H
HagiaSophia
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From the UK Guardian:
"…Yet is lack of capital Africa’s real problem? Many say emphatically no. Africa has 100,000 millionaires. Pointing out that every African alive today has received roughly $5,000 in aid, Richard Dowden of the Royal Africa Society argues that “if aid were the solution to Africa’s problems it would be a rich continent by now”.
And a truly devastating critique of Brown’s approach by Ian Taylor in the March 2005 issue of International Affairs argues that “his lack of knowledge about Africa has meant that he has latched on to the simple - but wrong - solutions”. Calls for a Marshall plan for Africa ignore the fact that Africa has already received the equivalent of six Marshall plans in cash terms. Taylor calls such prescriptions “more headline grabbing than well thought through”.
Open any serious newspaper these days and there is a good chance that, at least once a week, it will contain an intelligent and reasoned piece of sceptical writing about the ability of African governments to play the enlightened role earmarked for them in Blair and Brown’s vision of the continent. Have commentators such as Dowden and Taylor, or Michela Wrong in Sunday’s Observer, all got it wrong while Blair and Brown have got it right? It seems improbable.
My fear is that the dynamics of the G8 summit involve too much of the naive leading the naive. Too much of the Make Poverty History campaign reeks of middle-class Europeans trying to feel good about themselves by prescribing very radical but practically dubious solutions to Africa’s problems. Unusually, though, a similar criticism can be levelled against our normally pragmatic and careful government too. Geldof and Brown are in the same game. Both are brilliant at playing on liberal guilt. Neither of them is nearly as good at helping us to understand Africa.
Is it not too late to have a rather more sceptical and much less emotive debate about global poverty? Might it not be the case that the developed world is neither the problem nor the solution in Africa? Unless we rein in our rhetoric and our expectations very quickly then, at the very least, a lot of people are going to be very disappointed about what happens at Gleneagles.
guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1500641,00.html
"…Yet is lack of capital Africa’s real problem? Many say emphatically no. Africa has 100,000 millionaires. Pointing out that every African alive today has received roughly $5,000 in aid, Richard Dowden of the Royal Africa Society argues that “if aid were the solution to Africa’s problems it would be a rich continent by now”.
And a truly devastating critique of Brown’s approach by Ian Taylor in the March 2005 issue of International Affairs argues that “his lack of knowledge about Africa has meant that he has latched on to the simple - but wrong - solutions”. Calls for a Marshall plan for Africa ignore the fact that Africa has already received the equivalent of six Marshall plans in cash terms. Taylor calls such prescriptions “more headline grabbing than well thought through”.
Open any serious newspaper these days and there is a good chance that, at least once a week, it will contain an intelligent and reasoned piece of sceptical writing about the ability of African governments to play the enlightened role earmarked for them in Blair and Brown’s vision of the continent. Have commentators such as Dowden and Taylor, or Michela Wrong in Sunday’s Observer, all got it wrong while Blair and Brown have got it right? It seems improbable.
My fear is that the dynamics of the G8 summit involve too much of the naive leading the naive. Too much of the Make Poverty History campaign reeks of middle-class Europeans trying to feel good about themselves by prescribing very radical but practically dubious solutions to Africa’s problems. Unusually, though, a similar criticism can be levelled against our normally pragmatic and careful government too. Geldof and Brown are in the same game. Both are brilliant at playing on liberal guilt. Neither of them is nearly as good at helping us to understand Africa.
Is it not too late to have a rather more sceptical and much less emotive debate about global poverty? Might it not be the case that the developed world is neither the problem nor the solution in Africa? Unless we rein in our rhetoric and our expectations very quickly then, at the very least, a lot of people are going to be very disappointed about what happens at Gleneagles.
guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1500641,00.html
