Jeffrey Sachs has become something of a force in international development circles over the past decade. As special advisor to the UN’s Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, former director of the UN’s Millennium Development Project, and a decorated economist at Columbia University, Sachs certainly has much to commend him. And his recognition has been no less outstanding: the publication of his runaway messianic bestseller, The End of Poverty, bagged him his second showing on Time‘s list of the world’s top 100 most influential people.
In 2005 Sachs published a synopsis of his core ideas in a much-vaunted Time Magazine article titled — as boldly as his book — The End of Poverty: [http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1034738,00.html]. Beautifully written and convincingly argued, this piece still stands as one of the best distillations of his policy propositions to date. But behind the compelling rhetoric — much of which is spot on — some of his basic assumptions about Africa’s poverty warrant serious interrogation.
But first, the good. Sachs opens by offering a tragic run-down of African poverty statistics, a litany of emergencies that can’t but prick our consciences. While it might be tempting to retort that this constitutes an unfair representation of Africa and erases the agency of Africans, I think he does well to sound the alarm, for there is indeed an emergency. And, fortunately, Sachs is thoughtful enough to point out that the poverty of Africans is not somehow due to their allegedly innate inferiority, and dismisses outright the claim that we should blame Africa’s problems on laziness and corruption. He also does well to recognise the troubling legacies of colonial rule and the Cold War, and notes that debts imposed by Western “development” agencies continue to shackle African economies by draining government coffers.
Strangely enough, though, Sachs doesn’t let these insights about ongoing political and economic plunder inform the solutions that he proposes for Africa’s poverty. Instead, he calls on Western governments to assume the role of saviour by marshalling sufficient aid to help Africans up the “ladder of development”. This strikes me as an ironic distortion of history. How strange that Westerners — be they celebrities, development technocrats, or child sponsors — so easily embrace the role of saviour when so much of the 20th century has seen Europe and the United States deeply entangled in the role of plunderer. The problem here is that Sachs calls on us to think within a paradigm of aid when we should be thinking within a paradigm of justice.
Sachs’ proposals for the end of poverty focus on beefing up and streamlining aid by encouraging Western governments to keep their promises of charity. He claims that Africa needs just a paltry 0,7% of US GDP in aid to eliminate extreme poverty in Africa. This money would go to what Sachs calls the “Big Five” of African development interventions:
1. Boosting agriculture with new technologies, fertilisers, and pesticides.
2. Improving basic health through antimalarial bednets and essential medicines.
3. Investing in education through free school meals and expanded vocational training.
4. Bringing power to villages for water pumps, grain mills, and school computers.
5. Providing clean water and sanitation to prevent disease.
Sachs holds that these interventions would provide the necessary conditions that Africa requires to overcome structural poverty and get on to the first rung of the “development ladder”. But while no one would disagree that his proposals are important and well-intentioned, it strikes me that they obscure far more than they reveal about the reasons for Africa’s poverty. Working within his charity paradigm, Sachs completely dismisses the notion that the problem has to do with the global political economy; in fact, he self-consciously avoids discussing politics altogether. This perspective leads him to perceive Africa’s poverty as a static state, a consequence of their “unlucky” inheritance of an unkind climate conducive to the spread of tropical diseases. But the poverty of Africa is no more “natural” or “given” than is the wealth of the West; the two are intimately interconnected. The problem is not that Africans cannot reach the first rung of the development ladder themselves; the problem is that they are actively prevented from doing so. For more than a century Africa has been and continues to be purposefully underdeveloped.
As part of his work with the Millennium Development Project, Sachs sought to discover the reasons for Africa’s poverty by visiting rural villages where he personally witnessed the ravages of hunger, Aids, and malaria up close in the lives of people. His experience with poor farmers and undernourished children led him to think up his “Big Five” solutions. The problem is that his choice of fieldsites confined him to only one side of the cause-effect equation: the villagers taught him much about the effects of structural poverty but little about its causes. Instead of visiting villages, he should have dropped in on the boardrooms of in-country multinational corporations, where he could have channeled his charitable energies into exposing the loopholes in their mineral contracts and demanding that they restructure their wage standards. Take the oil-rich Niger Delta, for example. Seventy percent of Nigerians in the region live in extreme poverty, subsisting on less than a dollar a day. By contrast, the starting salary for a Chevron engineer in the area tops $175 000, and the company has walked away with millions in revenue already. In the context of such vicious plunder, Sachs’ plan to save dying Africans by handing out bednets and fertilisers amounts to a slap in the face.
