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December 11, 2009

Can't We At Least Talk?

Can't We At Least Talk?
hauling water
By savitri d
When Billy and I went to the World Social Forum in 2007 we encountered extremely widespread frustration with aid programs and the culture of dependence on the African Continent, particularly amongst African activists and organizers . There was vigorous opposition to large funding bodies like the Gates Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, and even the Global Fund. For some it was resentment of the elaborate conditions placed on the aid, so much of which favors western nations and corporations, for others it was looming sense that nothing was really changing, that development money doesn't really help development. Because the World Social Forum draws together people from all over the world it is a real opportunity for activists to learn from each other without relying on international news....if one were to take cues from the media the only opposition to African Aid would seem to come from cruel isolationists, free market fundamentalists or people who hate Africa and Africans ( racists, in other words).
I am not entirely sure how to enter into the discussion except to say I think there should be one.

Last winter Zambian economist Dambisa Moyo released her "controversial" book Dead Aid, she is highly critical of the aid system and while I find myself agreeing with her I am also troubled by her belief in the cures of the free market...when she says in an interview "I love China" I get more than a little nervous, because China is stripping natural resources out of Africa at a truly alarming rate... so I realize why I like Moyo--its because she gets the conversation started... here is an interview with Moyo  and another better one.


And here is Jeffrey Sachs responding to her work and more generally the idea of ending Aid to Africa-- I think he's off the mark completely--
Americans are predisposed to like the anti-aid message. They believe that the poor have only themselves (or perhaps their governments) to blame. They overestimate the actual aid from the US by around thirty times, so they imagine that vast sums are flowing to Africa that are then squandered. Many believe, typically in private, that by saving African children we would be creating a population explosion, so better to let the kids die now rather than grow up hungry. (I'm asked about this constantly, usually in whispers, after lectures). They don't understand the most basic point of worldwide experience: when children survive rather than die in large numbers, households choose to have many fewer children, in fact more than compensating for the decline in child mortality. Africa's high child mortality is ironically a core reason why Africa's population is continuing to soar rather than stabilize as in other parts of the world.
more 

There are many of us who think about ending Aid to Africa because it is another kind of colonialism and leaves the people of Africa in a state of terminal dependence and doesn't address the larger structural problems of capitalism that allow multinational corporations and the organs of globalization to create profit centers out of conflict and manipulate need in such a way that the incredible natural resources of Africa don't become valuable without a Western intermediary of some kind.

Here is a fair asessment by economist Paul Collier who thinks we can help another way.
African societies face problems deeper than their dependence on aid. Divided by ethnic loyalties, they are too large to be nations. Yet with only tiny economies, they lack the scale to be effective states. As a result the vital public goods of security and accountability cannot adequately be provided. In their absence the valuable natural assets that many countries possess become liabilities instead of opportunities for prosperity.

I think that African societies need international help to overcome these problems; it is just that the help they need is not predominantly money. Aid is not a very potent instrument for enhancing either security or accountability. Our obsession with it has detracted from the more important ways in which we can promote development: peacekeeping, security guarantees, trade privileges, and governance.

Thats a good start.


Comments

once, twice removed

Submitted by The Diva, Sister Laura on December 11, 2009 - 11:52am.
So strange to look at our responsibility in countries like Africa.  Europe and America created so many of the problems that exist today but when you get down to it, we are removed because it was not me personally that contributed to slavery or colonialism, but my forefathers.  The responsibility is once, twice removed. 

Plus, we are removed from the problem by distance.  If someone is drowning in a river right in front of us, we jump in, compelled by our humanity.  If someone is drowning 10,000 miles away and aid workers are asking for money to save them, then our humanity is once removed.  We are dealing in the abstract not the physical, which is why we rely so heavily on pictures, stories and video to help us put ourselves there.

The Dark Force of the Universe

Submitted by billy on December 12, 2009 - 6:11am.
Behind and around me, since I was a child, there was the dark weather of guilt about Africa. "Think of the children starving in Africa" - or India - or any number of distant places. And at the same time, all my life we have been at war, directly or through client states, with the faraway poverty-stricken - often portrayed as helpless without us.

I've been reading Mark Twain today, and his opposition to the Filippines aggression - about a quarter of a million killed after we "purchased" the islands from Spain. Then our President McKinley argued that we should "civilize" the Filippinos. After the Spanish were defeated, the Filipinno independence forces were not invited back to Manila. Their struggle for independence shifted from fighting the Spanish to fighting the Americans. Today, much of the Filippines remains desperately poor, a site for sweatshops and the continuing economics of the imperial economy. Here is Mark Twain's famous essay to Filippinos and to Americans as well.

http://www.historywiz.com/primarysources/sittingindarkness.htm

So the aid begins to look a great deal like how we, back here in the states, try to pass the plate after basic services like hospitals and parks have been privatized by corporate control of our government. The takeover by the larger forces operating in our name - now leave us with a life's work, to create a shadow government for the good, creating cross-border alliances of people volunteering after the damage has been done. In the Church of Life After Shopping - this has taken the form of confronting corporations and their customers at the point of purchase, at the cash register...








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