Follow-Up: More Analysis on Aid to Africa

Take a look at this op-ed piece from -- wait for it -- the New York Times (link xie-xie to blogfriend Pursuit of Serenity, who rightly wonders if the era of "white guilt" might be waning in terms of that "guilt" partially driving the African aid machine).

Blurb from the Times piece:

CAPE TOWN — Less than four years ago, on the back of Tony Blair’s Africa Commission recommendations, the Group of 8 summit meeting at Gleneagles agreed to write off Africa’s debt and to double aid by 2010. Aid, trumpeted the British prime minister and his fellow celebrity travelers from Bono to Bob Geldof, was the answer to Africa’s development woes.

But this once politically correct view has suddenly become unfashionable.

A key reason is that aid has proved to be an extremely ineffective way of getting a return — in this case, development — on serious money flows. Some put total aid to Africa over the past 50 years as high as $1 trillion.

. . . If Africa is to use aid productively, the responsible government — and not the donors — have to set the agenda. One way to do this is for African countries to ensure that only those projects will be considered that focus on the creation of hard (physical) and soft (education and health) infrastructure. And the government alone, not the donors, should identify priority projects, all of which need clear, identifiable and tangible outcomes and benchmarks — and not workshops, seminars and studies.

You will remember this recent post/book review on Western aid to Africa.