It is always Africa. The forgotten continent. It could be an empty lost planet, like Mars, but there are millions and  of persons fighting to survive in its beautifully sad lands. You can see the metaphor of Africa in a sequence of The Constant Gardener, when people run away through the desert as bandits come to rob and kill them. While white men could get on the plane, black people only have the choice of running faster than their captors. The support of the white man is only an illusion because if times go harder, like in the movie, there is no chance to save Africans.

In the last fifty years we have supposedly been helping Africa to leave from poverty and conquer prosperity. Another mirage. If you see at all the action Western countries have taken, no one has helped to really relieve the economic disaster of a majority of countries. And it seems we do repeat the same mistakes every time we propose a plan to save Africa. According to Marian L. Tupy from the Cato Institute, the last experiment, set up in 2005 in Gleneagles (Scotland) has fail like every other in the past decades.

«In response to persisting poverty in Africa, representatives from the world’s eight leading industrialized nations — Germany, Canada, the United States, France, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and Russia — met in Gleneagles, Scotland, in 2005 and agreed on a three-pronged approach to help Africa. They would increase foreign aid to the continent, reduce Africa’s debt, and open their markets to African exports. Unfortunately, aid has harmed rather than helped Africa. It has failed to stimulate growth or reform, and encouraged waste and corruption».

In her report The False Promise of Gleneagles she points out that the summit had very unrealistic expectations. The problem is not only about debt, but also is related to he institutions and policies of the African countries, which are contaminated of corruption, public waste and the difficulty to support property rights. There are several highlighted points that deserve to be considered:

  1. “Sub-Saharan Africa lags behind the rest of the world in most indicators of human well-being”
  2. “Between 1975 and 2005 Chinese and Indian incomes rose by 888 percent and 174 percent respectively. In Africa, incomes fell by 5 percent”
  3. “The priorities set out by the G8, which put aid and debt relief ahead of trade, are misguided”.
  4. “Aid has not led to economic reforms in Africa”.
  5. Aid undermines democratic accountability in Africa, because the governments find themselves answerable to donors, not to the public.
  6. “Something around 40 percent of Africa’s military spending is inadvertently financed by aid.”
  7. “The high level of debt shows that aid failed in its primary task of generating economic growth”.
  8. “Africa is one of the most protectionist regions”.

Do you agree? May be not. However, read the report as it offer a good range of eloquent arguments and data.