Bob Geldof and Live Aid
Great rant in
The Scotsman about Bob Geldof and his attempts to end poverty in Africa:
Geldof is wrong: aid to Africa hasn't worked
Perhaps I’m just growing old and grumpy but the sight of Bob Geldof parading his millionaire ego at Holyrood was more than I could bear. Yes, the plight of sub-Saharan Africa is desperate, but it will be cured by hard economic logic rather than pop-star emotion.
Geldof thinks African poverty is our fault. He thinks we are not giving Africa enough free financial aid - an extra £50 billion a year, or roughly the entire national income of Scotland, would be handy.
He also wants us to forgive all debt interest owed by African governments - I’ve seen numerous conflicting estimates, but we’re in the billions-a-year category. And he is anxious that the G8 countries open their economies to African imports without expecting the same in return. This is called "fair trade".
Just for a moment, let us ask: what has happened to the half a trillion dollars lent to the independent African countries since the Sixties? We are talking your taxes here. The whole point about borrowing is that you invest and end up richer than you started, even after paying back the loan. How come most of Africa is now poorer than when the loans began?
The answer has nothing to do with the usurious West demanding interest payments. During the Eighties alone, there were at least 92 attempted military takeovers in sub-Saharan Africa, affecting 29 countries. Not to put too fine a point on it, your money was wasted in civil war and corruption.
Remember Geldof’s famous Live Aid concert of 1985, to raise donations to end famine in Ethiopia? Well, the Ethiopians were starving not because you lent them money but because their utterly mad dictator, the odious Mengistu Haile Marium, had butchered at least 100,000 of them in imposing his Marxist dictatorship. Then he launched a series of external wars, with the help of Cuban tanks lent by his fellow nutter, Fidel Castro. That bumped off thousands more, while destroying the local economy. And by the way, much of the food aid paid for by Live Aid ended up being stolen by Mengistu to feed his armies. Never mind, it made Geldof famous, even if it didn’t help the Ethiopians.
When your loans were not funding genocide, they were funding Swiss bank accounts. Western aid has corrupted generations of African politicians as it is the fastest route to riches for the local elite.
By 1982, the former Belgian colony of Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) had accumulated a foreign debt of $5 billion. Not coincidentally, its president, Mobutu Sese Seko, accumulated a personal fortune of $4 billion. I know the Belgians ran Zaire in a despicable way. But I also know that the country is one of the most mineral-rich on the face of the Earth and should be lending money itself by now. The reason it is one of the saddest countries on the planet is not because you don’t send them charity.
Keep reading -- the author George Kerevan has some ideas on how to get Africa started on the right path and it doesn't involve fund-raising and an infusion of money into a corrupt government.
Spot on writing...
Posted by DaveH at June 5, 2005 4:37 PM