Say Anything Blog

Africa, both socially and politically, has been in shambles for decades.  Billions of dollars in international aid has been poured into the country to make things better, but do you want to know when things really started to get better?  When the international community turned it’s attention from Africa and stopped trying to help:

Two years ago, in the run-up to the Group of 8 summit meeting in Gleneagles, Scotland, the Commission for Africa advocated increased aid as a silver bullet for Africa’s development. Africa was still the “hopeless continent,” a “scar on the conscience of the world,” according to the host of the summit.

Since Gleneagles, economic growth in Africa has averaged over 5 percent annually - a step up from the dismal 1980s and 1990s when it managed little over two percent. And the number of conflicts is an exact corollary of the continent’s better economics - down by two-thirds from a peak of 12 in the late 1990s.

But this improvement is not the result of aid. . . .

...Africa is succeeding - not in spite of the international community’s apathy or unreliability, but because of it. It has forced African countries to become more self-reliant and to take responsibility. It has marked out the reformers from the laggards and the performers from the spectators.

Simple solutions, like more aid, will never work for Africa.

In New Zealand the government spent billions on subsidizing farmers and ranchers so that, as the supporters of the subsidization said, those farmers and ranchers could keep their heads above water.  Yet when did the agriculture industry of New Zealand do the best?  When the government quit the subsidies:

New Zealand agriculture is profitable without subsidies, and that means more people staying in the business. Alone among developed countries of the world, New Zealand has virtually the same percentage of its population employed in agriculture today as it did 30 years ago, and the same number of people living in rural areas as it did in 1920. Although the transition to an unsubsidized farm economy wasn’t easy, memories of the adjustment period are fading fast and today there are few critics to be found of the country’s bold move.

Amazing what happens when government policies encourage self reliance, open markets and competition instead of government reliance.