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African 'Rockeconomics'

By Helen Hughes - posted Monday, 15 August 2005


Insecticide impregnated mosquito nets to prevent malaria, protein supplements, micro finance loans of a few dollars and village wells are not deliverable to most of the poor people who are the victims of corrupt elites. Such welfare measures cannot be sustained once aid runs out. Substituting food programs for farming - necessary to prevent starvation - destroys the independence, self-respect and entrepreneurship that has led to the rapid development of agriculture in Asia.

Welfare measures cannot make up for the lack of roads, ports, power and other infrastructure essential for development. Shifting aid from “hard-hat” projects to “soft” welfare in an attempt to fulfill the Millennium Development Goals has cruelly deflected national and international efforts from growth and hence from real poverty reduction. It is also easier to steal “soft” than “hard hat” aid at central government, provincial government and local levels so that the Millennium Development Goals program is likely to encourage greater corruption.

Little trickles down to poor people at the end of the delivery line. The principal beneficiaries are the elites that cause poverty by failing to foster development and the armies of consultants and aid workers who are doing so well by doing good that a number have become aid millionaires.

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The larger Sub-Saharan countries - Nigeria (133 million), Ethiopia (67 million), the Republic of the Congo (52 million), and South Africa (45 million) - have the major concentrations of poverty, but the proportion of the population living in poverty is even higher in most of the 30 smaller Sub-Saharan states. Except for Botswana and Mauritius (and recent experience in Mozambique) no African country is growing rapidly enough to create the productive income-earning opportunities that substantially and rapidly reduce poverty.

The experience of the last 50 years has shown that unless countries adopt the rule of law (domestically and internationally) and open, market-oriented policies that will lead to Asian GNP growth rates of 7 per cent a year or more, they will at best take decades to reduce poverty as Latin America and the Middle East, struggling along with 3 per cent to 4 per cent GNP growth a year, have shown. They will also not be able to throw off corruption.

“Rockeconomics” failed to stem the rise of poverty in Africa after its inauguration at the 1985 Bandaid concert. The Millennium Development Goals program is already lagging far behind its targets. Only when African states take their destiny into their own hands, country by country and take step after step towards growth and development, will poverty recede in Africa.

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About the Author

Professor Helen Hughes AO is a senior fellow of the Centre for Independent Studies.

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