Steve Radelet: We’re asking the wrong question
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On the Financial Times blog, Steve Radelet offers a response to the question “Is aid working?” Radelet takes to task Dambisa Moyo’s “extreme views” by suggesting the more important question is “Under what circumstances does aid work, and what can be done to make it more effective?”
Excerpts below, full post can be found here
Ms. Moyo argues that “Millions in Africa are poorer today because of aid; misery and poverty have not ended but have increased.” But this storyline is at least a decade out of date. Since 1996 – twelve years now – economic growth across sub-Saharan Africa has averaged 2.3 per person per year. And it is not just due to oil. There are 18 strongly performing countries, none of them oil exporters, that together have achieved per capita growth averaging 3.1 per cent, meaning that average incomes have increased nearly 50 percent in twelve years. Most of these 18 countries are now democracies, including Mozambique, Tanzania, Ghana, Lesotho, Namibia, Mali, South Africa and others, and the majority are measurably improving governance. Across Africa literacy rates are up, infant mortality rates are down, and 34m more children are in school since 2000. And according to analyses by the World Bank, poverty rates (at $1.25/day poverty line) peaked at 59 per cent in 1996 and dropped to 51 per cent by 2005, a remarkable drop in nine years. Poverty in Africa has been falling, not rising.
What happened? The turnaround is primarily due to stronger leadership in Africa, much better economic policies, lower debt burdens, new cell phone and internet technologies, and an emerging and vibrant business class. What about aid? Aid has been neither panacea nor demon. Much has been wasted on sordid dictators, projects that didn’t fit local needs, and bureaucracies that ensure only a fraction of funding gets to those that need it. But much has helped support success.
-Chris Scott
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May 29, 2009 at 4:09 pm
Thank you, Mr. Radelet, for your well-reasoned response in this continuing discussion.
The statistics that you provide to show the growth of African economies in the last decade along with the continuing trend of African governments becoming MORE transparent & responsive to their countries’ needs (not less) is compelling evidence that Africa IS able to democratize & progress -
and NOT that is is an abyss of dictators & disasters as others would like us to believe to advance their own personal agendas.
In this debate for Africa’s Future, which side is REALLY portraying the Continent as an area of hope and which side is portraying the Continent as a “basketcase”?
From what I read, it seems that it is the Steve Radelets & others who promote responsible, targeted & transparent aid programs that see the Continent as full of Hope.
I will stand with them.
Living Positively, debbie
http://www.mpwn-uganda.org
May 29, 2009 at 6:00 pm
When will someone ask the Africans?
May 29, 2009 at 6:22 pm
Ridiyen, I am curious…what would an African respond if we asked if he wanted better leadership, cleaner water, better education and roads, and access to proven medical treatments? Would the average African likely argue that decreasing child mortality is a bad thing? That fewer Africans in extreme poverty is a bad thing? I don’t see what’s to ask. We have universal good being done in Africa because of aid, that much is non-negotiable. I, too, wish that Africa had been able to be 100% of its own solution, but it didn’t (and usually doesn’t) happen like that. Just the same, I don’t think anybody is really complaining about the lower poverty rates and higher levels of development.
May 29, 2009 at 8:13 pm
Eric, your questions are obviously rhetorical, but when you say things like ‘higher levels of development’ where exactly has this been achieved from donor contributions? Better yet, were in the world, has a nation developed significaantly, i.e. levels comprobable to the West, by depending on Aid? All this money is dumped on Africa as are medicines and second-hand clothes, and the very rich and capable African governments sit back and just watch. Maybe the West should stop giving this Aid so freely and force some of these governments to figure out more practical solutions to develop their countires. How has everyone else done it?
May 30, 2009 at 12:58 am
Well, Tanzania comes to mind, where debt cancellation put thousands of kids in school alomst overnight. As does Uganda, where the HIV/AIDS pandemic is slowly but surely reversing thanks to western medicine and sex education. A great deal of diplomacy has taken place in Ghana, where the governmental control recently switched hands peacefully. Nobody is telling African countries to depend on aid, least of all me. It’s my money, man! (or ma’am), and I’d love to be able to keep as many tax dollars as possible. But African governments aren’t always fatcats, waiting for America to solve all their problems. Most of them literally do not have the GNP to pay for education AND health care AND infrastructure, etc.
And still, my own question has been unanswered, what would an African say, were he or she given the choice of her child going to school and receiving western medicine and having a chance of his/her children not being born into poverty, or dying the name of Africa handling its own business? How have countries who receive less aid, like Zimbabwe, come up with their own solutions to their problems?
May 31, 2009 at 5:44 pm
How about a voice for foreign assistance programs from Sudan – it that a good enough “African” voice?
I would think so.
http://www.one.org/blog/2009/05/29/mo-ibrahim-good-governance-will-bolster-african-aid/#comment-563032
Living Positively, debbie
June 1, 2009 at 3:34 pm
We can go back and forth on what is important, for Africa, and even as an African man myself, I can never speak on behalf of the African continent. I think what Mr. Kibaya is saying is this idea “that the HIV/AIDS pandemic is reversing because of western medicine” is indicative of the parental hold the west continues to have on the continent. Some of the best innovations (remember Kemron?) have come out of this continent, and maybe money should be sent to things like that rather than PEPFAR. Or maybe Africans can’t really take care of themselves?
June 10, 2009 at 11:09 am
My interest is in Hospice and Palliative Care in Southern AFrica. The South Africans have taken a western model and adapted it to thier own needs. Aid has helped to support these adaptive systems so that they are able to do important work for patients and families. There is support within the South African communities as well. what is exciting is that these adaptive models could work in communities here. Many agencies work with the teams with mutal respect and partnership.
I congratulate all who read and react to the Moyo book. The more conversation the more and better the solutuions will be.
July 22, 2009 at 6:41 am
Hi all,
Interesting discussion going on here.
First of all, I think drastic ideas even though they help advance the debate in the long run, are not the magic wand solutions. Stopping aid totally is one of these drastic ideas. However re-thinking aid, and in my view starting with getting rid of the whole ‘aid’ and ‘assistance’ rhetoric is a start.
Second, as a reply to Eric M.’s example on Tanzania and schools, have a look at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/1775421.stm, just to nuance the debate. One step forward, 2 backwards?
Also, I think we should be careful about what we understand with ‘development’ and ‘aid’, as it has more often than not been understood as ‘development = economic growth’, which is a very narrow minded way to look at the issue. And ‘aid’ is oftentimes, because of issues of conditionalities, a vehicle for imposing Western / Northern values in so called ‘developing’ countries.
Why do we assume so easily that health and medecine solutions from the West are good or the only solutions? What do we make of centuries of Chinese medecine? What do we make out of initiatives for a Malaria vaccine coming from Colombia or treatments solutions for Aids coming out of Kenya… dimiss them because they have not being tested fully because of funding issues mainly due to Western/Northern’s own interest? Or should we take them seriously, test them seriously, and invest is going further with these initiatives as much as other initiatives around the world?
In how far has aid re-inforce Africa’s dependency on aid, not so much because it is provided, but more because of the way it is provided? In how much has aid perpetuated power relationships already enshrined for years in the world order?