Nick Kristof’s column in the NYT begins with a surprise (to some):
Those who care about Africa tend to think that the appropriate attitude toward President Bush is a medley of fury and contempt.
But the fact is that Mr. Bush has done much more for Africa than Bill Clinton ever did, increasing the money actually spent for aid there by two-thirds so far, and setting in motion an eventual tripling of aid for Africa. Mr. Bush’s crowning achievement was ending one war in Sudan, between north and south. And while Mr. Bush has done shamefully little to stop Sudan’s other conflict – the genocide in Darfur – that’s more than Mr. Clinton’s response to genocide in Rwanda (which was to issue a magnificent apology afterward).
The columnist then goes on to detail differences (which he admits to being over-generalized) between liberal and conservative approaches to remedying the horrible African situation. My opinion is simplistic. Anything good is good. Well up to a point, because unsupervised giving has almost always resulted in increased revenue for dictators and thugs and less than nothing for those who need it. What we don’t want in Africa is Oil-for-Food Two. That’s why the image of Chirac and Schroeder trying to cure poverty at the G8 is something of an eye-roller.
And speaking of OFF, forget Clinton and Bush, Mr. Kristof. The one you should have bashed on Darfur and Rwanda was not the American president, but the UN Secretary General. You would think an African himself would have moved heaven and earth to prevent genocide on his own continent. Oh, never mind.
Bush is a centrist, AKA “compassionate conservative”. Good that Kristof is finally catching the drift.
In fact, the Bush administration has tripled the total American aid to Africa over the past four years.
The problem with foreign aid is that it doesn’t help the development of the countries receiving it, and Dr Tomi Ovaska of the University of Regina in Canada has published a study (PDF file http://www.globalizationinstitute.org/publications/moreaidelessgrowth.pdf) of 86 developing countries from 1975 to 1998 that concluded that there’s a negative relationship between development aid and economic growth:. . . one percent increase in aid as a percent of GDP decreased annual real GDP per capita growth by 3.65 percent.
One measure that would improve the development of African nations would be the abolition of all farm subsidies in the USA and the EU, and of import tariffs for agricultural products. I don’t believe for a moment that the EU would agree to that.
Today’s Washington Times has a far more informative article that offers a solid indication as to how the current Administration will handle US-African aid policy.
It appears that our ambassador to Kenya launched a rocket at the embassy’s July 4 celebration. Here is part of his “toast”:
“Turning on the fire hose of international compassion and asking Kenya and other African nations to drink from it is not a serious strategy for promoting growth or ending poverty,” he said.
“The United States is committed to helping Kenya defeat this menace and will provide any and all assistance Kenya requires. We seek from Kenyan authorities a corresponding measure of vigor and commitment in confronting this challenge.”
[snip]
“Kenya’s investigation and prosecution of terrorist crimes remains far below the standard required to deal with the threats at hand,” Mr. Bellamy told his guests.
In diplomatic terms, it was a blackjacking in Harshville. Well done!
Oh, and read the final quote. Let freedom ring!
…two-thirds…? Pesky math. In the Guardian interview Roger linked to earlier, Bush says that the current level of aid is 3x what it was pre-Bush. If true, one could correctly state that Bush has increased it by 3 (which I think is 4.5 times greater than two-thirds), or equivalently, under Clinton aid was 1/3 what it is today. But increasing the money actually spent for aid there by two-thirds is wrong. This raises some questions:
Is Bush wrong?
Is Kristof wrong?
Can a New York Times columnist do 6th grade math?
Since journalists are better than us, being college-edumacated and like, passionate about like, stuff, I think the answer must be “yes!”.
Bill Clinton begs to differ:
The Scotsman has this report:
One measure that would improve the development of African nations would be the abolition of all farm subsidies in the USA and the EU, and of import tariffs for agricultural products. I don’t believe for a moment that the EU would agree to that.
And the US would?
Fausta: One measure that would improve the development of African nations would be the abolition of all farm subsidies in the USA and the EU, and of import tariffs for agricultural products. I don’t believe for a moment that the EU would agree to that.
Kyda Sylvester: And the US would?
Actually, yes.
Kyda, Paul
W.’s offer to restrict or eliminate US agricultural subsidies has a direct impact on Red State farm incomes, at least within the next election cycle. Bill Clinton would never attack or threaten a Democratic constituency like that. Should the Republicans make a serious effort in this area, be assured that page after page of newsprint would be devoted to the hell confronting US family-owned farms. Another round of Farm Aid concerts?
According to this article in the Australian, only the British and Australian governments offered support. Nothing was reported about the receptions Bush’s proposal received in Berlin, Paris, and Tokyo (Japan’s farm subsidies are astounding). The benefits for the agricultural sectors of the developing world would be significant:
“If there is a positive response from the Europeans it will completely change the dynamics of the Doha round,” [Australian Trade Minister] Mr Vaile told The Australian. “There could be significant benefits worth hundreds of billions. Oxfam says agricultural support is worth $US300 billion ($400 billion) each year.”
According to a report just now on CNBC, private-equity firms buying into Nigeria, Ghana, and Botswana are attracting capital. The less fiat regulation, the more the marketplace will do its invisible-hand stuff. Governments waiting around to grab everything worth grabbing are going to need aid forever–and further entrench themselves with it.