Instances like this can be multiplied ad nauseum. Take the Democratic Republic of Congo. Canadian negotiators recently convinced the DRC government to barter away mineral concessions worth about $120-billion to China in exchange for a paltry $6-billion of infrastructural development. Why are the Congolese people so desperately poor when they’re literally sitting on a goldmine? Because — as with European colonialism — their mineral profits are being siphoned by First-World corporations that can get away without paying them the real price of the commodities they extract or the labour that digs them up. Africans don’t need aid, they need fairer trade arrangements.
But back to Sachs. Let’s just imagine for a moment that his dream came true, and the US did in fact commit to giving 0,7% of its GDP in aid for education, healthcare, agriculture, and so on. That would be wonderful indeed. But it wouldn’t stop the US, Europe, and China from plundering many times more than that amount in artificially cheap African labour and resources each year. In effect, then, Sachs’ plan means dispensing band-aids with one hand and vicious beatings with the other. This strategy will almost inevitably leave Africans shackled to their poverty for centuries to come, bednets or no bednets.
According to Sachs, the international donor community should be thinking “round-the-clock” about how to roll out his “Big Five” interventions all across Africa. But with the broader context of Africa’s plight in mind, perhaps they should instead be thinking round-the-clock about how to halt the plunder of Africa’s resources by Western corporations and government actors. And that’s something they can do without ever leaving their shores. In terms of concrete strategies, here are five alternative proposals for ending poverty in Africa.
1. Forgive debt without economic conditions. The history of African indebtedness to Western banks is deeply troubling. After having been ravaged by colonial mis-development for nearly a century, newly independent African nations desperate for funds sought aid from the World Bank and the IMF under neoliberal conditionalities that suffocated their economies. Today, most African countries spend vastly more of their budgets on servicing their debts than they do on healthcare and education, for example. In a context of relentless debt, aid simply makes no sense.
2. Protect resource commons. The rich natural resources and minerals of each African country should be considered the common property of its citizens. Multinational corporations that exploit these resources should be made to give back a fair share of revenues according to publicly transparent and democratically ratified contracts and concessions. Models of this exist already: the US state of Alaska, for example, owns all its natural resources and distributes extraction revenues through rural development initiatives and annual cheques to each citizen. The yield from fairer revenue sharing would be many times more than the aid that Africa gets today.
3. Instate an international minimum wage law. Multinational corporations that seek cheap and abundant African labour should be made to pay wages pegged to the cost of local basic living standards. This should be recognised as a matter of fundamental human rights. The US and Europe expect companies to pay their citizens minimum wages; why should they not insist on the same treatment for Africans? If such a law were extended internationally, this would eliminate the “race to the bottom” effect that comes from seeking competitive advantage in countries that allow for easy labour exploitation.
4. Democratise international trade. The World Trade Organisation is controlled almost entirely by First-World economies whose representatives hold all the bargaining power in the negotiation of trade agreements, most of which are concluded in closed rooms from which representatives from developing nations are barred. If my conversations with Africans have yielded one refrain, it’s that they would prefer a fair voice at the WTO over any amount of Western aid. A more democratic WTO would pave the way for collectively ratified import/export quotas that would distribute foreign direct investment to where it’s needed most. The West casts itself as the messiah of democracy to the rest of the world; it’s time to put the rhetoric into action. The same goes for the United Nations, where powerful countries hold disproportionate decision-making power and exercise veto rights over the wishes of the General Assembly. Africans deserve the right to participate meaningfully in the decisions made by international institutions.
5. Reduce greenhouse gas emissions. While First-World economies such as the United States and China pump the overwhelming majority of the world’s carbon emissions into the atmosphere, it is underdeveloped countries that bear the brunt of the burden of climate change. Rising tides, drought, and desertification are responsible for much of Africa’s poverty today. First-World economies should have to bear the real costs of their industrialisation through compensation to those who suffer its effects. This is not a matter of aid, but of justice, and an important first step in creating disincentives for pollution. There is nothing “natural” about the hostile climates that many Africans have been faced with recently; desertification and drought can be stopped.
