Making Poverty History?
Nicholas Newman | 26.02.2005 15:49 | Analysis | Repression | Oxford
Hi! Don’t you agree that just forgiving third world debt is not the solution to tackling the poverty suffered by the poor in the third world, which the rich and famous like Dawn French and Bono would have us believe?
Making Poverty History?
By Nicholas Newman
18 February 2004
Hi! Don’t you agree that just forgiving third world debt is not the solution to tackling the poverty suffered by the poor in the third world, which the rich and famous like Dawn French and Bono would have us believe?
All it will do is reward the money grabbing elites that misrule those countries. Angola and Nigeria are major oil and gas producers, but they remain large debtors. In Angola, Global Witness reports that a quarter of oil revenue is unaccounted for each year, and one in four children dies in infancy. The poor in those countries remain poor despite the oil wealth. Debt, by itself, is not the principal cause of poverty in many economically failing states, but bad governance, incompetence and corruption. “Ordinary citizens in oil producing states of Angola, Equatorial Guinea or Kazakhstan have no information on what is happening to that money" Gavin Hayman of Global Witness told the BBC's Today programme. "The international community spends $200m each year trying to feed one million people in Angola who are critically dependent on international food aid," said Mr Hayman.
"Now given that $1.5bn is going missing from the treasury, there is a lot more they could be doing for their citizens."
All debt forgiveness or rescheduling does is to delay the day when such countries will need to make the painful process to reform their economic, governmental and political systems. The 1996 World Bank Report argues “Aid may have unintentionally encouraged misrule that led to collapse and civil conflict”. Almost all civil governance and public development in Africa is paid for by foreign aid, enabling African despots to wage wars on their neighbours.
Ethiopia is a good example of a failed state, a country fashionably popular with our rich and famous. In 2004 AFP reports, this much troubled land bought a new fleet of Sukhoi SU-27 fighter planes and military helicopters, costing millions of dollars, while two million citizens remain dependent on humanitarian food aid. Marti Ahtisaari, the UN special envoy for the Humanitarian Crisis in the Horn of Africa, blames current Ethiopian government policies in two key areas environmental and population polices as the cause of the country’s cycle of catastrophes.
Did you know debt forgiveness or rescheduling increases the cost of future borrowing - as such a process worsens the credit rating of such a state. Indonesia has rescheduled three times and the cost of borrowing has gone up each time. That explains why many third world states including Laos and Vietnam are against such proposals reports the World Bank.
Debt forgiveness or rescheduling is unfair on those countries that have made the effort to pay off their debts like India and Russia; in fact Russia will become a net creditor in a few years time, notes the OECD. Incidentally, there is a strong correlation between states that meet their repayments and later long term strong financial performance.
According to the OECD, did you know that almost every African country has witnessed a systematic regression of economic capacity over the last 30 years? The majority had better economic capacity at independence than they now possess. This poor economic performance is due to many reasons including absence of incentives for the private sector, government control of the economy, and discouraging investment laws., and, of course, corruption.
Having a simple regime change is not the solution; all you will do is replace one corrupt, incompetent, money grubbing elite with another. What is needed is a cultural change through economic, political and governmental reform, which will encourage the majority to work hard to transform their country into a modern prosperous state.
The oft sited mantra ‘that the only solution is to let such countries solve their problems themselves’ is now wearing thin according to often exasperated experts in the aid industry.
It looks like countries like Kenya need outside pressure to force significant change. When President Mwai Kibaki was elected three years ago, he promised Western aid donors and end to corruption by appointing the Kenya's National Anti-Corruption Campaign. Instead, his government has continued the two traditions of African governments, continued as before while paying lip service to Aid donors. This body was kept chronically under funded and blocked at every turn and its steering committee has resigned in disgust reports the Kenya’s Standard earlier this month. This together with the allegations of the Kenyan government ministers involved in a series of dodgy procurement deals worth millions of dollars reports the Kenya’s Sunday Standard.
Whilst Kenya’s Standard complains that ‘The government’s credibility in the fight against corruption has been in freefall in recent weeks, following a barbed attack by British High Commissioner Sir Edward Clay. Mr. Clay’s statement was followed shortly thereafter by the withdrawal of funding for the government’s anti-graft effort by the United States government and, on Friday, (18 February, 2005) by the German government’. It looks like the West is learning, letting Africa solve its own problems does not work - a more hands on, project by project, approach is certainly needed.
Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Bush are right to encourage democracy as part of the solution to turning round such basket cases. Simply throwing more aid to prop up corrupt incompetent regimes who neglect their countries duties to develop their countries for the benefit of the majority of its citizens is not the answer.
Since many of these poor states are victims of their corrupt governments, one possible solution would be for the EU adopt Robert Wheelan Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) proposal. This proposes that the West should privatise the governance of such countries to EU approved multinationals to run such states under a profit sharing deal for a 21 year period, with the aim to rebuild, regenerate and develop these countries economies for the benefit of the majority of these countries citizens.
Somehow I don’t see Dawn French or her Vicar of Dibley persona starting a campaign to support Wheelan’s proposal?
By Nicholas Newman
18 February 2004
Hi! Don’t you agree that just forgiving third world debt is not the solution to tackling the poverty suffered by the poor in the third world, which the rich and famous like Dawn French and Bono would have us believe?
All it will do is reward the money grabbing elites that misrule those countries. Angola and Nigeria are major oil and gas producers, but they remain large debtors. In Angola, Global Witness reports that a quarter of oil revenue is unaccounted for each year, and one in four children dies in infancy. The poor in those countries remain poor despite the oil wealth. Debt, by itself, is not the principal cause of poverty in many economically failing states, but bad governance, incompetence and corruption. “Ordinary citizens in oil producing states of Angola, Equatorial Guinea or Kazakhstan have no information on what is happening to that money" Gavin Hayman of Global Witness told the BBC's Today programme. "The international community spends $200m each year trying to feed one million people in Angola who are critically dependent on international food aid," said Mr Hayman.
"Now given that $1.5bn is going missing from the treasury, there is a lot more they could be doing for their citizens."
All debt forgiveness or rescheduling does is to delay the day when such countries will need to make the painful process to reform their economic, governmental and political systems. The 1996 World Bank Report argues “Aid may have unintentionally encouraged misrule that led to collapse and civil conflict”. Almost all civil governance and public development in Africa is paid for by foreign aid, enabling African despots to wage wars on their neighbours.
Ethiopia is a good example of a failed state, a country fashionably popular with our rich and famous. In 2004 AFP reports, this much troubled land bought a new fleet of Sukhoi SU-27 fighter planes and military helicopters, costing millions of dollars, while two million citizens remain dependent on humanitarian food aid. Marti Ahtisaari, the UN special envoy for the Humanitarian Crisis in the Horn of Africa, blames current Ethiopian government policies in two key areas environmental and population polices as the cause of the country’s cycle of catastrophes.
Did you know debt forgiveness or rescheduling increases the cost of future borrowing - as such a process worsens the credit rating of such a state. Indonesia has rescheduled three times and the cost of borrowing has gone up each time. That explains why many third world states including Laos and Vietnam are against such proposals reports the World Bank.
Debt forgiveness or rescheduling is unfair on those countries that have made the effort to pay off their debts like India and Russia; in fact Russia will become a net creditor in a few years time, notes the OECD. Incidentally, there is a strong correlation between states that meet their repayments and later long term strong financial performance.
According to the OECD, did you know that almost every African country has witnessed a systematic regression of economic capacity over the last 30 years? The majority had better economic capacity at independence than they now possess. This poor economic performance is due to many reasons including absence of incentives for the private sector, government control of the economy, and discouraging investment laws., and, of course, corruption.
Having a simple regime change is not the solution; all you will do is replace one corrupt, incompetent, money grubbing elite with another. What is needed is a cultural change through economic, political and governmental reform, which will encourage the majority to work hard to transform their country into a modern prosperous state.
The oft sited mantra ‘that the only solution is to let such countries solve their problems themselves’ is now wearing thin according to often exasperated experts in the aid industry.
It looks like countries like Kenya need outside pressure to force significant change. When President Mwai Kibaki was elected three years ago, he promised Western aid donors and end to corruption by appointing the Kenya's National Anti-Corruption Campaign. Instead, his government has continued the two traditions of African governments, continued as before while paying lip service to Aid donors. This body was kept chronically under funded and blocked at every turn and its steering committee has resigned in disgust reports the Kenya’s Standard earlier this month. This together with the allegations of the Kenyan government ministers involved in a series of dodgy procurement deals worth millions of dollars reports the Kenya’s Sunday Standard.
