Sagepaper

Numerous wealthy western countries are wanting to put together an enormous relief program in Africa. They believe that a sudden, massive cash infusion could lift Africa out of poverty permanently. Tony Blair will discuss this in person with President Bush soon. The US position is that it takes time to spend money wisely, and that a sudden cash infusion is likely to be poorly spent.

As I discussed in my post, "Musings on NATO," I think we need to find a way to change the geopolitical map in Africa. State boundaries need to be redrawn with an eye toward creating nation-states. Also, the allocation of African natural resources needs to be handled. When we get a sense of how that might progress, I think a targeted cash-infusion would be a good idea.

One of the problems is that Africa is not inherently that poor. The wealth is not spread evenly over the continent, however. Many African states are fairly wealthy, but contain terribly impoverished citizens of a nation other than the nation in charge of the government. Witness Sudan's need for aid, despite its oil wealth -- at a time when prices are high. We need to set-up institutional infrastructure for each nation to handle its own affairs, in its own interest. Then we can see about who needs money and who needs markets.