Why aid to Africa must increase

Africa, a continent blessed with milk and honey but subject to poverty by its leaders. Let the truth be told that aid will not solve our problem in Africa. Developed countries are working their way out of recession but Africa is asking for aid to bail us out of reccession. It is just not possible. We have been asking for aid since the word "Aid" was created. In fact I believe the word was created for Africa. Instead of asking for aid why dont we ask for ideas.

Aid in my personal opinion DOES help, yes-- but I agree with the formulation of ideas being the needed exogenous support (support being the key word). Homegrown ideas. I dont think Africa's growth over the past few years can mainly be attributed to AID, new endogenous solutions by frontrunning African countries such as Sth Africa, Nigeria and Botswana are setting great examples in my opinion.

I thank the Author for raising this important subject. Aid should be considered as an instrument for global development partnership. Africa needs a development support. BUT the way this support/aid is delivered need to be seriously revisited. Aid for what?Who will use the aid? What is lacking that needs external support, etc? Genuine aid for Africa should help equitable natural and human resources development for Africa; and sustainable technology and know-how transfer, as well as enhancing participation in global trade. If aid does not help enhancing Africas own initiatives and capacity, it will be of less use in the future, just like its effects were limietd in the past, i.e. aid will perpetuate itself and Africas poverty, too.

Shanta you are correct. However, the buraucracy from multilateral donor agencies would not help Africa. Often due to conditionalities, such "aid" will come several years down the road. To mitigate against the Global crisis, Africa must get get the resources at the right time and in right doses.

Other than Kenya where the public is increasingly putting the Government on the spot, I am afraid most resource to most countries may end up in the pockets of politicians. We have some distance to go in terms of political reforms. Unfortunately, we are not able to leap frog through violent political reforms as in the case with Europe and America. If we are not able to leap frog, then we must brace ourselves for a tarbulent Africa in the next decade before this can settle. There must be political and economic reforms if Africa must move forward. I do not care which comes first but parts of Asia have been able to achieve economic reforms a head of political reforms.

Aid to Africa therefore, is a complex matter.

Victor

First I would not categorically NO to stopping aid into Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). That said, the way and the form in which it has and is continuously been given MUST also change.

Aid has proven successful in Western Europe and also in Isreal, so i believe more aid can make a different BUT there must be skills and knowledge in the population of SSA. Below are some reason for more aid:

There is no state in SSA that is not depend hugely in aid for running it governments and to some extent more that half of the countries running cost come from aid. So stopping it would mean a total collapse of many public sector insitutions and thus further aggreviate the suffering of the poor and ordinary people as is seen Zimbabwe. We wouldnt like to see such a thing spreading across the region.

However, if aid has been following since before I was born and yet still people are poorer and poverty not declining, we need to think twice and ask what going wrong and that a good part of Moyos book.

Thus my proposal and change in the aid would be:

Aid to the education sector. More colleges and poly-technecques and remodernisation of all the existing ones. Germany and Japan were able to rebuild their nations after the war because of a simple reason they invested in education and training of their people. More than 80% of young people in SSA are without no marketable skills in our present society. If these a resource (Human capital) is refined, it will lead to an unpresident growth and development.

Training all and in all sectors: from farming to lawyers, doctors, carpeters, nurses, midwives and so on. If there is a highly skilled nurse, mid-wife, teacher, carpenter, baker etc in every village in SSA, it will go a long way to improve the livelihood of the people in the village and thus lead to reduction of poverty. Any one who goes to school beyond the High school will be free from poverty and anyone who went upto college level will get a job either in the private or public sector even self-employed.

With skills and knowledge governance is easily enhance and thus the development of democracy and good governance, strengthening and development of the local institutions.

I am coming from one of the smallest and remotest village in SSA, but I am free from poverty not because I am smart or more intellegent than my fellow friends and relatives I left in the village (who are living under a dollar and have to repair their hut even dry season and have to walk miles before they can see a nurse or doctor) but because I had a chance to get quality education.

Aid must focus on education and not the present day mass education in try to attain a goal (MDGs). Millions go to school now only to end in Grade 9 and then finding no chance to a college or skillful training center and they dont want to go back to the village to be like their parents thus one of the massive exodus of young people from West Africa to Spain and if such trend is not rectified it will lead it to instability.
Ghana is shining today because of its high literacy rate and quality education system. Give more aid to traing and building on Polytechniques not projects for poverty alleviations at the finance ministries and buying of four wheel Pajeros, lap tops and travel around!!!!

