Foreign aid and Africa

[REDY]

The more I am thinking about aids to Africa the more I think that these aids are actually counteproductive. This is probably very controversial opinion and honestly I would not present it to my rl friends. I studied non-profit sector and many my former school mates are actually working on aid to Africa and some even work there for almost no salary, just because they like helping people.

Sure there are some positive numbers like lower rate of child infancy or increase of average age. But for me its worrying that Africa actually has no resources for such population growth and so it will be allways hellhole dependant on world. It seem that aids actually conserve ineffective regimes, or at least its economies and societies. I cannot think of any progressive development in any African country in last years.

What do you think?

 

[Synobun]

What kind of foreign aid are you referring to? Government cash stimulus and material drops? Community projects? Labour? Entrepreneurial assistance?

 

[rah]

If you don't consider decreased infant mortality and increased longevity progressive developments, I don't know what you would count as such.

 

[Synobun]

If you don't consider decreased infant mortality and increased longevity progressive developments, I don't know what you would count as such.

Given that he said "so it will be allways hellhole dependant on world", likely some form of out of sight, out of mind.

 

[Uberfrog]

The question in the poll is so vague that "It Depends" is the only reasonable, if entirely pointless, answer. I'm not really knowledgeable enough to begin to weigh up the pros and cons of the various forms of foreign aid that exist, but from your post it seems you have a couple of basic misconceptions that are getting in the way of a proper understanding of this issue.

"Africa" is not a country, nor is it one monolithic thing that can be talked about in any realistic way. Many African countries (Nigeria, Ghana, Ethiopia, Côte d'Ivoire) have rapidly growing economies built on agriculture, oil, mining, tourism, and indeed remittances from expatriates working abroad. This growth has very little to do with foreign aid, and it is insulting and misguided to refer to African countries as resource-starved "hell holes" that will always rely on the outside world.

This growth is not without its problems (but then again which country has a flawless economy or society). Foreign aid in its various forms is clearly still important in some areas, and there is obviously some level of corruption that diverts some of this from its intended targets. But I suggest you read a little bit more about the modern economies of African countries before writing the entire continent off as lacking development.

 

[Hrothbern]

The more I am thinking about aids to Africa the more I think that these aids are actually counteproductive. This is probably very controversial opinion and honestly I would not present it to my rl friends. I studied non-profit sector and many my former school mates are actually working on aid to Africa and some even work there for almost no salary, just because they like helping people.

Sure there are some positive numbers like lower rate of child infancy or increase of average age. But for me its worrying that Africa actually has no resources for such population growth and so it will be allways hellhole dependant on world. It seem that aids actually conserve ineffective regimes, or at least its economies and societies. I cannot think of any progressive development in any African country in last years.

What do you think?

Is your main discussion point that aid as done now is mostly counterproductive ?

 

[REDY]

What kind of foreign aid are you referring to? Government cash stimulus and material drops? Community projects? Labour? Entrepreneurial assistance?

I didnt want exclude any.

If you don't consider decreased infant mortality and increased longevity progressive developments, I don't know what you would count as such.

OK point taken.

The question in the poll is so vague that "It Depends" is the only reasonable, if entirely pointless, answer. I'm not really knowledgeable enough to begin to weigh up the pros and cons of the various forms of foreign aid that exist, but from your post it seems you have a couple of basic misconceptions that are getting in the way of a proper understanding of this issue.

"Africa" is not a country, nor is it one monolithic thing that can be talked about in any realistic way. Many African countries (Nigeria, Ghana, Ethiopia, Côte d'Ivoire) have rapidly growing economies built on agriculture, oil, mining, tourism, and indeed remittances from expatriates working abroad. This growth has very little to do with foreign aid, and it is insulting and misguided to refer to African countries as resource-starved "hell holes" that will always rely on the outside world.

This growth is not without its problems (but then again which country has a flawless economy or society). Foreign aid in its various forms is clearly still important in some areas, and there is obviously some level of corruption that diverts some of this from its intended targets. But I suggest you read a little bit more about the modern economies of African countries before writing the entire continent off as lacking development.