Whilst Kenya’s Standard complains that ‘The government’s credibility in the fight against corruption has been in freefall in recent weeks, following a barbed attack by British High Commissioner Sir Edward Clay. Mr. Clay’s statement was followed shortly thereafter by the withdrawal of funding for the government’s anti-graft effort by the United States government and, on Friday, (18 February, 2005) by the German government’. It looks like the West is learning, letting Africa solve its own problems does not work - a more hands on, project by project, approach is certainly needed.
Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Bush are right to encourage democracy as part of the solution to turning round such basket cases. Simply throwing more aid to prop up corrupt incompetent regimes who neglect their countries duties to develop their countries for the benefit of the majority of its citizens is not the answer.
Since many of these poor states are victims of their corrupt governments, one possible solution would be for the EU adopt Robert Wheelan Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) proposal. This proposes that the West should privatise the governance of such countries to EU approved multinationals to run such states under a profit sharing deal for a 21 year period, with the aim to rebuild, regenerate and develop these countries economies for the benefit of the majority of these countries citizens.
Somehow I don’t see Dawn French or her Vicar of Dibley persona starting a campaign to support Wheelan’s proposal?
Nicholas Newman
e-mail:
nicnewman@btinternet.com
Homepage:
http://www.oxfordprospect.co.uk
Comments
Hide the following 12 comments
Attribution
26.02.2005 19:08
Newman is the editor of Oxford Prospect, and Chair of Greater Headington Labour Party. He's therefore a colleague of Andrew Smith, MP.
"The 1996 World Bank Report argues"...
"According to the OECD, did you know"...
Newman seem to be listening to the views of some rather - how can I put this? - "regressive" organisations.
He apparently favours more nuclear powerstations:
He recommends building new settlements in Green Belt areas:
Hmmm. I won't be going.
Unattributed
Make Poverty History is not just debt relief
26.02.2005 19:30
Debt cancellation is both morally and prudentially neccessary - and of course, will only achieve the maximum success when carried out in line with reforms to trading and financial institutions and rules in a way that benefits the poorest nations.
Debt that has been accrued through irresponsible lending to developing nations should not act as a burden to the current development of those nations. It is in the rewriting of trade laws, a key plank of the Trade Justice component of the Make Poverty History campaign, that the negative effect of the current international financial systems that so disadvantage developing nations can be reduced.
The Make Poverty History campaign understands the need for locally responsive development, adopting economic models that are suitable for developing nations - not a one-size-fits-all approach of the form that has been previously imposed in aid and loans pushed under trade liberalisation based development policies.
It is part of this bigger picture of change that debt relief needs to come. That does not mean that governance reforms should not be part of the picture. Good governance is a key to successful development. But debt relief, when acompanied by meaningful reforms of international trading laws, and a removal of 'strings attached' policy directing aid, must be a priority in ensuring that developing nations get a genuine opportunity to develop.
T
oh yes, privitatization will improve the South's problems... NOT
26.02.2005 19:39
you said "This proposes that the West should privatise the governance of such countries to EU approved multinationals to run such states under a profit sharing deal for a 21 year period, with the aim to rebuild, regenerate and develop these countries economies for the benefit of the majority of these countries citizens." (2nd last para)
Oh yes, multinationals will go in and out the the good of their hearts, use the profits to improve the conditions of the citizens in these countries. They won't keep the profit for themselves and their shareholders back in the North of course (which is what a corporation is required to do by law, by the way), rather they will just put it back into the states they are "running" and improve the lives of the South's citizens.
If it wasn't so scary that people actually can believe your suggestion, I'd be falling on the floor laughing my head off right now at it.
BTW, the anwswer to your question "Don’t you agree that just forgiving third world debt..." um, no, cannot say I do agree.
jgp
Corruption is a major problem yes BUT
26.02.2005 21:06
That's true.
But WHY?
Could it possibly have anything to do with the LEGACY OF COLONIALISM?????
(duh!)
Ozymandias
A note on rhetoric
26.02.2005 21:37
as any amateur student of rhetoric could tell you, making and immediate and explicit appeal for assent to a hostile audience will not win over any hearts and minds. Back to oratory school for you chum!
Sim1
ah, the dreadful legacy of colonialism
27.02.2005 01:36
Let's look at 1890, prior to colonialism. Where theere many schools in the country. No, because if you haven't invented writing, there isn't much point. Hospitals? No. Roads? If you haven't invented the wheel ...
