Foreign Aid & Civil Society
What Price for Saving India’s ‘Sweatshop children’?
The Telegraph reported yesterday that police in Delhi had closed a sweatshop factory at the “centre of a scandal involving US clothing giant Gap.” This followed a story and a sting operation by a media outlet showing the factory illegally employed children (Gap had subcontracted work from this factory). The international NGO “Global March Against […]
What is the World Bank Good For?
The Wall Street Journal is carrying a detailed piece describing how the World Bank has “winked at bribery, and worse” in projects in India, but particularly Cambodia. I thought it worth reproducing here for three reasons. First, because the WSJ is not standard fare in the development community. Second, because the article is scathing in […]
“Is the UN Colonizing Africa?” asks the BBC
In a sure-to-be controversial piece, the BBC’s Africa “analyst” Martin Plaut asks: “Is the UN Re-colonizing Africa.” Unfortunately for the BBC, Mr. Plaut’s ignorance of the UN seems to be exceeded only by his lack of knowledge of Africa.
Why More Aid Will Not Work - The Limits of Sachs
Gillian from St. Jude asked me to comment on an article by Jeff Sachs on the role of the World Bank. Sachs is well known for his theory that the only way out of poverty for Africa is to double, triple, or quadruple aid. Gillian supports the view that such aid is necessary, indeed critical, […]
The Case Against Development Aid: China, India, Africa
Greg Mankiw points to a piece by Robert Barro (Harvard economist) saying Bill Gates is never going to achieve as much with his philanthropy, as he did with Microsoft. Much of it advocates market oriented capitalism as the best known tool for development, but it also makes a more general case against charity. And hidden […]
Health Update: IFC Healthcare Fund, Clinton HIV drugs, Gates Foundation Strategy
Oodles of news on global public health.
1. The FT carries an article on IFC’s plans to create an Africa healthcare fund of about $500 million. According to the report, the agency has been funding work, in collaboration with the Gates Foundation, to develop an equity, debt and technical assistance fund to finance commercial healthcare projects. […]
Africa Does Not Need More Aid
In addition to providing raw materials, labor, and markets for finished products, Africa also cleanses the conscience of Africanist scholars, evangelists and missionaries, the rock and roll musicians who want to save Africa through orphan adoption, and philanthropists with Mother-Theresa complexes.
Mukoma Wa Ngugi writes a scathing criticism of Western aid and attitudes towards Africa. He […]
More on the Foreign Aid Curse
I’ve mentioned the aid curse before. Well, the topic of provisioning public goods came up today, so I ended up doing some more research on it, to see just how bad it was. Seems its pretty bad, and someone has already studied it.
The Aid Curse originally followed from its better understood counterpart - the “resource […]