I have been in Ghana and what I saw I would not call as hellhole. Especcially in contrast of carribean Haiti. And people seemed to be happy in both. Generaly. Generalisations may be offensive but without them some sciences and discussions would be impossible.

The thing is that even with so called rapid economical growth the children live economically worse life than their fathers. While more educated, they cannot find jobs, affordable rents and big part of countrys GDP is just consumption by new (highly undemployed) population. Granted, not only in Africa, thats also the case of some western countries.

Is your main discussion point that aid as done now is mostly counterproductive ?

Yes, but I have no idea how to make it productive either. For example no tariffs on African products or change of international copyrights/trademarks laws would be more effective than any aid imho.

 

[AmazonQueen]

Not sure what you mean no resources.
If anything its problem is it has too many resources. Just look at the DRC. One of the worst governed and conflict torn places in Africa but rich in mineral resources.
Maybe you mean agricultural resources. Plenty of cash crops grown there and sold to the developed world.
The West takes far more out of Africa in profits than it provides in aid.

 

[Bootstoots]

The more I am thinking about aids to Africa the more I think that these aids are actually counteproductive. This is probably very controversial opinion and honestly I would not present it to my rl friends. I studied non-profit sector and many my former school mates are actually working on aid to Africa and some even work there for almost no salary, just because they like helping people.

Sure there are some positive numbers like lower rate of child infancy or increase of average age. But for me its worrying that Africa actually has no resources for such population growth and so it will be allways hellhole dependant on world. It seem that aids actually conserve ineffective regimes, or at least its economies and societies. I cannot think of any progressive development in any African country in last years.

What do you think?

I didnt want exclude any.


OK point taken.


I have been in Ghana and what I saw I would not call as hellhole. Especcially in contrast of carribean Haiti. And people seemed to be happy in both. Generaly. Generalisations may be offensive but without them some sciences and discussions would be impossible.

The thing is that even with so called rapid economical growth the children live economically worse life than their fathers. While more educated, they cannot find jobs, affordable rents and big part of countrys GDP is just consumption by new (highly undemployed) population. Granted, not only in Africa, thats also the case of some western countries.


Yes, but I have no idea how to make it productive either. For example no tariffs on African products or change of international copyrights/trademarks laws would be more effective than any aid imho.

Let's think about where Africa was in 2000. A series of horrific civil wars and genocides had just occurred or were still raging - far exceeding anything we see today in e.g. South Sudan or the CAR - including the deadliest conflict since at least the Chinese Civil War, if not WWII. HIV/AIDS was spreading unchecked across the continent. Life expectancies fell into the 30s in the countries worst affected by either or both of war and HIV.

Now the number of war deaths per annum, while still a problem, are far lower, and cheaper antiretrovirals along with disease prevention have greatly extended lifespans of those with HIV. Malnutrition rates were higher than today. Life expectancies have climbed dramatically; the CIA's World Factbook now lists Chad as the lowest at 50.2. Some countries actually gained more years of average life expectancy than the number of years that have elapsed between 2000 and 2017, e.g. Sierra Leone (39 --> 58). GDP per capita was far lower across the continent. Ethiopia, to give one example, had a GDP per capita (PPP, constant 2011 $) of $618. Today it's $1730. Uganda? $1050 vs. $1698. Ghana? $2259 vs. $4228. I haven't poked around the World Bank website enough to see if they have aggregate data by continent but the story is likely to be similar.

The continent still has lots of problems, of course, and it still is the poorest continent with the worst indicators, mostly because of how poor it used to be. There are reasons to be concerned for the future, as the population in most countries is not going through the demographic transition as quickly as did e.g. South Asia so that birthrates are stubbornly high, and most of it has a rather fragile ecology while most of the projections of climate change show disrupted weather patterns affecting Africa disproportionately. But Africa has come a really freaking long way in the last 20 years and deserves a lot of credit for it.

Aid flows, meanwhile, are quite small - almost no countries spend as much as 1% of their GDP on foreign aid; for the US, it's about 0.2%. Foreign aid to Africa is dwarfed by the amount of money extracted through e.g. transfer pricing of its resources by multinationals, and by the money outflow to Western bank accounts and accounts in tax havens by corrupt officials who are aided and abetted by the world financial system as it exists now. As for the aid that exists, some is of course embezzled or wasted on bad projects, but the majority does actually go to useful purposes - things like food assistance and refugee aid, and also infrastructure improvements and the like (including a bunch of stuff funded by the Chinese so as to improve their own access to its resources and labor).