The first act of the brutal colonialists was to build a railway several hundred miles from the coast to Lake Victoria. Nairobi, now the capitol city. came about by accident. Up to then, the railway had been built over the relatively flat plains of the nyika. The railway halted for the construction of the track at the foothills to the hills and mountains that led to the Rift Valley. This railway camp grew and is now home to more people than were alive in Kenya in 1890.
Fifty years later, just prior to independence, the country had schools, hospitals, roads, railway lines, airports. The funding of these came from Britain since Kenya had no significant mineral deposits of any kind. The principal export then and now is of tea and coffee - both introduced on a plantation scale by ... the colonialists.
As far as corruption is concerned, one thing that can be said of the colonial civil servants was that they were bribe free - thye made little money as civil servants, and retired back to the UK on fairly minimal pensions. They handed over a system of government untainted by bribery.
Whatever you may say about the ethics of colonialism, Kenya in 1890 did not exist as a country and had precisely no infrastrucure. By the time of independence, it was prosperous, had a government and adminstration free from corruption, and well equipped with schools hospitals and so on. This, I would submit, is a legacy which Britain gave to the region, and which has not been maintained since.
sceptic
The legacy of colonialism
27.02.2005 11:11
>>Let's look at 1890, prior to colonialism. Where there many schools in the country.
>>No, because if you haven't invented writing, there isn't much point. Hospitals? No.
>>Roads? If you haven't invented the wheel ...
Did the people have writing? No. Did they have schools? No. Did they have hospitals? No. Roads? No. Wheels? No. Banks? No. Wage labour? No. Plantations? No. Prisons? No.
Did they have any **NEED** for these things?
Once again, a resounding NO (well, perhaps hospitals might have helped...)
>>These people had their own kind of society which is primitive in terms of material
>>consumer products, science and technology, and other things the West likes to point to >>to illustrate the supposed superiority of our style of "civilisation".
These people had social interactions, they had culture, they had story-telling, they had the accumulated wisdom of the village elders etc, they had music, they had close-knit families and communities. They had a functioning society. I'm sure it wasn't perfect, I'm sure it wasn't some kind of eutopia. But basically those people would have reasonable lives of their own before we came along and started trying to tell them how to live.
What you are saying is shockingly arrogant and shockingly blind. You're saying that because they didn't have railways and infrastructure and all the rest of it that they basically had NOTHING and they needed US to come and SAVE THEM FROM THEMSELVES.
And you think that because they didn't have the blatant big physical objects that our so common in our society, and because they didn't have our style of large-scale top-down hierarchical administration, that they somehow lacked "civilisation".
Were these people any HAPPIER as a result of us coming and taking over?
>>>
The first act of the brutal colonialists was to build a railway several hundred miles from the coast to Lake Victoria. Nairobi, now the capitol city. came about by accident. Up to then, the railway had been built over the relatively flat plains of the nyika. The railway halted for the construction of the track at the foothills to the hills and mountains that led to the Rift Valley. This railway camp grew and is now home to more people than were alive in Kenya in 1890.
>>>
OK so there's a big town now that wasn't there before. Why is that superior to people living in the countryside?
And why is it good that this town has more people than were alive in Kenya in 1890? Is population growth such a good thing? What's wrong with a stable sustainable level of population?
>>>
Fifty years later, just prior to independence, the country had schools, hospitals, roads, railway lines, airports. The funding of these came from Britain since Kenya had no significant mineral deposits of any kind. The principal export then and now is of tea and coffee - both introduced on a plantation scale by ... the colonialists.
>>>
Is that meant to be some kind of BOAST, that we introduced plantations???
People used to grow food for themselves and their families and be in charge of their own lives. Now they are paid a tiny pittance to grow luxury goods for export to rich westerners. What's so progressive about that???
And can you imagine the working conditions on those plantations?
An export orientated economy was forced on Kenya first by the colonialists, and then later by the World Bank and IMF. This promotes food-insecurity for the Kenyan people and subordinates their economy to the west, insuring that we continue to run the show.
If plantations area the legacy of colonialism then I DEFINITELY don't support colonialism. If the UK's economy was based on exporting cheap cash crops to some richer country would you think that was a good situation for us to be in? No so why is it any more appropriate an economic model for the Kenyans.
>>>
As far as corruption is concerned, one thing that can be said of the colonial civil servants was that they were bribe free - thye made little money as civil servants, and retired back to the UK on fairly minimal pensions. They handed over a system of government untainted by bribery.
