"The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing."

                --Archilochus

Glenn Reynolds:
"Heh."

Barack Obama:
"Impossible to transcend."

Albert A. Gore, Jr.:
"An incontinent brute."

Rev. Jeremiah Wright:
"God damn the Gentleman Farmer."

Friends of GF's Sons:
"Is that really your dad?"

Kickball Girl:
"Keeping 'em alive until 7:45."

Hired Hand:
"I think . . . we forgot the pheasant."




I'm an
Alcoholic Yeti
in the
TTLB Ecosystem



Saturday, July 09, 2005

G8 Report Card

Gleneagles, though painfully interrupted, proved to be a step forward for white bureaucrats who want to show they actually care about Africa. You know, that place south of Europe with 800 million people? Ring any bells?

Development aid to Africa has always been one of those unique situations where the hand that feeds you also bites you. The familiar loan-and-default cycle has arguably left the continent worse than when aid programs began; back then, at least everyone was poor and nobody could scrape enough money (or food) together to slaughter half a million of his neighbors.

At face value, the Gleneagles Communique is another supremely ambitious and naive document, full of heartwarming plans to eradicate poverty worldwide. We're going to increase aid by $50bn to Africa? Great! African leaders are agreeing to "commit to democracy and good governance" - FINALLY! Give us a break. Fundamentally, you're always going to see these meaningless but popular sentiments announced - it's like campaigning for student body president and vowing to put Coca-Cola in the water fountains.

But there are signs that the Eurocrats (and maybe even the Americans?) are starting to get it. For years, development economists have been screaming their heads off about debt relief, and it looks like at least someone's listening. Forgiving the debts of the 18 poorest African nations is a MUCH bigger deal than most people have acknowledged. Perhaps some African development aid will actually get spent on Africans soon.

Not that soon, unfortunately. (The aid increase, as well as plans to create universal access to anti-HIV drugs, won't be implemented until 2010, by which time AIDS will have claimed 10,000,000 more African lives.) And worse, the agreement does little or nothing to address the following equally-important issues: corruption, security, rule of law, infrastructure, local development, reinvestment, or even, say, implementation. Most disappointing was the failure of the G8 to seriously consider Blair's call for grant-based aid. The U.S.'s own grant program, the Millennium Challenge Account, has been embarassing in its stinginess.

Debt Relief: A-
Climate Change: C
Development Aid: C+
AIDS: C-
Reform: F

Overall:
C-

Not terrible, G8. But please, try a little harder next time.

Comments on "G8 Report Card"

 

Anonymous Anonymous said ... (4:10 PM) : 

No mention of African kleptocrats, African psychocrats, or African genocidal maniocrats. (Not to mention African health officials who are SURE the CIA engineered AIDS, but have no idea how it's spread.) These sets often overlap, a fact of which HH appears to be ignorant.

Before the Muslim Crusade, North Africa (Egypt in particular) fed the Roman Empire.

What was the per capita income in South Africa in 1965? In 2005?

What was the per capita income in Rhodesia in 1965? In Zimbabwe in 2005?

 

Blogger Hired Hand said ... (6:50 PM) : 

North Africa ain't Sub-Saharan Africa. See pgph. 5, where I point out that it's the G8 that seems to be ignorant of rampant kleptocracy, not your humble servant.

Whatever the problem, the solution is NOT "give up." This is a painful reminder that the right has been as conspicuously absent on poverty as the left on terrorism.

 

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