Furthermore, aid should also be in the form of techology transfer and opening of the markets to SSA. Every country from Guinea Bissau to Zimbabwe has some resources which when value is added to the product will fetch better price and also could be stored for long period.

Governments and private sector must increase it investment on Agriculture and more priority given to the sector.
Gambia export g/nuts, fish and cotton. They sell them raw and at world market prices. Thus fetch little or nothing as compared to the efforts they make in it production. If they can produce g/nut oil, make quality butter, or fried them and parkage them, it will exponential increase the earning of these farmers and thus free them from poverty and like wise any other country in SSA. Why are the government not doing it, simple no technology and where the technology is available no skilful personels to run and maintain it.

Thus once again more aid in the education sector and Techology transfer. The biggest challenge to development and reduction of poverty in SSA is ignorance which can be easily wipe out through quality education quantitative or mass education is like given insufficent dose of a medicament to someone, it doesnt cure but leads to resistance. That is where we are now in the black box of development in many countries in SSA.
We must and the only way to get out is through quality education and technology transfer.

Bah.

1) The recession would reduce the available resources for AID, of course. But given that previously billions of AID money have been wasted and some what inefficiently used (without much trickle down effect on the poor that the amount of would have dictated), can Africans the decline in AID money as an opportunity to tighten their belts?
2) The best for Africa would be not necessarily increasing AID money (unless its use can be properly monitored), but taking a closer and transparent look at the Agricultural policies of the west. Well we live in a world where a cow in the Netherlands get (through subsidy to its owner) more than an average farmer in Kenya (who owns 10 of its cousins, African cows).
3) Create a mechanism to convert the AID money into some other form: say by encouraging FDI into these countries, help them improve their institutions and infrastructure
4) Finally, it would be great to see how the numbers have been calculated - .

Well, my argument is not that AID is UN important at all. It is of course helpful. Let us think not only about increasing AID to Africa, but also about improving the mechanism of allocating AID to responsible governments, in a way that helps the majority to get out of poverty and and create more jobs -- in wat that is not tantamount to FINANCING THE GAMBLING AND DRINKING HABITS OF AN IRRESPONSIBLE FATHER, AND EXPECTING HIS CHILDREN TO BECOME WELL FED, DRESSED, AND ATTAIN THE BEST EDUCATION.

Stop begging; an Ms Moyo has rightly said, there should be a time limit on aid. Three years from now is enough, after that, not a cent should be sent.

I am not an aid advocate and I do share the point that aid will not buy development nor will it lead to economic transformation in Africa - even when associated with sound policies - (see Devarajan, Easterly and Pack 2002 http://econpapers.repec.org/paper/cgdwpaper/13.htm , Easterly 2003 www.nyu.edu/fas/institute/dri/Easterly/File/EasterlyJEP03.pdf ).
That being said, I think we need to make a clear distinction between aid intended as a growth booster and aid as a relief, in order to better understand why aid is in many cases so critical in poor countries and Africa in particular.
I agree with the author of the post When will Africa stop begging for Aid that aid will not solve our problem in Africa, assuming by problem he means economic growth and development. But there is a kind of aid that Africa just cannot afford dealing without; and that the developed world feels somewhat morally committed to deliver. This is what Shanta nicely summarized on this blog referring to the current situation: In poor African countries, children get pulled out of schooland miss out on becoming productive adults. In some cases, children die before they have a chance to go to school. If the current growth collapse is typical of the ones Africa has experienced in the past, an additional 700,000 African children may die before their first birthday. When it comes to immediate assistance for sectors such as health, education or simply aid following natural disasters, Africa just cant afford to rely only on itself, for the good reason that between the time you began reading my post and the time you end no less than five children would have died from Malaria in Africa, and this figure could double or triple without aid.

Should we ask for ideas as suggested by the author of When will Africa stop begging for Aid?
Its certainly true that good ideas are part of the drivers of economic transformation, but Africa doesnt have idea problem! Actually, no poor country has (or should have) idea problem. There are much more good ideas and policies (from both theory and experience) than Africa ever needs. You have idea problem when youre ahead, i.e among the leaders, because you have to innovate if you are to keep growing; the US has idea problems, Japan has idea problems, etc. These countries experience sometimes policies with uncertain outcome because they are in the front and have no empirical test to rely on when innovating. Countries which are behind dont have and shouldn't have this kind of problem; they just have to open their eyes and look at what has worked and works elsewhere and then adjust to their own situation. A basic example: Africa does not need to reinvent farm tractors to mechanize its agriculture; the same reasoning applies for economic policies. No need to ask for ideas; we all know what works. I think.