>>>
Dude, you sound like some Church of Scientology guy banging on about how perfect and flawless their founder L Ron Hubbard was. Or some Christian insisting that every single word of the bible is the word of god. You call yourself a 'sceptic' and yet you are prepared to unquestioningly believe in the perfectness of the colonialists.
What does "little money" mean? Little money compared to a tea plantation worker? So did these people live on the equivalent of less than 50p a day in today's money?
Presumably they made enough money to feed their families. THAT is a pre-requisite for not taking bribes. Many civil servants in Africa today are not paid enough to live on becuase of IMF-forced government cutbacks. So of course they're taking bribes.
>>>
Whatever you may say about the ethics of colonialism, Kenya in 1890 did not exist as a country and had precisely no infrastrucure. By the time of independence, it was prosperous, had a government and adminstration free from corruption, and well equipped with schools hospitals and so on. This, I would submit, is a legacy which Britain gave to the region, and which has not been maintained since.
>>>
Yes, they had NO COUNTRY and NO INFRASTRUCTURE. They didn't NEED either of those things. They just got on with their lives.
Now they have a COUNTRY and some INFRASTRUCTURE. And they live in ABJECT POVERTY.
Their pre-colonial lives were NOT poverty. They did not have the kind of **material wealth** that you're thinking of but they had a functioning society, without the enormous problems that they're suffering at the moment.
Who needs countries or infrastructure anyway?
"Imagine there's no countries" as John Lennon sang.
Essentially your argument says nothing more than that we have brought the people of Kenya CAPITALISM and a rather dysfunctional capitalism too - may sound good on paper, but if you look at the reality on the ground it doesn't work.
Now before we finish, I'm prepared to believe that the kind of society we undemocratically imposed on them during the colonial era did function, at the time, considerably better than it did today.
But you can't just set something up like that and except it to carry on working. Western civilisation has many flaws. I do except that it functions here better than in Kenya. But why is that? It's because our society / economy is something which has evolved over many hundreds of years. If you set something up from scratch over a small period of time then when you leave it, the chances are it's going to collapse. Whereas something which has evolved over a much longer period of time will be far more stable.
The infrastructure we set up was highly superficial. We built railways and suchlike but we did not establish the culture and level of education and the wealth of expertise that is ingrained in our way of doing things. That takes a MUCH longer time to develop.
Countries and states and civil service and monetary systems and capitalist firms and so on are systems that were totally ALIEN to these people. You can't impose these things overnight and expect them to function efficiently because to learn a new culture effectively you need to learn it on more than the superficial level we gave them.
In particular, these societies were completely unused to dealing with such large concentrations of power. Concentrations of power have a bad enough effect in our own countries but to people who have no experience of holding so much centralised power to account of course corruption is going to develop. Power corrupts, that's its natural tendency.
Now you may thinking "Well that's exactly why we should have stayed rather than giving them independence".
NO!!! It's exactly why we shouldn't have conquered them in the first place!! They never invited us to interfere. If we hadn't interfered they could have carried on living like they were before. They've got railways and stuff but a fat lot it does them. Kenyans today live in POVERTY, which is completely different from living the simple frugal life but contented life that they did before. Yes hospitals can be a good thing but if you think the majority of Kenyans have EVER had access to a western-style health centre you're deluded.
To be honest, I don't find a single one of your arguments persuasive. You point out a whole bunch of things which we left the Kenyans and try to claim that these are reasons why colonialism was good and I find this so ironic becuase it's clear to me that these things are not blessings at all and it's your naive simplified western-centric world view that makes you think these are positive things.
I'm not saying that the Kenyans should have stayed in the stone age forever. Development is fair enough if they want it but it should be on the people's own terms, it should be organic, and while government can play a role in these things, development should be essentially FROM THE BOTTOM UP and with an emphasis on people retaining autonomy over their own lives rather than submitting themselves to the authority of rich plantation-owners or profiteering multinational corporations.
So why do YOU think there's so much corruption and incompetence in so many African countries? Because Africans are naturally corrupt and imcompetent? That would be rather racist of you wouldn't it.
Think about it: we went in there, we interfered with their society and culture and tried to replace it with one resembling our own. And NOW they're all living in poverty there. Before they had materially simple lives but functioning society. Many of them lived in harmony with nature (which arguably makes US look like the uncivilised ones). And they lived like this for thousands of years. But since western civilisation started imposing things on them everything has gone wrong.
