Those are the words of a very courageous Kenyan economist, James Shikwati, as interviewed in Der Spiegel. Shikwati is a leader of the Nairobi-based Inter-Region Economic Network, which is doing outstanding work in East Africa and on the African continent generally. (I’ve supported IREN in the past and it’s an excellent cause. An easy way to make a tax-deductibel donation is through the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, which can then allocate the funds to support IREN’s work.)
I took part a few years ago in a symposium in Berlin with James, where he delivered a paper on the topic “Do Intellectual Property Rights Harm Africa?,” which is available from the Liberales Institut. (The paper I delivered, “Globalization and Culture: Homogeneity, Diversity, Identity, Liberty,” is available for downloading in PDF format here.
Accidentally deleted with a ton of advertising spam:
Oh I know, he’s excellent. Some of the economics blogs I read caught this a while back and had a ball with it. (Although some of my more leftish friends were most displeased when I shared with them the debunking of the G8 and Live 8 aid logic.)
My favorite part:
Shikwati: Huge bureaucracies are financed (with the aid money), corruption and complacency are promoted, Africans are taught to be beggars and not to be independent. In addition, development aid weakens the local markets everywhere and dampens the spirit of entrepreneurship that we so desperately need. As absurd as it may sound: Development aid is one of the reasons for Africa’s problems. If the West were to cancel these payments, normal Africans wouldn’t even notice. Only the functionaries would be hard hit. Which is why they maintain that the world would stop turning without this development aid.
Posted by: Daniel Slate at July 17, 2005 01:40 AM