Then what do we need?
The good news: very simple things, two words: leaders + visions (I agree with Gks Bible quotation). It has to come from the top of African countries. We need leaders that want to achieve economic success story in their country. We need leaders that step up, take full ownership of their development stake and push their people to hard work. African have to keep in mind that no one will do it for them. Even the most famous proponents for aid admit that the poor will have to get rich on their own effort to close the gap between them and the rich (See Sachs 2005, The End of Poverty, page 289). Leaders + visions. This may sound simplistic, even naive, yet its desperately true. You may come with the best policies with a doubled or tripled package of aid yet the outcome will not be different from what weve been witnessing for decades until you have a bench of committed leaders on the top of African countries. No policy will work and no aid will be effective without having these two words joined.

The bad news: how do we get committed leaders with visions on the top of each country in Africa? From an economic perspective, Im afraid there is not much we can do...

Regards,
Ahiteme

but "institution" is an ambiguous word, academic fields didn't find a consensus about it and I think that african policymakers are not willing to listen to this song again. yet, leadership factor matters crucially in Africa and we should go beyond a conventional aid scaling up and look at the use of aid in terms of equal opportunities for people in the need!

Thanks for the write up Ahiteme. There is no point repeating all that you have said but I disagree with the way you ended at the same time I share your feelings to an extent. You asked the question, how do we get committed leaders with visions on the top of each country in Africa? And you went on to call this the bad news. My friend, atimes I really do not blame the corrupt leaders so much because atleast they stood up for something (Cold). My question is, we the Engineers,Doctors, Economists, Historians, etc... that knows what we need in Africa wot do we stand for (Neither cold nor hot= Nothing)? Again permit me to quote from my favorite book even though I am a sinner striving towards perfection on a daily basis "Rev 3:15-1615 I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were cold or hot. 16 Since you are lukewarm and neither hot nor cold, I am going to spit you out of my mouth." My friend the good news is until you and I rise up to the call and stop searching for leaders with vision then we still have a long way to go as a continent. No matter how small let stand for something. I will be glad to meet you in person if you will be around at the International Conference on Diaspora for Development, July 13-14, 2009. Again thanks for your contribution.
Regards,
GK.

I agree, pouring more money into some countries in Africa will only enable more greed and corruption on the side of some of those few that abuse their power. The fact is although Africa is widely regarded as poverty stricken most countries their are more than capable of handling themselves in this current climate. However it is just their corrupt leaders that are influening their economic decline!

Great post

You´re right!

The major problem and obstacle for the development of underdeveloped countries is the corruption of their leaders.
Resources should be used in an efficient social and economic policy but theys are used to further enrich the fraction of corrupt and dishonest politicians.
I'm not generalizing, saying that all politicians are dishonest, but what we see is just a corrupt ruling class in many countries.

Africa, a continent blessed with milk and honey but subject to poverty by its leaders. Let the truth be told that aid will not solve our problem in Africa. Developed countries are working their way out of recession but Africa is asking for aid to bail us out of reccession. It is just not possible. We have been asking for aid since the word "Aid" was created. In fact I believe the word was created for Africa. Instead of asking for aid why dont we ask for ideas.Thanks
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Fragile states & education: Guinea-Bissau, the horror of the political elite

Why Cape-Verde or Mozambique increased primary education and reduced infant mortality and Guinea-Bissau, a territory with vaster potential, went the other way around? Simple answer: EDUCATION. And it seems that there is a new class of politicians that prefer to govern sheep than people. It's easier with less competition and less demands and an eternal vicious circle for a small group of friends.

If the EC, for instance, would allocate 30% of 3 consecutive EDFs and promote primary education as it was promoted in countries like Cape-Verde, Guinea-Conakry, Senegal, Mozambique, etc etc, Guinea-Bissau could in 15 years become a country with people and a state. What is the need for a state from the sheep's perspective? None. Make people first and fight neo-colonialism.

Yes I do agree with you that aid is needed in Africa especially during this 3Fs crisis (Financial, Fuel and Food crisis), but not aid as the only solution. First of all Africa need Statesmen and Stateswomen not just "politician". For that Africa need good governance and responsible leaders that are accountable to the people they lead. Do you know that in Africa most of the ex-presidents are found either in jail or dead! Africa needs its own efforts to be seen wealthy; Africa need foreign investments as well as local initiatives, all these shall be facilitated by peace and security more than anything else. Africa has to end corruption in any of its forms (plagiarism, nepotism,...). Africa needs the culture of competence based society, the know how and not the know who! without all these, Africa will remain poor! Africa need all these and it has all it requires!. Africa is not poor; my Africa is poorly managed! Aid alone will not help!