Coincidence?
I don't think so.
--
"-What do you think of Western Civilisation?
-I think it would be a good idea!"
- Gandhi
Sceptical about colonialism!
Pre colonial societies
27.02.2005 14:56
Ah, the simple but contented life! Like having most of your children die before the age of two. Like having ten pregnancies in the hope that some of the children will survive to look after you in your old age. Like a life expectancy of 30 years or so. Like dying of famine if the rains didn't come. Like hacking a living from scrub. Like dying of smallpox or polio.
How come the life expectancy has increased? Do you approve of illiteracy?
Yes, indeed, these people did manage without radio, tv, and all these other things. But if the simple but frugal life was so wonderful, why didn't they turn their back on what the West had to offer, and go back to it?
And there's a lot of assumptions hidden in that assertion that they are 'in POVERTY' now, but they weren't before.
sceptic
Re:
27.02.2005 18:17
And of course people don't want to go back. That's human nature - when materialism arrives, people find it too tempting to throw it away.
I'm sure disease was a major problem in many areas. And I'm sure it still is. But is this the sole criterion for measuring the merits of a particular society? What about the social bonds that made the society function - close-knit communities where power was exercised locally, rather than large scale bureaucracies which do not function properly anyway.
Scratching out a living from bush? Beats scratching out a living from working long hours for a pittance on someone else's plantation. People feel much better if they have a higher level of autonomy and if they are able to themselves enjoy the products of their work. Being a hunter-gatherer beats being an exploited farm-labourer any day.
Look at the inequalities of land ownership patterns in Kenya now. They didn't even have such a thing as "ownership" of land back before we imposed this alien concept on them. People shared things and lived communally didn't they.
And how about all the slum dwellers. No such thing as slum dwellers in the pre-colonial era. For all the hardship with disease, people didn't have to experience the kind of poverty you'll find in the slums and shanty towns.
"Do I approve of illiteracy?" Well let's unpack that one, hey? What are the assumptions and value-judgements behind that question? Is it a terrible thing to have a society without reading? No. Is a human being to be looked down on because they can't read? No. Is writing an impressive and useful human invention? Yes, of course it is. But to trash someone's society and then claim that you have saved these people because they can now read (well, not all of them) is not enlightened as far as I'm concerned.
You have to look at what colonialism took away as well as just what it (often superficially) appears to have brought. Many of these things are invisible to those whose eye for civilisation is entirely Western-centric - elements of their culture, their way of living together and in (relative) harmony with nature, their social bonds, their way of looking after eachother etc. You haven't even begun to study their culture and yet you think we had the authority to trash their way of doing things and impose our own vision on them (largely for our own strategic economic gains!).
Well that'll probably do from me. Anyone else feel like adding anything to this argument?
still...
Slums and povery
27.02.2005 23:08
Whether or not one should apologise for keeping people alive is another matter.
sceptic
troll accepted...
28.02.2005 00:25
Gosh, I'm glad I dont live somewhere like /that/.
In fact life for most people in the West is a non-stop joy ride of rainbow powered loveliness thanks to our glorious and democratic corporate masters.
Or perhaps the money grabbing elites that run /all/ countries are the problem we need to sort out?
That might happen by eroding their power not increasing it.
I'm sure sceptic will produce a dull, interminable, ill-thought out and badly argued answer to this rather obvious post. Maybe rogerox will call me a fascist censor or something.
Hey-ho...
feeling argumentative
Oi, nickyboy/sceptic!
28.02.2005 01:32
It's a bit hard to argue with the barrel of a gun, mate. As if a colonised people were given a choice about whether they were to be colonised or not.
What you are saying is that the British ruling class done the people of East Africa a favour by turning them into economic slaves and their land into a tea plantation.
What you are saying is that the governments from the oh-so great and superior civilisations like the US and EU (In who's interests the World Bank consistently operates) should continue squeezing the African people for their own good.
What you are saying is that Africans are inherently corrupt and stupid and need to be shown the light by a bunch of fat white capitalists.
And being fat, white and a capitalist is the defining mark of civilised man, isn't it? hmmmm?
All the peoples of the world need the automomy and freedom from coercion to build their own destinies for themselves.
You can dress up your version of the white man's burden in as much libreral lefty spin as you want, you ain't fooling no-one. Go back to your Victorian tea party and stop shitting on my eyes.
Smoked Kipling For Breakfast