Implementing these changes would require enormous political will and moral courage. After all, the sort of solutions I’ve proposed would run up against Western economic interests, and would most likely cut into the profits of those who presently pride themselves on their philanthropy. But what if Sachs, Bono, Madonna and the rest could manage to channel the massive momentum and money that they have mobilised for charity to tackle instead the structural issues I’ve listed above? Then real change would happen, and rapidly. Only with these broader interventions in place will Sachs’ vision for an end to poverty be realised.
I have argued here for a shift in the mentality of charitable Western donors from a paradigm of aid to a paradigm of justice. No one has captured this sentiment better than Frantz Fanon, one of Africa’s greatest intellectuals. On the question of aid, he offers the following very pointed words: “Colonialism and imperialism have not settled their debt to us once they have withdrawn their flag and their police force from our territories. The wealth of the imperialist nations is also our wealth. Europe is literally the creation of the Third World. The riches which are choking it are those plundered from the underdeveloped peoples. So we will not accept aid for the underdeveloped countries as “charity”. Such aid must be considered the final stage of a dual consciousness — the consciousness of the colonised that it is their due, and the consciousness of the capitalist powers that effectively they must pay up.”
Excellent article.
If the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation would channel some of their billions into sustainable agricultural practices instead of promoting geneically modified (GM) crops it would make a massive difference.
GM crops are harmful to human health and the environment and undermine food security. They will reinforce economic colonialism and dependence on the first world.
Thanks for verbalising what I did not have a language for when I (attempted to) read Sach’s book ‘Common wealth: economics for a crowded planet’ – because I simply don’t understand Economics. I could not fault the remedies offered, so I simply put the book down and feel troubled every time I see it. Troubled that I can be so dense that economics simply does not make sense to me despite years of trying to understand it.
You so clearly explain how the problem lies with the paradigm. With a sigh of relief I realise that its not that I don’t ‘get’ economics, its that injustice galls me. Ignoring structural violence and doing good deeds to those affected by it, is equal to what Chomsky calls ‘making happy oppressed people’.
I guess its his internalised superiority and blindness coupled with sincere caring that troubled me… because its so hard to reduce to understandable language that does not offend. And it does not help that very progressive people think that this is the new bible.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2010/feb/19/climate-change-sceptics-science
A recent article by Mr Sachs. One that gives an insight into his way of thinking and operating.
It reveals what a devious orator he is and how poor his scientific grasp is. (slimy is the old only word i can find for that piece of “journalism”, aka special interest representation)
The article is rife with mistruths, distortions and plain old lies, and is basically an “ad hominem” attack on anyone he deems a “denier”. A group including many distinguished scientists.
Certainly not someone i would ever wish to be caught quoting.
peace
PS, concur entirely with gist of your article and it’s conclusions.
This is a well thought out and well written piece of work, I appreciate what the author has to say, and whole-heartedly agree. I would like to see us standing up for ourselves as a thrid world people and saying that this is now ENOUGH. The first world has raped our continent for long enough, and it’s time for 3rd word conciousness, for us to resucue ourselves and stand up for our people. I’m angry at what has happened and how the developed world continues to make it look like they are the good guys
So, if we understand you correctly, its all the fault of colonialism, multinational exploitation, debt due to the West – which was really just another form of theft, to enslave Africans. Right so, that explains it then – and I was beginning to think possibly Africans were somehow implicated in their own poverty, through kleptocratic political systems. Jezz how wrong can you be, propaganda obviously fed to us by the Economist, IMF, EU, USA, China and the UN, Chevron, Nestle and Shell. Evict them all I say – it may get a lot worse before it gets better.
Good, valid points. However, you have missed the big one – the average African government is so corrupt they make our own look positively honest. Why do you think mineral rights are given away at such appallingly low rates? The obvious answer is bribery and corruption, and lots of it. Ask anyone who has traveled extensively in Africa – money speaks very loudly indeed. The Sachs/Bono type solution has been tried to some degree – and has failed in many cases simply because of corrupt officials skimming off as much as they could before handing it to the next set of scavengers. What guarantee is there that anything will change?