I’ll drop farming subsidies if EU does the same, says Bush
Oh as if. Talk about never having to worry about fullfilling a pledge. Since 1995 the federal government has spent over $131 billion on agriculture subsidies–link. The Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002 will spend $190 billion over 10 years on farm aid. That’s a whole lot of special interest at work, special interest that doesn’t give crapall about giving third world economies a hand up if that hand is in it’s pocket. What a bunch of political double talk.
Maybe Bush is just trying to change the subject, but this sounds like something Bill Clinton would say.
I’m afraid as long as we have the United States Senate, we’re going to have farm subsidies. Too many small states are addicted to them: Vermont, Wisconsin, Iowa, N. & S. Dakota, Wyoming, Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Arkansas, etc.
The Milk Compact is one of the most shameful, anti-consumer deals ever made. And the ethanol subsidies are even worse. It’s time to end the nostalgia for uneconomic farms that is funneling money straight into the pockets of corporate farmers.
It actually is a little like Oil for Food in that respect.
Kofi and the UN are what they are; I cannot even work up minor irritation over them. What is most outraging about Darfur (aside, of course, from what is actually happening and who is actually doing it) is that it does not even occur to people that anybody besides the US should do something about it. In the European and US press and blogs there are constant complaints and snarky digs about the US doing so much in Irag and Afghanistan (if they even acknowledge that), but nothing about Darfur, so hence, we’re a bunch of cynical hypocrites.
How about this? The German government announces tomorrow: “For 60 years, we have had to live in shame for committing one of the great evils in history. We can never make up for that, but it is time to try to redeem ourselves. The German military is going to Darfur to show that while once we made war to commit genocide, we now march to stop one.”
Never mind doing it; not even the idea would ever occur to them, or anyone else in Europe. “Us? Redeem ourselves? But we hate the US. Isn’t that enough?” That pretty much sums it up for me.
A little tangential light on that, Jeff, from Belmont.
A friend sent me a link to an African blog from Kenya, http://thinkersroom.blogspot.com/ Thinker’s Room:
o, I am not holding my breath. The solution will not come from Live Aid or from G8. It will come from Africans who will finally refuse to accept the nonsense they are subjected to by their asinine leadership and throw the lot of the useless cretins out.
It will come from Africans who will put their skills and abilities to use for their countries.
It will come from Africans who will refuse to acknowledge the empty gestures from Europe and America, whose only concern is how best to plunder the continent of its resources and people without ruffling too many feathers and upsetting too many of their taxpayers.
Along with Roger’s blog, a daily must-read.
Kristof isn’t alone. As Bob Gledof put it not too long ago, “the Bush administration is the most radical – in a positive sense – in its approach to Africa since Kennedy.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/famine/story/0,12128,965311,00.html
Excerpt– gotta love the Guardian’s freedom with the f-word, btw:
The neo-conservatives and religious rightwingers who surrounded President George Bush were proving unexpectedly receptive to appeals for help, Geldof said.
Former president Bill Clinton had not helped Africa much, despite his high-profile visits and apparent empathy with the downtrodden, the organiser of Live Aid claimed. “Clinton was a good guy, but he did fuck all.”
Lord Alli, the aid activist who is accompanying Geldof on the trip organised by the UN children’s aid agency Unicef, echoed his praise of the Bush administration.
“Clinton talked the talk and did diddly squat, whereas Bush doesn’t talk, but does deliver,” Lord Alli said.
Wish somebody would inform Sen. Kennedy–or did his interest in Africa wane after the Mugabe sorts came in?
Fresh Air ó Those small states feed you.
If Europe was really concerned about Africa, they would end their paranoid and ignorant ‘frankenfood’ obstructionism and let the Africans use the tailored foods that can increase their crop yields dramatically.
What Richard McEnroe said. It’s GM foods, not Oxfam or any aid package, that saved literally millions of lives in China and India during the last century and wiped out starvation in those countries.
For some reason, those French small-farmer street demonstrations really bother the Paris bureaucracy. Guess it’s the power of the past, in tandem with the active imagination.
Der Spiegel has posted a very interesting interview the magazine conducted with Kenyan economics expert James Shikwati. Mr. Shikwati describes in clear, understandable terms how conventional aid programs from developed countries are harming the economies of African nations.
An excerpt (but read the whole thing) :
SPIEGEL: In the West, there are many compassionate citizens wanting to help Africa. Each year, they donate money and pack their old clothes into collection bags …
Shikwati: … and they flood our markets with that stuff. We can buy these donated clothes cheaply at our so-called Mitumba markets. There are Germans who spend a few dollars to get used Bayern Munich or Werder Bremen jerseys, in other words, clothes that that some German kids sent to Africa for a good cause. After buying these jerseys, they auction them off at Ebay and send them back to Germany — for three times the price. That’s insanity …
SPIEGEL: … and hopefully an exception.
Shikwati: Why do we get these mountains of clothes? No one is freezing here. Instead, our tailors lose their livlihoods. They’re in the same position as our farmers. No one in the low-wage world of Africa can be cost-efficient enough to keep pace with donated products. In 1997, 137,000 workers were employed in Nigeria’s textile industry. By 2003, the figure had dropped to 57,000. The results are the same in all other areas where overwhelming helpfulness and fragile African markets collide.
(link via Lucianne.com)