| Submit your comments on this article |
| Africa: Subsaharan |
| Foreign Aid Causes Famine |
| 2005-07-30 |
| DAKAR, Senegal - In Niger, a desert country twice the size of Texas, most of the 11 million people live on a dollar a day. Forty percent of children are underfed, and one out of four dies before turning 5. And that's when things are normal. Throw in a plague of locusts, and a familiar spectacle emerges: skeletal babies, distended bellies, people too famished to brush the flies from their faces. To the aid workers charged with saving the dying, the immediate challenge is to raise relief money and get supplies to the stricken areas. They leave it to the economists and politicians to come up with a lasting remedy. One such economist is James Shikwati. He blames foreign aid. "When aid money keeps coming, all our policy-makers do is strategize on how to get more," said the Kenya-based director of the Inter Region Economic Network, an African think tank. "They forget about getting their own people working to solve these very basic problems. In Africa, we look to outsiders to solve our problems, making the victim not take responsibility to change." Aid groups say Niger's catastrophe could have been averted — that early warning systems were in place, and the United Nations and other humanitarian agencies warned of imminent food shortages late last year. In November, Niger's government issued an emergency appeal for 78,000 tons of food. Donors, busy with higher-profile crises, barely responded. The following month came the Indian Ocean tsunami that entirely eclipsed Africa's misery on the world's TV screens. Aid workers say heading off famine needs long-term, steady funding. Some still don't get it. At a feeding center in Mada Roufa, in eastern Niger, Mai Sali, a local employee of the international relief organization Doctors Without Borders, praised those (aid) efforts, but agreed crisis aid was not the answer. "We need to find other long-term solutions. We can't just address emergencies," he said. "Victims" everywhere are in the same boat. Give a victim a fish and feed him/her for a day. Teach a victim to fish, and feed her/him for life. |
| Posted by:Bobby |
| #2 Well, yeah. It wasn't news to me! But fo rYahoo news to allow it in print? THAT was news, I thought! And the parallel to 'victime' everywhere? That's mine. Aid can cause dependency. Maybe even co-dependency. |
| Posted by: Bobby 2005-07-30 22:24 |
#1 Foreign Aid Causes FamineWell, yeah. It props up dictators and causes dependency. Pfui. |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2005-07-30 19:53 |