Wow! Thank you for the comprehnsive summation of the root causes of the problems facing the developing world
I agree fully with all of your solutions. As you point out though, the implentation of your suggestions will not arise without European and North American buy-in. I would like to hear how you fell that will be attined – including reformatting the veto system within the UN Security Council.
that should be: I would like to heat how you FEEL the buy-in will be attained
Absolutely spot on! And China is the worst and most powerfully growing new coloniser, buying up land and resources, which it then uses Chinese labour to work, further depriving the communities it has bought from. When you consider the wealth of Areva, Monsanto, Mittal Steel etc, never mind the oil companies and how little they pay the people who do the backbreaking work for them, you realise that these multinationals are the new slave masters, not just in Africa, but throughout the southern hemisphere.
What is that in your bourgeois glass, Jason? Wine or vinegar? Can’t be wine. It is sour … no longer Virgin-ia.
I am so glad I am not one of your students. Your “interrogation” may be plausible or not. Relative plausibility is not the problem with your piece. The problem is that it contains nothing new … nothing interesting … nothing except, perhaps, a dash of Green Discourse to decorate a banal version of theories of imperialism, dependency & their reincarnations.
But it is not your fault. You suffer from the virus carried by much of 20th Century Structuralist Sociology (and its derivatives): Extreme Externalisation of Locus of Control.
Excellent article. Minerals, oil, cheap labour, multi-national corporations, democracy and corrupt African leaders. A profitable, criminal and disastrous cocktail. Let us hold our leaders accountable – to us.
What a bunch of absolute hogwash! I have no idea what Sachs’s motivation is here – or maybe its blunt ignorance – but this is a one way ticket for the world to go to hell in a handbasket.
Question: is there poverty in Africa? Answer: YES. No one can deny that.
But to lay the blame for that poverty at the door of “colonisers and corporations” is not only short-sighted, it also robs Africa of a very valuable context: accountability. You see, its not OUR fault…
What amazes me is how people with supposedly high educations and more than their fair share of IQ points, can possibly equate “profit” with “plundering”. The dreadful, dreadful irony being that everybody is FOR poverty-alleviation but AGAINST profits… huh? Get with it people, the opposite of poverty is wealth. If we strive for wealth, why do we hate the people who have achieved it?
If we want to alleviate poverty, we first need a mental paradigm shift, one that does not vilify the rich. One that does not demonise the captains of industry, the builders of infrastructure and the employers of millions. Strive for that – don’t resent it and then expect the same people you resent to give you unlimited handouts under the guise of “justice” – its a bloody joke!
“Resentment at the achievements of others is the hallmark of the second-rater”.
There are lots of potential in Africa itself to overcome poverty. What stands in the way is the cleverly dumb mindset of paternalism and know-all on the part of those who think they’ve made it.
Let them invest in projects that will impact on themselves as well. Giving without being changed is a fallacy.
I agree with 99% of the article, but debt should only be canceled when 1 term government terms are instituted throughout Africa…
Good article!
The “global north” (rich developed countries) really has no clue as to the approach to solving problems in the “global south”, (i.e. Africa, as well as South America, parts of Asia, etc.). Too often, adopting approaches from those countries are not only inappropriate and make the problems worse, as well as instill the idea that Africans need others to save them as they cannot save themselves. It is arrogant that these people from the global north think they have all the answers to our problems in the first place!!! In fact, Africans need to solve Africa’s problems themselves in an African way – things will never get better if we think only outside help can make things better. A first start would be redrawing the map of the continent. It is not right that the colonial boundaries still exist, and only the names of the countries have changed. The boundaries were never drawn in terms of natural divisions and functionality, but rather as a way to divide up resources between European colonial powers – and after colonialism result in dysfunctional states. Second, stop capital flight (in terms of foreign multinational corporations taking our resources for fractions of what they are truly worth). We have the most natural resources in the world; by effect, we should also be the wealthiest continent! Third, education education education – so people can help themselves! All else (jobs, housing, eliminating poverty, good healthcare) flows from this.
In a Utopian world, highly plausible.
But I think you’ve oversimplified the issues and the people you’d be dealing with.
I think the very fact that Africa has been allowed to think of itself as a deserving beneficiary is 90% of the problem.
Until we get off our butts and do things for ourselves, nothing will change.
How long can we blame colonialism? The Brits and French had to get over Roman occupation and Europe had to overcome the 40-year wars. The Brits (just because it first comes to mind) also had to get over serfdom.
