Emily's Worldview

In this week's NYTimes, Paul Theroux reveals that he finds Bono "annoying" because the rock star is always pushing the "big money platform", that increased aid, fairer trade relations and debt relief are crucial to real development in Africa. Theroux thinks this results in perverse outcomes, and that self-sufficiency must come from African governments and African people cleaning up their acts.

By the way, this man's credentials are that he wrote a prize-winning novel and did a few years in Peace Corps in the 70s. He's basically the literary-rock-star version of Bono, except without a real plan. I mean, what is his alternative? Encouraging young local professionals to stay and work. Great, except for, um, AIDS, which kills exactly those people at faster rates than those countries graduate them. When you have HIV epidemics of 10-40% in the general population, you can't rely on the piecemeal stuff that he supports; "humanitarian aid, disaster relief, AIDS education or affordable drugs". You have to make it possible for governments to have enough money to do those AIDS treatment programs, forever. And the infrastructure issues he talks about at the end are exactly the types of projects that foreign aid is pretty good at doing and should be doing more of.

Of course, he's right that money has been wasted in the past, often by the governments it was going through. Remind me again why the poorest people in the world are being asked to pay for bad deals between their corrupt rulers and misguided international lending institutions? And what about all the well-designed, transparent, high-level HIV, malaria, and TB projects that the Global Fund has approved and that are just stagnating while they wait for funding?

Here's the thing; even if debt relief and aid do not always lead to improved welfare, there is just no scenario where a heavily impoverished and indebted nation can turn itself around within the current world system. Development is not the necessary result of more aid; but aid and trade and debt relief are all sine qua non for development.

Obviously, there's a lot that's indefensible that goes on in the aid world, and I agree a lot with the critiques like the one I discussed in my previous post. But those critiques are made analytically and descriptively and they aren't used to undermine the fundamental principle that rich people have an obligation to use their wealth in service to the poor. A principle that Bono has a big role in bringing to the international table. Now that's a real rock star.