"Make Poverty History is about ensuring that 2005 is the year that we will all rise to the challenge to end poverty."
Would that it were so. Unfortunately, for all its laudable aims, and the good works contemplated, it amounts to no more than feel-good ambulance chasing.
It will remain that way until recognition that 2005 is the year of the human rabbit: as many, or perhaps more, humans have been brought into life on this planet as in any one previous year - some 80 millions. And most of the newly-arrived were in places with less than desirable conditions for their nurture.
While such recognition is deliberately avoided, the laudable ambulance chasers will be contemplating even more desperate situations the following year. The same will apply to all subsequent years. Ah, but they will feel a rosy glow coming on for doing all those good works.

Yep, this is all about keeping a bunch of folk wrapped tightly in their warm-and-fuzzies.

"It is pessimism, scepticism and cynicism that are the three worst enemies of the global anti-poverty agenda"

With which I profoundly disagree. I see those enemies as naivety, blinkered thinking and the firm unshakeable belief that emotion is an adequate substitute for logic.

Mr Hewitt blithely states - in a somewhat backhanded defence of third world corruption - "yet few people are clamouring for US corporations to be denied further taxpayer funded assistance until they can demonstrate they are corruption-free." Has the chap not heard of Sarbanes-Oxley? Does he not read the press, which is filled to the brim with stories on new regulations to enforce proper governance on businesses everywhere? Yet there still isn't a similar groudswell of protest at the destination and use of the billions the developed world has already poured into the pockets of their favourite overseas dictators.

Once we screen out the waffle, we are left with three relatively concrete proposals: "more and better aid, debt relief and fairer trade".

Point one is that if aid were "better", it is unlikely we would need "more". A friend of mine tells me new stories every week of how a charity organization he is associated with that is transforming villages in Africa through micro-capital projects - a dam here, an agricultural consultancy there, assistance to set up cottage-industry projects etc. - is working well.

It is a privately-funded operation, which is probably at the root of its success - once governments get involved, they will only recognize other governments as proper recipients. Anything else would be disrespectful of the receiving nation, wouldn't it?

Point two, debt relief, is a two-edged sword. Private capital will dry up, and any new public funds will come with strings - usually tied to the economic benefit of the donor nation.

Fairer trade is the best idea, only this will require every developed country to stop hiding behind its own tariff walls, or subsidising its own industries. Hear those pigs a-flying?

Pessimistic? Sceptical? Cynical? Moi? You bet.

Andrew spends much of his article trying to take the focus away from corruption , but fails to give good reasons why it is so much less of an issue than the weak historical influences he proposes. His primary causes are weaker - like most of the 3rd world Africa has a history of colonialism, Cold War politics, wars etc, and it takes a long bow to blame the continent’s poverty on the depredations of slavery in West Africa 200-400 years ago.

Government corruption and incompetence are worldwide problems and are far from being the only cause of African poverty, but I’m yet to see anyone mount a good argument as to why they are not currently the biggest addressable cause of poverty in Africa. We can’t rewrite history, replenish natural resources, eliminate microbes, or change the climate in Africa, but we can try to make sure our aid is properly directed and spent.

Its no surprise that the organisations who are handing out the aid seem to be the main ones who clamber for more and don’t want to identify corruption and incompetence as a primary problem – their distribution of aid can play a direct role in fuelling them. Some large charities seem to be more focussed on collecting funds and making their donors feel good about themselves than really trying to address the root causes of poverty.

No balanced analsysis could credibly suggest that corrupt practices in African states are solely responsible for the continent's plight.

Other factors are also at work, including several identified in the piece under discussion.

But an important one is simply bad decision making by many African governments - not always due to corruption but often to poor judgement.

Recently I saw a program on ABC or SBS comparing Ghana (Africa) with Malaysia (SE Asia). Both achieved independence from the British colonial power in the same year. Since then, however, their paths have diverged markedly. Malaysia is hardly corruption-free, but nevertheless has prospered where Ghana has languished. The main reason - bad decisions in Ghana, better ones in Malaysia.

Such decisions compound with corruption (where present) and western rapaciousness (ditto) to drag states down into the abyss. But if decisions were better, such states would at least have better prospects.

Mhoram

It would be a naïve comment which would presume African Nations are solely to blame for their national poverty. It would be, likewise, naïve to suggest that the plight of African Nations is down to ex-Afro influences alone.

It is, likewise, naïve to compare the likes of Bernie Ebbers to some corrupt African Official – especially when Bernie Ebbers

1 has been found guilty of criminal offences and is suffering the penalty for his crimes whilst those African Officials continue in their roles with impunity despite the corruption.

2 Criminals, like Bernie Ebbers actions impacted most directly upon comparatively wealthier private individuals who are far less vunerable than people living hand to mouth from charity and aid boxes.

As I mentioned on another thread, making the world poverty-proof would most likely be resolved by the old colonial powers wresting authority back from the corrupt national governments. However, I do not think that solution would wear too well with much of the underdeveloped world.

No one can have it both ways and I for one get bored and irritated by (presumably) well-meaning do-gooders demanding the developed nations disadvantage themselves for the benefit of the developing nations, when all that translates to is subsidising some tribal despots Swiss Bank Account.

Ultimately we all need to accept some responsibility for our circumstances. I see that as a well adopted philosophy among the developed west – and a characteristic almost totally ignored elsewhere. Such accountability / responsibility is at the heart of the development and advancement of nations. Its absence in Africa explains more than anything else why so many African Nations remain “Basket Cases” – the result of institutionalised welfare aid.