NOT AT ALL. The problem in Africa has never been lack of money, but rather the inability to exploit the African mind. Picture a banana farmer in a rural village in Africa with a leaky roof and that would cost $ 100 to repair. If someone bought $ 100 worth of bananas, the farmer would have the power and the choice of whether the roof is leaking its spending priorities. On the other hand, if he were given $ 100 as a grant or loan to repair the roof, his choice would be limited to what the donor sees as a priority. About 960 million Africans in 53 states, there are innovators and entrepreneurs, they are rewarded by the market, will address the challenges facing the continent.
If money was the key to solving problems, banks would send officers on the streets to provide money to people in need. But banks offer money to individuals who successfully translate their problems into opportunities. A British aid to $ 7 million to 228 Samburu herders in Kenya in 2002 did not prevent him from becoming poor in 2007. Money itself is neutral. Substantial amounts of money treated as capital led strategists (which depict Africa as trapped in a cycle of poverty) to argue for massive inflows of capital as the only way out of poverty. Instead, see money as a value, a creation, effect resulting from the exchange between different parties, offers a chance to translate African problems into opportunities.
As Lord Peter Bauer has rightly observed, "money is the result of economic success and not a precondition." Africans How can they engage in activities that lead to success Economic? The key is to transform the mentality of 50% of Africa's population under 20 years so they focus on the conversion of Africa's problems into opportunities. In Africa today, there are opportunities to feed 200 million people undernourished, kill billions of mosquitoes causing malaria threaten the lives of about 500 million people, and develop infrastructure.
Africa has enormous capital in the form of natural resources that include oil, hydropower, diamonds, uranium, gold, cobalt, coltan World 70% and 34% of the cassiterite. Coltan and cassiterite are strategic in the production of cell phones, laptops and other electronic products. If Africans used the power of reason, the global mobile phones, which delivers 25 cell phones per second, would provide a huge source of income for respective countries and expanding their choices.
Focusing on the human mind as the African capital will translate into wealth resources, helping to solve Africa's problems. The usefulness and value of money will be generated by rational responses to the challenges facing the continent through the exchange of products and services at village level, at national, continental and international levels.
James Shikwati is the founder and director of Inter Region Economic Network and CEO of the magazine The African Executive business magazine.
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'S WHAT I THOUGHT. .. but not anymore. There's that overused maxim that says: If you hold a hammer in hand, every problem resembles a nail. What happens then, when all that we hold in our hands is a checkbook? The approach "checkbook" of development suggests that poor nations can not develop the skills to solve their own problems. There are, however, a notable exception.
President of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, called me to his office to help strengthen private sector capacity and improve export competitiveness. I informed him that the amount of money and time he would not budgeted to make both my work and train Rwandans. He told me the story: when he had finally accumulated enough money to pay wage arrears of the troops who fought to end the genocide, he asked them if, instead, he could use the money to buy helicopters to end the war faster. Not a single soldier objected.
President Kagame bought helicopters to countries, provided they also provide drivers. He then persuaded the pilot to carry out missions in enemy territory, and at the same time, train Rwandans flight. His tactics in a country without roads and a thousand hills, shortened the war and saved lives.
Every nation needs money to modernize and improve the lives of its citizens, and that is positive when a rich nation helps a poor nation after a natural disaster, or to meet a basic human need. But too often, when a nation helps another, it is based on a massive injection of financial capital subject a change of monetary, trade, investment, fiscal, and sectoral wage. It is often good advice, not without compromise. The nation became rich while the decision-making responsibility for the future of a nation must always remain in the hands of the citizens of this nation, and not those of foreign advisers, and certainly not those of creditors and donors.
This "checkbook" Development confuses compassion and generosity over-responsibility for human beings. Explicitly or implicitly, the dealer tells them how to run their country, and this process, unwittingly deprive citizens of countries emerging from their most precious assets - dignity and autonomy.
The Rwanda receives little foreign assistance. Leaders of the World Bank presented me with several other experts, to President Kagame and promised to pay the cost of our work, but they needed two years to complete the program, and Rwanda could not wait two years. President Kagame understand that poverty destroys the cornerstones of the society of his country: tolerance, confidence, aspirations and hope. He decided to pay our wages from the proceeds of his privatization program, but he insisted that we should begin immediately and we will refund if we do not do what we promised. He requested further: "I want you to be like those who flew the planes and formed the Rwandans." I asked, "Do you want me to help you kill the enemy, too?" He replied: "I want you to help me kill poverty."
Rwanda has no money, but it is a nation that wishes to free itself from creeping fatalism often encouraged (but unintentionally) by people known as benevolent. His leadership had the courage to challenge the underlying assumptions of international aid, and this led to an increase of nearly 20% per year subsistence wages in key export sectors. Responsibility for its own future depends entirely on the shoulders of men and women of his country. Not a single Rwandan objecting.
Michael Fairbanks is the co-founder of the OTF Group and the SEVEN FUND, which provides grants for enterprise solutions to poverty.
************************************** NO. In fact, after fifty years of attempts and 600 billion dollars in aid, with an increase almost zero level of living in Africa, I can stand the answer "no" in some farm. The lawyers talk with inexpensive solutions such as oral rehydration salts to 10-cents would save a baby dying of diarrhea, the drug against malaria to 12-cents saving someone with malaria $ 5 nets that prevent them from contracting malaria in the first place. Yet despite the influx of aid money, two million babies still died from diarrheal diseases in 2009, more than a million are still dying of malaria, and most of the potential victims of malaria does not always sleep under mosquito nets.
Clearly, money alone does not solve the problems. What is needed instead, they are entrepreneurs in the economic, social and political leaders are, for example, to ensure that drugs reach the victims, rather than slogans wonderful for administrative solutions that are as advertising vehicles for increasing even more money raised for using inefficient bureaucracies. Contractors would be responsible for results, unlike the bureaucrats and politicians with the rich countries that make promises that nobody holds them accountable. As
to facilitate development in Africa, free enterprise is the vehicle that has proven to escape poverty elsewhere (see China and India most recently) and it is simply patronizing to suggest that this does not work in Africa. The hope of Africa is more of someone who, like the businessman Alieu Conteh, launched with great success in chaos of civil war, a cellular phone company in the Democratic Republic of Congo, as defending celebrities like Bono assistance. Africans are far from being doomed to remain helpless wards wealthy donors: the political and economic freedoms of thought will enable Africans themselves to solve their own problems.
William Easterly is professor of economics at New York University, together with Africa House, and co-director of the Institute of Development Research at NYU. It is also non-resident member of the Center for Global Development in Washington, DC.
A Templeton Conversation, in templeton.org / translation from French unmondelibre.org
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