Sunday, July 03, 2005

Live8: valuable contribution or waste of resources?

Live8 happened yesterday and today, all over Africa, millions of people are waking up completely oblivious to the efforts Sir Bob Geldolf and his band of merry men, women and Elton John have made to improve their lives.

The question is, was Live8 a valuable contribution or a waste of resources?

I was only 7 or 8 when Live Aid happened but even then I had the opinion that it wouldn't help. In fact, I recall taking some stick from some of the goody-goody rich girls (you know - the ones with ponies) when I refused to smile and put some change into their collection tin and instead chose to tell them what I still firmly believe now: the more we give in aid, the worse we make the situation.

Today I discovered I am not alone in my beliefs - the brother of the South African president wrote an open letter to Sir Bob Geldof basically thanking him for his kindness but telling him that he isn't helping.

You see, the thing is, the more aid we give to African countries, the less their governments have to answer to their own people. The poor, starving Africans live their lives days away from death and on the whole they don't know or care whether the food they have just been given is from their own government or from Mr and Mrs Smith of High Wycombe. The only people who can change Africa are the Africans.

No matter how much we give in aid, most of it will be stolen by their governments and the benefit won't reach many people.

The only way to effectively give aid to Africa is to take their corrupt governments out of the equation and the only way of getting rid of corrupt governments is for their people to get rid of them. We could remove their governments by force like with Afghanistan and Iraq but all that will happen is a few years down the line, another corrupt government will step in and in the meantime the people at the bottom of the chain of command are still the same corrupt petty officials, Changing the people at the top isn't going to change that.

The best thing we can do for Africa is write off their debts and cut them loose. When they start relying on their own governments and they get let down they will have to do something about it themselves. It sounds harsh but it's the best solution. Tough love.