Out of Africa

We have previously reported on the harmful effects of foreign aid on Africa in regard to AIDS treatment vs. AIDS prevention and the exorbitant costs of treating AIDS.

In this article by Dambisa Moyo, Wall Street Journal:

Over the past 60 years at least $1 trillion of development-related aid has been transferred from rich countries to Africa. Yet real per-capita income today is lower than it was in the 1970s, and more than 50% of the population – over 350 million people – live on less than a dollar a day, a figure that has nearly doubled in two decades.

In this review of Paul Collier's new book:

Coups tend to cost a country 7 percent of a year's income – "not a cheap way of replacing a government," he notes. And international aid, by sweetening the honey pot, increases the risk of a coup – by roughly a third when aid amounts to 4 percent of the gross domestic product of a recipient nation………. Leakage from international development assistance finances some 40 percent of military budgets, yet military spending doesn't necessarily bring peace. Quite the opposite. It can jeopardize peace by signaling to potential rebels that the government "is planning to turn nasty."

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