African slaves were often sold to interlopers by Africans and our minerals and oil would still be below the ground had foreigners not noticed it.
The fact that we now know about these commodities is thanks to the original colonists. Whether we improve their value to us is really up to us and we let too many opportunities pass us by because we won’t think for ourselves or banish corruption.
I am convinced we actually prefer the handouts.
So what’s your point Cornelius van Oudorp? He’s offering solutions – and insight to those of us who don’t know what you are talking about. What would ‘internalising locus of control’ mean in this context – to balance the external locus (which surely you have to agree does exist?) Big up to this guy who dares to suggest solutions from the ivory tower – other than to be satisfied only with intellectual duelling and barbed insults to show off perceived intellectual superiority ivory tower to ivory tower, conference after conference.
@Gerry – you make a valid point because not all wealthy people are bastards and not all poor people are saints. However, it is naive to believe that if everyone pursued the kind of wealth you have, all will be well with the world. Don’t be so defensive – you have to agree that the extremes of wealth and the undue power & influence the wealthy have, makes nonsense of equality of conditions and opportunity. The world is structured to favour the wealthy – help change that structure so that everyone can have enough … and watch crime and other social ills drop … if the Scandinavian countries are anything to go by…
Oh good grief, could everyone please just stop ignoring the elephant in the room?! Population control is at the root of the solution. “If you can’t feed ‘em, don’t breed ‘em”. ‘Nuff said.
Scrap ownership and put everything on lease terms of appropriate length depending on the investment/return. That way the enterprising get rewarding without being able to pass on more than a leg-up to the next generation. Each country effectively gets its resources continually returned. Intellectual property (patents) have a finite lifespan, why should physical property be any different? If fact the latter was often obtained in a less entrepreneurial/”worthy” way! Furthermore, end-of-lease terms could stipulate full rehabilitation and lease terms, equitable management of the business…
Very well argued critique of liberal attempts to paper of deep structural flaws of current paradigms of economic developpment. I don’t hear you say that its plunder only that’s behind Africa’s abject poverty, but that Sach’s analysis is incomplete for failing the recognize the significant role of global transformations in marginalization of Africa. For this reason, even well-governed African states like Botswana languish in poverty. The problem is some of us who refuse to see the big picture and remain stuck in surreal binary views: profit is inherently good even if it comes from theft and poverty is lack of skills and ideas for profit-making. The world is complex and so is global inequality. Thanks a lot for resuscitating a perspective that’s sidelined by mainstream neo-liberal agenda. Thanks!!!
mr Sachs points are clearly from a first world perspective. Can’t blame him, they pay him.
Your five points are probably close to a long term solution to Africa’s problem(s) from an economic viewpoint.
In the middle sits the problem of corruption of the collective African leadership. If you want, you can blame colonial practices for that.
The real question is: “how can we change that attitude into serious and honest leadership practices”???
Death penalty for proven corruption? Long jail terms for suspected corruption?
Solution number one – Family planning.
An exceptionally well written article. And many valid points regarding the plundering of African resources by western nations.
However, there is one serious flaw in the paradigm. The other side of the equation is the greed of African politicians. It beggars the question – Why do African politicians allow this plundering to continue? Surely they should be looking after the interests of their people first. Their primary objective should be the development of their own infrastructure that will benefit their people and provide a sustainable economy. This can be achieved by driving more favorable deals.
The simple answer is that the deals are sweetened, by the corporates, run by the west, to ensure that African politicians benefit handsomely by permitting these concessions as mentioned in the article.
Greed is a natural human trait. It will always be with us. That was what gave rise to colonialism in the first place. This is turn leads to competition. That will always be with us too. And the greed of African politicians will ensure that poverty is sustained in Africa. That, unfortunately, will also stay with us.
In a nutshell you have a brew of the rich western corporates, supported by their governments, striking deals with rich corrupt African politicians (benefiting from disorder) to serve their mutual interests. Is this likely to change? I don’t think so.
Idealogical paradigms don’t seem to cater for the real world dynamics.
All the items you mention: Health, water, agriculture, are instruments of power for tiny ruling elites to keep their people poor, while financing their mansions in Europe. Debt forgiveness will only allow kleptocratic leaders to run up yet more debts. If people cannot take power for themselves, no aid from outside will do anything.
