December 16, 2005
The Novelist’s Burden
By Steve Radelet
Paul Theroux has written an entertaining but misguided screed against Bono and foreign aid in general in yesterday’s New York Times titled The Rock Star’s Burden (login required)
Those of us who committed ourselves to being Peace Corps teachers in rural Malawi more than 40 years ago are dismayed by what we see on our return visits and by all the news that has been reported recently from that unlucky, drought-stricken country. But we are more appalled by most of the proposed solutions.
I am not speaking of humanitarian aid, disaster relief, AIDS education or affordable drugs. Nor am I speaking of small-scale, closely watched efforts like the Malawi Children’s Village. I am speaking of the “more money” platform: the notion that what Africa needs is more prestige projects, volunteer labor and debt relief. We should know better by now. I would not send private money to a charity, or foreign aid to a government, unless every dollar was accounted for – and this never happens. Dumping more money in the same old way is not only wasteful, but stupid and harmful; it is also ignoring some obvious points.
Theroux sets up the usual straw man, asserting that people are arguing for more resources blindly disbursed in the same old way. But of course not a single soul is arguing for that strategy. The question that all are struggling with is how to make it work more effectively. Even our friend Jeff Sachs, perhaps the best-known advocate for more money, is calling for dramatic changes in how the money is used — witness his Millennium Villages Project which is anything but “the same old way.” Theroux also makes the usual mistake of citing Botswana as a country that succeeded without aid, when in fact it was one of the largest recipients. More importantly, his line of argument is blissfully unaware of the real debates now underway about how the system might be improved. It’s too bad that such a persuasive writer has merely muddied the waters.
December 18, 2005 at 5:05 pm
Although Theroux’s data on Botswana may be suspect and his solution insufficient, his overall complaint does describe a critical flaw in the “conventional” development model.
During my field research with groups in Africa and South America (both during and prior to my current position as a graduate student in MIT’s Department of Political Science) I was often frustrated with the overall outcome of the development projects I observed. Lots of dialogue, lots of money spent; little lasting impact for the broader populations. I will admit that I was (and still am) frustrated by many of the same things that he describes in his column. As you mention, though, there are indeed other alternatives besides simply leaving these countries to their own devices.
My time here at MIT has allowed me to examine insights culled from my fifteen (-plus) years of experience working on humanitarian or scholarly projects addressing problems in the developing world. To detail what I have discovered, I wrote up a short scholarly paper for MIT Prof. Nazli Choucri that spells out the/a true root of the same problems Theroux elucidates so well. It also shows why microcredit projects, such as those carried out by India’s Grameen bank, do not suffer from the same problem.
As a caveat to any potential readers, there are bits of the paper that have moderately nasty-looking math, but the math’s role is really just to substantiate the presence of the tragic flaw I describe. Skipping the math and reading the examples that demonstrate it should work just fine.
It’s something on the order of 10 pages long; the paper is available at the following URL, which was also pasted into the section above this.
http://web.mit.edu/jdseale/www/DocumentBucket/
Best regards,
+>Josiah Seale
Indentured Graduate Student
MIT Department of Political Science
December 24, 2005 at 1:14 pm
Grameen Bank is based in Bangldesh not in India. There are many replications of Grameen model in India though.
April 28, 2006 at 1:44 pm
I just saw that I never replied to this. Thanks for the correction; the paper identifies the Grameen Bank as being Bangladeshi, but I apparently did credit India for it here. I stand humbly corrected: please accept my sincerest apologies.
Best regards,
+>Josiah Seale