I saw an interesting article on the ONE blog yesterday. It's from this week's edition of Business Week. It discusses how Africans "want skills and a leg up, not handouts." It's definitely worth the read and would only take about ten minutes of your time.
Africa Wants Opportunities, Not Handouts
IBM's Nicholas Donofrio has heard it from Africans themselves: They don't want aid, they want a chance to develop their own businesses
Labels: africa, blogosphere, business
posted by Shannon Smith @ 1/11/2008
3 Comments
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3 Comments:
We had an interesting discussion on something similar to this last spring or fall i think. The focus of our discussion was in regards to Bono's call to retire all the debt to African governments. My comments were along the line of suggesting that we don't want to develop a spirit of dependency (continual handouts and retiring of debt) in a country rather we want to help teach/train/equip them to be economically viable. This is something I could get behind, offering aid through training/equiping instead of buckets of money.
That being said, I still do believe that the payment structure of African debt needs to be altered in such a way that it doesn't overburden the individual economies.
Yeah, I remember that conversation.
I agree that "retiring" the debts might not be the best solution, but something must be done. I don't know everything about the situation, but what I have heard is that the payments that are being made are only covering interest charges and the principle is not being touched. It sounds a lot like the minimum payment on a high interest credit card.
You have heard correctly. There is a historical example of retiring Venezuelan debt in the 70's. The Country quickly found itself in greater debt shortly following that. In essence 70's Venezuela was declared bankrupt and as such no longer had debt. Then guess what they were able to do? That's right, take on more debt!
You are right there needs to be something done, and there are movements afoot through the various international banks to help these nations with this problem. They set a series of economic benchmarks that need to be met and as they are further aid/debt help is supplied. It's an interesting program that was used extensively in South Africa to rebuild post-apartheid. Evidence that it has worked can be found by simply noting that the World Cup will be held there in 2010.
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