients not the givers.
“Why did one nation prosper from foreign aid and the other stagnate?”
Answer – a national average differential of about 40 IQ points.
USAID is a joke. In Guatemala, 5 Peace corps voluteers presented a reforestation project. Our cost for 5 years $25,000. USAID said no. That year the 5 vol. with the towns reforested more area than USAID did that same year. USAID cost $10,000,000, volunteer cost, $750.00 and 3 piglets.
USAID in Africa is a goldmine for our and their corrupt government.
One merely has to visit neighborhoods in the U.S. to witness the same results. Vibrant ethnic activity, shops, churches, etc., except in Black areas. There, we have plywood storefronts, trash, and graffiti. Furthermore, most Black children are subjected to ridicule and possible harm, when they attempt to rise above,……meaning, getting an education, and speaking like ‘whitey’.
My sympathy ran out years ago.
One reason is that South Koreans have some of the highest IQs in the world and Africans have some of the lowest. It isn’t a mere coincidence that East Asians, Western Europeans and German Jews thrive everywhere they live while maintaining low crime statistics and high educational standards while every other ethnic group struggles to stay afloat. It’s the innate analytical differences stupid. Not the politically correct answer but nevertheless true.
There was an unfortunate move to kick the whites out power in the late 1950s and early 1960s. This proved disastrous. A high percentage of African leaders attended left-wing universities in the West. They returned home as convinced socialists, if not outright Marxists. Much of the continent was thrown to the wolves. Zero-sum economic doctrines and victim politics dominated the landscape. Things may only gotten worse over the last few decades.
don’t worry the USA is the new africa.
there will be lots of time to figure out how we all got there from here.
Read “Dead Aid” by Dambisa Moyo. ‘Ms. Moyo is to aid in Africa what
ayaan Hirsi Ali is to Islam’. (Collier)
The article would do some justice if it actually analysed whether the economic philosophy of Kenya or South Korea was more in tune with the views of Obama, his Kenyan father and the European-American left-wing establishment.
It should be also noted that no US buerucrat tells Kenya to “copy exact” Korean model – which is surely due to the fact that while Obama and his ilk like Korean results, they don’t like Korean methods (i.e. they don’t want to give up marxist-leninist ideology).
Lastly, the IQ difference between Africans and Asians is not relevant to the discussion, since North Korea is just as poor as Kenya.
P.S. Don’t forget to visit my blog:
http://hyphenatedamericans.blogspot.com
P.P.S. Per capita GDP in Vietnam and Cambodia are comparable to per capita GDP in Kenya.
“Lastly, the IQ difference between Africans and Asians is not relevant to the discussion, since North Korea is just as poor as Kenya.”
Well…not neccesarily. North Korea only proves a communist-style tyrannical regime will trump IQ and the ability of your society to progress, when you suppress the creativity of the people. But… it does allow for nuclear bombs and a weapons industry!
…and which sub-saharan African country has nuclear bombs, besides maybe South Africa???
North Korea only PROVES the point about corrupt leftist-marxist regimes not being able to improve the conditions of their people. Only when you allow the capitalist/entrepreneur to begin to operate freely (China, anyone?) do things actually begin to change….
And, yes, that DOES require some IQ points and broad-based education.
AND the focused effort of a government free of corrution!
BOTH lacking on the African continent.
USAID.. aka ‘another reparations program that never pays off’.
You can’t walk 100 feet without seeing a UNICEF or other Belgium/UN soccer t-shirt, Western volunteer, program in place in Africa.
The corruption of its ‘leaders’ and other Government blokes is so blatant it is truly amazing. Witnessed/ experienced this when in Mali, Burkina Faso, Kenya, Sudan..
BTW, the WORST Guinness beer in the world award has to go to ‘African Guinness beer’. It’s brewed with Kenyan water.. worse than Houston, Texas tap water.. a travesty to even slap the ‘G’ name on the can.
About the IQ difference. In infancy the developing brain needs a high protein and fat diet. If you don’t get the proper diet you grow up to be a subhuman trog. When the Irish first came to the U.S. they were both mentally and physically stunted. Within a two generations however they were pretty much on par with everyone else and they integrated into American society. In much of Africa today most people are stunted for similar reasons. The problem is cultural corruption. The food aid does not get where it is needed.
you have to admit they are pretty good at scamming westerners, that must count for something.
I have a question for anyone who cares to answer it. When Bill Gates and Warren Buffet tell people to give to Africa, do they mean Africa the continent or is AFRICA an acronym for some sort of financial conglomeration. I am serious about the question.
Thank you.