This narrative of African countries all being a bunch of hopeless poopholes needs to stop. Yes, most of them are still quite poor, but the trends are for the most part very positive. And all comments about aid should come with disclaimers about how tiny the aid really is and how profits for companies in donor countries exceed aid inflows.

 

[El_Machinae]

Foreign Aid has often (often!) been done poorly. Usually due to a terrible mix of naive paternalism and because there were foreign policy agendas as well. There's been some really good progress in the field, because people are getting more and more familiar with the question of "what is the goal, and how will this help?".

There's a lot of good that can be done.

 

[FriendlyFire]

The more I am thinking about aids to Africa the more I think that these aids are actually counteproductive. This is probably very controversial opinion and honestly I would not present it to my rl friends. I studied non-profit sector and many my former school mates are actually working on aid to Africa and some even work there for almost no salary, just because they like helping people.

Sure there are some positive numbers like lower rate of child infancy or increase of average age. But for me its worrying that Africa actually has no resources for such population growth and so it will be allways hellhole dependant on world. It seem that aids actually conserve ineffective regimes, or at least its economies and societies. I cannot think of any progressive development in any African country in last years. What do you think?

Foreign Aid dose come with strings attached you know.
Then there is foreign investment, foreign loans, foreign trade agreements and so on all come with their own benefits and negative effects.

In places like Somalia there are signs of what considered aid dependency where aid itself has put farmers out work, as why work when you can get aid for free ? Then the aid eventually dries up and the world stopped caring anymore
As for the development of Africa as a whole, theres been a slow creation of wealth, I had a look at Ethopia a while back and it agriculture industry has grown, and export a lot

 

[Hehehe]

I've heard about some forms of aid being counter-productive (volunteer workers doing a poor job while also replacing local labor, or second hand donations disrupting local markets). But on the whole, it seems to me that foreign aid has been massively helpful to Africa, helping them achieve much better conditions than they could ever hope to achieve by themselves. I fear, however, that all of this is simply kicking the can down the road. With the massive population growth being what it is, I fear that Africa might be headed for a Malthusian nightmare.

The West takes far more out of Africa in profits than it provides in aid.

Foreign aid to Africa is dwarfed by the amount of money extracted through e.g. transfer pricing of its resources by multinationals, and by the money outflow to Western bank accounts and accounts in tax havens by corrupt officials who are aided and abetted by the world financial system as it exists now.

Do you guys have any solid numbers you can put on this? How much wealth is really siphoned off by Western countries in the form of "unfair trade deals" or whatever?

Aid flows, meanwhile, are quite small - almost no countries spend as much as 1% of their GDP on foreign aid; for the US, it's about 0.2%.

But, given how much larger Western economies are, shouldn't we be looking at the % of GDP in the countries that receive aid? Wouldn't that be a better metric?

For example, in 1992, aid accounted for 12.4% of gross national product (GNP), over 70% of gross domestic savings and investments in Sub-Saharan Africa and over 50% of all imports.

(I don't know how reliable this is, but it's the first figure I found)

 

[Hrothbern]

I've heard about some forms of aid being counter-productive (volunteer workers doing a poor job while also replacing local labor, or second hand donations disrupting local markets). But on the whole, it seems to me that foreign aid has been massively helpful to Africa, helping them achieve much better conditions than they could ever hope to achieve by themselves. I fear, however, that all of this is simply kicking the can down the road. With the massive population growth being what it is, I fear that Africa might be headed for a Malthusian nightmare.

AmazonQueen said: ↑
The West takes far more out of Africa in profits than it provides in aid.
Bootstoots said: ↑
Foreign aid to Africa is dwarfed by the amount of money extracted through e.g. transfer pricing of its resources by multinationals, and by the money outflow to Western bank accounts and accounts in tax havens by corrupt officials who are aided and abetted by the world financial system as it exists now.

Do you guys have any solid numbers you can put on this? How much wealth is really siphoned off by Western countries in the form of "unfair trade deals" or whatever?

