Date: 6.6.05
It' s not clear why a new plan for international aid would work when $568 billion spent on aid to Africa over the past 43 years has not, according to New York University economist William Easterly. Big plans at the top do not work without ncentives for the people at the bottom who deliver the goods and services. Those who implement plans at the bottom are civil servants and aid bureaucrats in donor-recipient countries. Accountability to date has been scarce, corruption not.
"We have had so many of these megaplans that start with hullabaloo, pomp and circumstance," says George Ayittey, a native Ghanaian who teaches economics at American University in Washington, D.C. "A few years later everyone forgets about it." Ayittey maintains Africa could find $148 billion a year on its own if its leaders would clamp down on corruption.
The $25 billion aid proposals coming from Tony Blair et al. grow out of a study done in 2000 by former World Bank economists David Dollar and Craig Burnside suggesting aid is effective when coupled with good government. This would seem intuitively correct, but it doesn't hold when more data are plugged into the model, says NYU's Easterly. Intuitive or not, aid can cure a disease or build a school,
Ask Dyan | Curriculum Vitae | Forbes Articles | Graphic Novel | Jokes | Machan Auction | Nice Things Said About Dyan
Pictures of Dyan | Quotes | Screen Treatment | The First Article I Published | What is a Machan? | Home