South Korea has a national IQ score of 106.
Kenya has a national IQ score of 72.
Just saying.
The entire article is lacking in that if one is to make a useful comparisson one not only need to compare the purposes to which the money was put, but the political and economic environment into which it was placed. As many have noted, the biggest determinant of success in the ROK’s case was the (largely) democratic government and (mailnly) capitalistic market-driven economy, two elements that were (and are)markedly lacking in Kenya. Only a fool (or a guilt-ridden westerner) cast their seed upon the barren land and expect to reap a harvest. It is far better, and wiser, to prepare the land and make the soil fertile before sowing.
One more, otherwise unremarked upon, point about this article. Did it escape my eye, or did the author ever provide anything to support the outright claim that “[The] institutional infrastructure [of universal health insurance] was instrumental in the emergence of Korea’s entrepreneurial spirit.” Why, for example, would this be so imporant in Korea’s case when it, obviously, was not for America throughout its entire history of automotive, electronics, steel, and shipbuilding industry? It was unfortunate that any merit the rest of the article may have had was so blatantly squandered by this silly and politically timely midless comment.
“When the Irish first came to the U.S. they were both mentally and physically stunted.”
They were physically malnourished tho’ no more so than the English industrial proletariat of the time. The difference was that Ireland was overwhelmingly agricultural and Landlordism – anachronistic even at the time of the Great Famine – discouraged economic development beyond subsistence farming in large swathes of the country.
As for their “mental stuntedness” there is no scientific basis for this merely a great deal of Anglophone prejudice – fundamentally anti-Catholic – against a people who had arrived poorly educated in a destitute condition in a foreign land and a highly urbanized environment in a society which spoke only English, a language which at the time of the Famine was not known by the vast majority of the emigrants who were either Gaelic monoglots or with a modicum of very bad English.
It is only in the second half of the 19th century that English, party as a result of the Famine, began its rapid and inexorable spread among the mass of the peasantry. If the English speaking Americans had been able to converse with the newcomers in their own beautiful and ancient tongue they would have discovered a very different people from the “subhuman trogs” of sectarian legend. This is borne out by the very great political success the Irish-American community achieved in very short order.
It is also noteworthy that in the 19th century the Irish were considered proxies for blacks. One Troy backbencher famously cried out in the House of Commons “If N****r weren’t N****r, Irishman would be N****r!”. This tradition still lives on, evidently.
As head of the Peace Corps from 1989 to 1991, the great Paul Coverdell redirected the vast majority of their effort to eastern Europe. He concluded that the African continent was a black hole for capital. His strategy was that investment in those countries which had decent infrastructure and educated people might eventually generate a return on investment.
Post-colonial Africa was making a little bit of progress until OPEC roiled the globe with their 1973 oil embargo.
Dollars as “aid” is nothing but an invitation to corruption. If we had a standard structure, thereby a basic fixed price, for individual housing, we could say we built X number of houses on Elm Street. Donors would be able to see pictures of 123 Elm Street and know they made a difference. As it is, the tribal cultures of the world steal our aid for their tribe and impoverish the rest of the country…sort of like Democrats and ACORN. And, finally, what in the world are we doing supporting regimes that don’t support the most important things that have made us so free? 1) First Amendment, 2) Second Amendment, and 3) Article I, section 2 (bi-yearly election of the taxman!). Stupid humanitarians, money is for adults!
This article raises some interesting ideas but doesn’t quite get there. My understanding is that the Asian tigers, S. Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore, were all able to follow in Japan’s footsteps by building their high-tech manufacturing capabilities and becoming aggressive exporters. None of the countries is as “free” as the US, but they are all politically stable and safe and efficient ways of doing business. The Asian work ethic is legendary of course. I don’t think USAID made much difference to either country, although the positive ties to the US and access to US markets was key. There now is a general development blueprint to follow and it is obviously pro-free market and stable govt, not socialist or communist.
A friend once told me that “foreign aid is where you take money from poor people in one country and give it to rich people in another country”.
This is really a poorly-written article. To start with, the percentages aren’t explained, nor does it discuss the fundamental reasons for the problem. The wisdom is in the comments.
It is inaccurate to hold outsiders entirely responsible for the state of Africa.
Societies are what they are because of the collective habits and attitudes of their people.
Countries where corruption is considered normal, where conflict is endemic, where bigotries go out in all directions, where people get ahead through connections and not merit, and where pre-modern social outlooks prevail – are simply not going to be as prosperous as countries where this is not the case.
For Africa to progress there must be a sea change in the personal values of its people. And that cannot be accomplished with money.