Aid to Africa

In light of the recent Live 8 benefit concerts, Max Boot writes that what Africa's poor need is, not more aid money, but better government. Rich nations have been pouring money into Africa for decades. What has that money bought? More poverty.

In the last 50 years, $2.3 trillion has been spent to help poor countries. Yet Africans' income and life expectancy have gone down, not up.

Simply pouring more money into the situation is not helping, and Boot argues, is making things worse. The money goes into the coffers of the corrupt government rather than to the people, or causes inflation which drives small businesses out of business.

As with any problem, one must consider the root causes and address them. Otherwise, no amount of money will make the problem go away. In the case of poor African nations, the root problems include what Bob Geldof called "corruption and thuggery."

Africans continue to be tormented not by the G-8, as anti-poverty campaigners imply, but by their own politicos, including Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir, who is abetting genocide in Darfur, and Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, who is turning his once-prosperous country into a famine-plagued basket case. Unless it's linked to specific "good governance" benchmarks (as with the new U.S. Millennium Challenge Account), more aid risks subsidizing dysfunctional regimes.

Any real solution to Africa's problems must focus on the root causes of poverty — mainly misgovernment. Instead of pouring billions more down the same old rat holes, maybe the Live 8 crew should promote a more innovative approach: Use the G-8's jillions 2 hire mercenaries 4 the overthrow of the 6 most thuggish regimes in Africa. That would do more to help ordinary Africans than any number of musical extravaganzas.

Instapundit writes, "Perhaps the next concert should be called Liber8." Indeed.