Friday, September 27, 2002
Africa and development: An excellent oped this morning on why current development policies are failing in Africa. Hub Blog recently spent six months in Africa, using Cameroon as a base for continent-wide travel. This much is clear: The Chad-Cameroon oil pipeline is turning into a disaster. Africa simply doesn’t need this big-picture type of development assistance. What it needs is more slow, deliberate “micro” development policies -- electrification, village by village, at a slow and steady pace; health care improvements, clinic by clinic; education assistance, school building by school building. But what the IMF and World Bank constantly strive for are the magic-wand, all-encompassing, we’ll-solve-all-the-problems-at-once solutions. They do more harm than good -- and the big dollars involved only increase the opportunity for massive corruption. When will we learn?
