David Cameron has been passionate in his defence of British aid. And\u00a0quite right too. The prime minister has been under pressure from\u00a0Conservative backwoodsmen, and the cash-strapped Defence Secretary,\u00a0Liam Fox, to cut international \u00a0development, whose budget has been\u00a0protected from public spending cuts. \u00a0There is more to this than\u00a0tightened public spending purse strings. There is something\u00a0pernicious in the air.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The campaign has been orchestrated by the Daily Mail, which has been\u00a0suggesting that far from alleviating global poverty, aid has actually\u00a0made things worse, propping up corrupt governments. But the paper\u2019s\u00a0coverage has been ignorant, dishonest and cynical. It has relied on\u00a0outdated stereotypes and isolated half-truths in a wilful attempt to\u00a0harden hearts against helping the world\u2019s poorest people.<\/p>\n
The clich\u00e9 about aid supporting dictators may have been correct in the\u00a060s and 70s when it was sometimes handed out by both America or Russia\u00a0to any tyrants would support them as Cold War proxies. But the Berlin\u00a0Wall fell in 1989. Since then, decade by decade, aid has become more\u00a0effective, more poverty-focused, and better-targeted through projects,\u00a0programmes, sectors and budget support to ensure that it is not so\u00a0easily siphoned off. The idea that we have learned nothing about where\u00a0aid works and where it doesn\u2019t is preposterous.
\n The Mail makes no acknowledgement of this. Instead it produces a\u00a0handful of dodgy examples to back its case. It quotes a 2005\u00a0International Monetary Fund report entitled \u2018Aid Will Not Lift Growth\u00a0in Africa\u2019 as if it were the IMF\u2019s view, rather than a discussion\u00a0paper by two individuals. Few would suggest that aid alone will\u00a0automatically lift growth; it has to be linked to good policies by\u00a0African governments. Aid and policy are interlinked. The IMF\u2019s\u00a0position is actually that aid does support growth in low-income\u00a0countries and in many cases needs to be increased.<\/p>\n
The Mail also cites in evidence Dambisa Moyo, the Zambian economist\u00a0who wrote a sloppy and simplistic book Dead Aid. Again, no recognition\u00a0that Moyo is one of a handful of maverick writers whose views run\u00a0countered to all the mainstream research. It is like citing Nigel\u00a0Lawson on climate change. Intriguingly the Mail brags that Moyo used\u00a0to work for Goldman Sachs \u2013 an organisation which the Mail elsewhere\u00a0reports contributed to the global financial crisis by designing,\u00a0marketing, and selling collateralised debt obligations. The paper\u00a0quotes a critic\u2019s description of Goldman as \u201ca great vampire squid\u00a0wrapped around the face of humanity\u201d whose executives should be put on\u00a0trial.<\/p>\n
It also quotes a poorly-researched book by the journalist Linda Polman\u00a0which draws erroneous general conclusions from unrepresentative\u00a0examples. On the resettlement programme by the Ethiopian regime in the\u00a01980s \u2013 which I investigated personally from both sides \u2013 gets much\u00a0completely wrong.\u00a0The newspaper laments \u00a0the fact that much UK aid goes to India, which\u00a0has a growing economy, and even a space programme, without admitting\u00a0that more than 400 million Indians live below the international\u00a0poverty line \u2013 more than in the whole of sub-Saharan Africa. Nor does\u00a0it seem to know that India\u2019s emerging middles classes are\u00a0increasinglty \u00a0philanthropic; nor that British aid to India is planned\u00a0to taper off.<\/p>\n
It is easy to find high-profile examples of aid not working.\u00a0Corruption and misguided policies by some African leaders have seen to\u00a0that. So has the West\u2019s brand of economic fundamentalism which in the\u00a080s and 90s gave priority to price stability, privatisation and\u00a0financial liberalisation when what was needed was trade reform, job\u00a0creation, industrial development and economic growth.\u00a0But extensive studies have shown that, where when a strong commitment\u00a0is made by Africa leaders to change governance, aid works. It has put\u00a033 million kids into school and cut the number of children who die\u00a0before their fifth birthday by 4 million since 1990. Smallpox was\u00a0wiped out by just $100 million worth of targeted aid. Aid has\u00a0increased medicines for Aids tenfold. Analysis by the World Bank, that\u00a0great defender of free-market capitalism, suggests that average rates\u00a0of return on its aid projects in Africa exceed 20 per cent. \u201cCritics\u00a0who ignore the benefits aid brings,\u201d says Desmond Tutu, \u201care at best\u00a0misguided and at worst putting ideology ahead of real improvements in\u00a0the lives of poor men, women and children.\u201d<\/p>\n
The history of aid is littered with broken promises. Unrelenting\u00a0pressure by activists over the years has reduced these. The G8 summit\u00a0at Gleneagles in 2005 has, thanks to persistent lobbying by\u00a0anti-poverty activists, now delivered $31bn of the $50bn it promised.\u00a0That is a remarkable achievement, though it still leaves a shortfall\u00a0of $19bn in real terms, as David Cameron insisted was included in the\u00a0G8 communiqu\u00e9 at Deauville.<\/p>\n
\u201cAid-bashing does not actually get us anywhere,\u201d one of his\u00a0development ministers, Alan Duncan, noted recently. \u201cIf we were to\u00a0cancel the aid budget altogether it wouldn\u2019t solve all the other\u00a0problems.\u201d Britain is an exceptionally rich country, even in this\u00a0downturn, and there can be no moral equivalence between financial\u00a0hardship in the UK and the struggle for basic survival in the poorer\u00a0parts of the world.<\/p>\n
Selfish and cynical cries that \u201cwe gave before and it didn\u2019t solve theproblem\u201d are tantamount to saying \u201cwe had lunch yesterday so we don\u2019t\u00a0need to eat today\u201d. \u00a0Most people in the world are poor beyond our\u00a0imagining. Total aid over the last five decades handed out less than\u00a0$9 a year to those in the world who live on less than \u00a31 a day. Not a\u00a0princely sum. The pledge which David Cameron wants to keep \u2013 to give\u00a00.7pc of our national earnings in aid \u2013 is like saying if you had a\u00a0pound, would you give a halfpenny to stop someone dying in the street?
\n I think we can afford that. How much does the editor of the Daily Mail\u00a0earn?<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
from Third Way magazine<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
David Cameron has been passionate in his defence of British aid. And\u00a0quite right too. The prime minister has been under pressure from\u00a0Conservative backwoodsmen, and the cash-strapped Defence Secretary,\u00a0Liam Fox, to cut international \u00a0development, whose budget has been\u00a0protected from public spending cuts. \u00a0There is more to this than\u00a0tightened public spending purse strings. There is something\u00a0pernicious in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,35,40,38],"tags":[705,85,315,718],"class_list":["post-4013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-africa","category-aid-development","category-ethics","category-society","tag-africa","tag-aid","tag-daily-mail","tag-ethics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4013"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4013\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5207,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4013\/revisions\/5207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}