BBC: Ethiopia’s Food Air Addiction
When you act to aid somebody when they are down, you are sending a signal that they can’t help themselves, and simultaneously providing a disincentive for them to raise themselves up on their own.
That point is dramatically illustrated by this story:
Like a patient addicted to pain killers, Ethiopia seems hooked on aid.
For most of the past three decades, it has survived on millions tonnes of donated food and millions of dollars in cash.
It has received more emergency support than any other African nation in that time.
Its population is increasing by 2m every year, yet over the past 10 years, its net agricultural production has steadily declined.
...
Why, with so much international support, have things gotten worse and not better?
Woldu Menameno, a farmer in the Tigre region of northern Ethiopia, believes he knows at least part of the answer.
“For years things were very bad. There was plenty of aid, but people were lazy. They just had the food and sat in their places,” he says.
“They didn’t participate in anything, but just counted the days. They sat in their houses, dreaming of how to get more food.”
Of course, in a much less dramatic fashion, many of the lower class in the United States and other industrialized nation are locked into poverty by the social-economic consequences of this sort of farcical self-perpetuating aid.
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