Bootstoots said: ↑
Aid flows, meanwhile, are quite small - almost no countries spend as much as 1% of their GDP on foreign aid; for the US, it's about 0.2%.

But, given how much larger Western economies are, shouldn't we be looking at the % of GDP in the countries that receive aid? Wouldn't that be a better metric?

For example, in 1992, aid accounted for 12.4% of gross national product (GNP), over 70% of gross domestic savings and investments in Sub-Saharan Africa and over 50% of all imports.

(I don't know how reliable this is, but it's the first figure I found)

I see whether I can find some nice telling graphs etc to answer more properly
So from the top of my head and simplifying.
Sub Saharan Africa has the GDP of Italy, but 20 times as much population, to get the rough picture of the size. Like in Italy the differences between areas are big.
* Sub Saharan Africa has a GDP of about 10% of the EU. => 1% GDP aid from the EU would be 10% GDP aid to SubSaharan Africa (SSA). That is as such a massive support. A super Marshall plan. And RL is near that 10%.
* The population growth has been for more than a decade around 2.5% and is forecasted to decline only slowly. => this means that SSC needs to grow her food production with minimal 2.5% per year which does not happen. In reality it means they have to import more food and this is seen by the big food producers as an excellent business opportunity: the more population growth, the better.
* To have the money to import SSA has minerals where they get not much from of the value chain and they grow export cash crops (coffee, cacao, etc) at the expense of self sustainable local food.
* The geopolitical interests to get hold in Africa are not done by real aid but by big loans for not always usefull infra projects that make the countries financial vassals, the local elites rewarded.

IF SSC would have one government like China in 1980, => would apply the one child-family policy, grow her food and food yield production, have for all secondary education (farmer-craftsmen-admin), build up basic manufacturing AND have that 10% aid to pay for building up that domestic base level....... we could close our eyes... wait 20 years.... and we have a more normalised situation that will naturally grow onward in doing business with the rest of the world.

But SSA is no China, is growing the population, is not developing her domestic food security fast enough (certainly not in the perspective of the Climate desertification) and is just a big pond of poor people where foreign countries fish for their own interests, helped by the local elites.

 

[El_Machinae]

Having the OECD goal of 0.7% of GDP towards foreign aid made my own creation of the numbers I give rather easy. Unlike the large agencies, I can pivot my next donation very easily, and so I can do my donations according to the whim of the theory that I am currently following.

Canada gives 0.32% of GDP to foreign aid (with a goal of 0.7%). I work 2000 hours per year, and 0.38% of 2000 is 7.6 hours of my wages that I should be donating. Because I have loved ones that are odious louts, I give additionally to compensate for their share. 18 hours of wages. 1.5 hours per month. From 8 am until 9:30 am on the first of every month, I am working to sustainability improve conditions elsewhere.

The first thing that any economy needs is capital, and there's a powerful argument towards the demand-side benefit of spending. If I give a woman's rights organization a bit of cash, they'll spend it as they see fit. But importantly, I am also injecting hard capital right into an economy. This is also true of remittances, which is why no one should resent them.

 

[warpus]

It surely depends on what exactly is done with the money. If it's invested in local farms and other businesses, and no unreasonable conditions are attached to the money, it probably does a lot of good.

On the other hand you can also do a lot of bad with foreign aid. You can attach unreasonable conditions to the money that will in the long term harm the region rather than help it. I also remember reading that shipping in food and distributing it for free often puts local farmers and other businesspeople out of work. The free/cheap food is soon gone, but the jobs don't come back.

So I'd be careful which exact agencies I donate through. Some of them, for instance, pay their employees crazy amounts of money, and only a small % of what you donate ever ends up in the hands of the people who need it.

 

[Imaus]

Foreign Aid is overblown in the public mind and mostly makes up single digit percentages for the worst cases in the continent. Africa is long past the Post-Cold War chaos.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

US foreign aid has long consisted predominantly of "here's a voucher you can use to buy weapons, as long as you buy the ones we tell you to buy from the US companies we tell you to buy them from." No money actually leaves the US. Given that, the world would almost certainly be better for it if we stopped.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Tim is exactly right about US foreign aid.