Jeffrey Sachs, Columbia University Economist and more importantly special advisor to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, states it this way in his LA Times editorial millions are dying because of American Policy. It is a myth states Sachs that the corrupt and mis-management of Africa’s kleptocracies keep it from being able to support more aid. It is a myth, he says, that additional U.S. aid would be squandered.

Okay, Independent Sources has given time to Mr. Sachs’ viewpoints, now here are ours. First, we will note that it is a myth that the UN doesn’t have a strong anti-American bias so we’re not surprised that Mr. Annan selected an economist who shares his anti-American perspective on Africa’s problems.

Second, we noticed that Mr. Sachs does not cite Zimbabwe in his editorial but we would be interested for his comment what exactly one can do, short of forcing out strongman Robert Mugabe, with a country whose leadership adopted racist land seizure policies driving the country into a food crisis? The Zimbabwe situation is quite analogous to the starvation and food crises of Ukraine and other parts of the Soviet Union during the forced collectivization under Joseph Stalin. No doubt had Mr. Sachs been around at that time he would have been pointing the finger a the U.S. for that as well. Notwithstanding Mr. Sachs claims otherwise, you don’t solve the problem without removing the causes. In Zimbabwe that includes Robert Mugabe, and in other African nations it is other strongmen, warlords, criminals, etc.

We agree that no one with a conscience can ignore the plight of Africans, and there are in fact a few things with which we agree with Mr. Sachs including his belief that emergency food distribution is misguided. Half of the money (that which isn’t stolen) gets eaten up by transportation costs.The money would do so much better being focused on roads, clean water programs, and malaria control that could help solve the long-term hunger problem and not just put a temporary band-aid on them.

However, unlike Sachs, we think the most positive step that the G8 can take is to stop the farm subsidies that make it impossible for African agriculture to compete in rich-country markets. These farm subsidiaries are the most damaging aspects of US (and EU) policies vis-a-vis Africa. According to the Economist:
Agreeing on Africa, up to a point | Economist.com(subscription may be required)

Yet there is one step that rich countries could take that would help Africans in both well-governed and poorly-governed states: curbing the agricultural subsidies and health-and-safety regulations that keep African products out of rich-country markets. The current structure of agricultural protections not only hurts poor African farmers, but also, by levying disproportionate tariffs on many processed goods such as ground coffee, helps keep poor countries selling low on the value chain. This leaves their already-weak economies extremely vulnerable to swings in raw commodity prices.

If Mr. Sachs really wants to to make a dent in the African problem, then in addition to figuring out how to turn kleptocracies into democracies he and his UN buddies should focus on how to get the U.S. and the EU off of their rich agricultural protections–an effort we would support. But this is not going to be an easy sell. For every Live Eight concert that tries to help African hunger there will be another Farm Aid concert perpetuating it.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 13th, 2005 at 8:15 am by Insider and is filed under Los Angeles Times, Media, Politically Correct ... and stupid. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.