English Quiz for UIIC AO 2016 – Set 5

The outside world has pat answers
concerning extremely impoverished countries, especially those in Africa.
Everything comes back, again and again, to corruption and misrule. Western
officials argue that Africa simply needs to behave itself better, to allow
market forces to operate without interference by corrupt rulers. Yet the
critics of African governance have it wrong. Politics simply can’t explain
Africa’s prolonged economic crisis.
The claim that Africa’s corruption is the basic source of the problem does not
withstand serious scrutiny. During the past decade I witnessed how relatively
well-governed countries in Africa such as Ghana, Malawi, Mali and Senegal,
failed to prosper, whereas societies in Asia perceived to have extensive corruption, such as Bangladesh,
Indonesia and Pakistan, enjoyed rapid economic growth.

What is the explanation? Every
situation of extreme poverty around the world contains some of its own unique
causes, which need to be diagnosed as a doctor would a patient. For example,
Africa is burdened with malaria like no other part of the world, simply because
it is unlucky in providing the perfect conditions for that disease; high
temperatures, plenty of breeding sites and particular species of
malaria-transmitting mosquitoes that prefer to bite humans rather than cattle.

Another myth is that the
developed world already gives plenty of aid to the world’s poor. Former US
Secretary of the Treasury, Paul O’Neil expressed a common frustration when he
remarked about aid for Africa: “We’ve spent trillions of dollars on these
problems and we have damn near nothing to show for it.” O’Neil was no foe of
foreign aid. Indeed, he wanted to fix the system so that more US aid could be
justified. But he was wrong to believe that vast flows of aid to Africa had
been squandered. President Bush said
in a press conference in April 2004 that as “the greatest power on the face of
the earth, we have an obligation to help the spread of freedom. We have an obligation to feed the hungry.” Yet how
does the US fulfil its obligation? US aid to farmers in poor countries to help
them grow more food runs at around $200 million per year, far less than $1 per
person per year for the hundreds of millions of people living in subsistence
farm households.

From the world as a whole, the
amount of aid per African per year is really very small, just $30 per
sub-Saharan African in 2002. Of that modest
amount, almost $5 was actually for consultants from the donor countries, more
than $3 was for emergency aid, about $4 went for servicing Africa’s debts and
$5 was for debt-relief operations. The rest, about $12, went to Africa. Since
the “money down the drain” argument is heard most frequently in the US, it’s
worth looking at the same calculations for US aid alone. In 2002, the US gave
$3 per sub-Saharan African. Taking out the parts for US consultants and
technical cooperation, food and other emergency aid, administrative costs and
debt relief, the aid per African came to a grand total of 6 cents.

The US has promised repeatedly
over the decades, as a signatory to global agreements like the Monterrey
Consensus of 2002, to give a much larger proportion of its annual output,
specifically upto 0.7% of GNP, to official development assistance. The US’s
failure to follow through has no political fallout domestically, of course,
because not one in a million US citizens even knows of statements like the
Monterrey Consensus. But no one should underestimate the salience that it has
around the world. Spin as Americans might about their nation’s generosity, the
poor countries are fully aware of what the US is not doing.