In all human endevour/relationships there are things we do and things that others do that affect us. If we (or countries) only focus on the outside things then those things we can do will not be done and in 99% of cases (be it individuals, groups or countries) we will go backwards.
If Africa focussed most of its energies/politics on cleaning up its emdemic corruption and walking the talk of Ubuntu then its people (not governments) will rise up and as equals take on and negotiate better international deals with other governments, corporations and world bodies.
One little example of what Africa does wrong: know of a church based group who raised funds and expertise to drill water boreholes in villages in Mocambique so as to assist development and stop the women walking miles every day for water. All were successfully built and handed over. A year later on visiting the boreholes were taken over by the village strong man/men and the rest of the villages were extorted if they wanted water – some were resorting to doing the walking option.
This attitude/action needs to be stamped out at all levels right to the top or else Africans will never be liberated and rightfully take their place with dignity at all levels internationally.
Brent
Jason, I am very glad this morning to read your article. This argument, I have had many a times and the opponents will always call me denialist, etc.
Cornelius, don’t attact the man. He has said nothing but the truth. If Europe had not ran out of resources, colonialism would never had happened!
If they are not plundering Africa, why are the prices of commodities mostly set in London or NY. When was the last time when you needed to sell an article of yours that the buyer set the price for you?
There are structural issues that have to change, like Jason so correctly stated, if we are to break the cycle of poverty. One reason the world did not pannick when Mbeki (with his capatalist and market fundamentals approach) was ousted is because he was too much for African Rennaisance and Africa having a say in the world bodies. Go figure why!
Jason, thank you again.
Africa don’t need AID. It needs full control of its mineral assets, and good governance!
Also it needs European countries who plundered it to compensate for its loss…Britain owes my people Trillions in compensation but my country is paying the IMF and World Bank for the bullets bought to shoot its people!
Back to basics!
With that level of exploitation and double standards the best way for Africa is deal with its internal market and do business with itself. Africa needs cars, computers, software, medicines, food, clothing, oil but a bulk of these products are imports. Africa needs to trade with itself to satisfy that demand by closing import market.
A production quota system based on capability and capacity would be formulated. As an example RSA would produce automobiles, generators etc, Zambia would produce electrical consumables, Ghana would produce mobile phones, Zimbabwe would produce Food, software, computers, Nigeria, Libya would produce oil products etc and unprocessed products would not be exported. African states would be required to buy Africa and the good Europeans would buy their good products. The created quota system for African market would develop African technologies, engineers and would empower African people, the current over-reliance on the north for everything would take African technology and expertise back to iron age.
It is said that “There is only one thing Worse than being exploited by a capitalist’ – and that is not being exploited by one”
Moreover, those nations that kicked out all those colonialist who were deicated and became citizens of their new country, are now inviting ‘Foreign Direct Investment” – saying in effect -”Come and exloit our resources’
Jeremy Sachs is living in the old Industrial Age Paradigm of manufacture that has ended economically and environmentally for creating employment -which is replaced by the Information Age. Humankind has to evolve [ as J.C. Smuts predicted to a new awareness of greater self-reliance [ which Africa was before the Colonial Age ] and not to be depending on ‘Rights’ Revenge, entitlements and hand-outs
Good article ; also agree that a lot is shiphoned out of africa’s wealth and not recompensated accordingly including wages of the local workers.So why are the african nations allowing all of this to happen ? Is that because the democratic systems ( do we have them in africa????)do not check up on the elected leaders ??? …or is it that the majority of african countries are run by kleptocratic individuals that steal ,then steal more , are egocentric and dictatorial , allow and contribute to the spreading of corruption and lack of accountability of good governance and pretend to talk about that famigerated word called ubuntu, yes as if we have not seen it all what means throughout africa !!! who do you think you are fooling ?
Gerry:”What amazes me is how people with supposedly high educations and more than their fair share of IQ points, can possibly equate “profit” with “plundering”. Profit is a reasonable motivator for investment, but disproportional extraprofit earned by devious and illegal means, possibly aided and abetted by local corrupt poliicians is plunder. In other words, getting something for nothing.
In fact, after reading all blogs in this column,I am developing a certain affinity and even sympathy to Mugabe’s idea of “indigenization” of businesses and industries.