stop forcing Westerners to buy high-priced Western food instead of low-cost African grown food — end agriculture protectionism and subsidies to rich Western farmers.

See the Kick_AAS (all agro subsidies) by the Guardian (not usually a free market newsgroup.)

Virtually everybody who is poor is poor for one reason — they don’t have a job.

Solution: use as much money as you have, and loan it to poor people to start small businesses — micro businesses.

I loved Bob Geldof’s book after Live Aid, 20 years ago; he cares enough to be honest. I would have asked him how many sustainable (profit-making) businesses his “aid” has helped found.

Profit is the business term, AND measure, for sustainability. Every quarter most big capitalist companies give a report on their “sustainability, and sustainability forecasts” — profit. Sustainability is why capitalism works — plus the fact that investors, owners, managers, and workers all voluntarily agree to work together in peace and trust (and harmony? not quite).

A “peace” economy, in practice, looks like — capitalism.

I think current efforts from the left and right to tie aid more closely to governance are a huge step in the right direction, but what Geldof et al. ought to focus on (they do mention it, but it’s always secodnary) is access to markets. If all this aid money were instead spent placating (say) the sugar and cotton lobbies in the US so that free imports of those products could be happen everyone would be mcuh better off, particularly the African nations that produce those products.

I have an idea how to help at least one African country.

Unfortunately, US law probably prohibits us from taking up a collection to put a contract on Mugabe.

It’s a year or two old (more?), but well worth reading; especially since Kim was born and raised in Africa.

Anything potentially good will be invariably consumed by this societal blight.