Why aid destroys economies but loans and trade save lives

Article by Marc Aupiais

On the Haiti situation I gave extensive coverage as I have before to the fact that the local disaster hit country's economy would suffer for years to come, causing many deaths: not due to the natural disaster, but due to aid groups ignoring subsidiarity, and importing aid supplies and volunteers, rather than utilising local resources: a practice which has the same effect on an economy as dumping cheap goods no longer of use.

What has worked is micro-loans and business investment, and investment in infrastructure projects: something often ignored by major offenders such as the ever more political Red Cross and Unicef, as well as unfortunately the United Nations, with its development goals.

Rather than focussing on getting families out of poverty by spurring business, it focusses on born women and children, making the child unsupported when he becomes an adult. Such counter-cultural goals, have a real measurable cost, namely lost income for women and children, due to a focus on them rather than on the family structures: on education for women for instance: when unlikely to get a job, and when their uneducated husband could better support them if more educated.

Not to ever suggest that not educating women can be of benefit, but international donors always tend to ignore the best solutions locally and to forget local beliefs. The fact that  condoms are seen as foreign and evil in Africa, should have tuned donors in to the Ugandan success of combating polygamy and extra-marital sex: playing on responsibility and personal will power.

What works? Same as everywhere else: jobs, micro-loans, infrastructure projects and investments: such as into China. What doesn't work? Politics and arrogance.

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Scripturelink SACNS Quotes Analysis:


FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2010


Millennium Development Goals money never reaches poor- micro and macro loans will!
Marc Aupiais quotes C-Fam!




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