[afro-nets] Failings of Western Aid to Underdeveloped Lands

[Claudio Schuftan <claudio@hcmc.netnam.vn>]

"A brilliant diagnosis of the failings of Western aid to under-
developed lands"
---------------------------------------------------------------

From: Unnikrishnan Pv
Business Week: April 3, 2006


THE WHITE MAN'S BURDEN - Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest
Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good

By William Easterly
Penguin Press -- 436pp -- $27.95

Editor's Review
The Good: A brilliant diagnosis of the failings of Western aid
to underdeveloped lands.

The Bad: Easterly himself is disappointingly skimpy on solu-
tions.

The Bottom Line: His indictment may be overbroad, but aid agen-
cies deserve criticism.

The international development community is still reeling from
William Easterly's 2001 book, The Elusive Quest for Growth. In
it, the former top World Bank economist demonstrated how the
panaceas concocted by the West to save the Third World, such as
huge injections of aid, conditional loans, population control,
infrastructure spending, and debt forgiveness, have all failed
to stimulate sustainable growth and cut poverty.

Easterly is at it again. In The White Man's Burden, he marshals
a wealth of fresh studies, original statistical analyses, his
own anecdotal reporting, and historical precedents to buttress
his argument that today's foreign-aid system doesn't work. He
shreds practically every new strategy by the World Bank, Inter-
national Monetary Fund, U.N. agencies, and other donors aimed at
lifting the world's poor out of misery. This book is disappoint-
ingly skimpy on solutions, but it is brilliant at diagnosing the
failings of Western intervention in the Third World.

The real tragedy, says Easterly, isn't Western indifference to-
ward the human crises in Africa and elsewhere, as many advocates
of huge aid hikes claim. The problem is the development commu-
nity's miserable record of treating the most basic needs of the
poor. The West "spent $2.3 trillion on foreign aid over the past
five decades and still has not managed to get 12 cents medicines
to children to prevent half of all malaria deaths." Throwing
greater sums at the problem under the existing system will actu-
ally be detrimental because "the current wave of enthusiasm for
addressing world poverty will repeat the cycle of its predeces-
sors: idealism, high expectations, disappointing results, cyni-
cal backlash." So before digging further into their wallets,
rich donors should demand hard results and hold international
aid agencies accountable.

Easterly's 16 years as a World Bank economist and his broad ex-
perience in developing nations make the critiques hard to dis-
miss. He is as harsh on U.S. conservatives as on free-spending
liberals. He blasts the Bush Administration's antipoverty pro-
grams as naive and poorly conceived. He rips into the Presi-
dent's much-ballyhooed African AIDS initiative because it fo-
cuses mainly on expensive drugs while discouraging th e use of
condoms, whose widespread application could save many more mil-
lions of lives. He also ridicules neoconservatives who believe
the U.S. can make poor failed states better places by forcibly
removing dictators and imposing democracy and free-market eco-
nomics.

Yet the author admits he has no big answers of his own. In fact,
he says he's allergic to anything smacking of ambitious plan-
ning. The fatal flaw of big aid initiatives, he writes, is that
they derive from rich Westerners' utopian agendas rather than
input from the needy. Another problem with broad, collective
goals is that no one agency bears responsibility for achieving
anything concrete.

Instead, Easterly advocates "piecemeal interventions." For in-
stance, donors should fund well-focused projects created by
"seekers," highly motivated individuals who find creative ways
to solve real-world problems. He profiles many grass -roots suc-
cess stories that deserve help, from a private college in Ghana
to an Indian outfit that cut HIV incidence by working with pros-
titutes. Aid agencies should focus on specific tasks, such as
building roads and clinics or providing textbooks. Independent
auditors should scrutinize sample projects in the field to see
if they are delivering results. Poor villagers ought to decide
for themselves what they need, receive cash vouchers supplied by
donors, and use these to hire the most effective agencies to
provide what's wanted.

These are great ideas. But would hundreds of thousands of inde-
pendent microprojects really make a bigger impact -- or be more
cost-effective and freer of abuse -- than if such efforts were
coordinated through existing channels? More to the point, well-
off, conscientious Westerners are unlikely to sit by and watch
millions of Africans die of preventable causes as t hey wait for
verifiably waste-free aid projects to materialize.

Easterly's book also has some glaring omissions. What to make,
for example, of the immense foundations guided by tycoons such
as Bill Gates that aim to bring the focused, results-based meth-
ods Easterly advocates into the war on AIDS, tuberculosis, ma-
laria, and other diseases? Nobody would label Gates a central
planner, but he does believe in international coordination, high
goals, and big expenditures. Surprisingly, the Bill & Melinda
Gates Foundation isn't mentioned in this book.

Easterly's thesis may be overstretched. Still, he is right that
we should be tough on aid agencies that don't deliver. The White
Man's Burden is disturbing but essential reading for would-be
Samaritans -- and a powerful call for reform.