It’s important to distinguish between economic aid and public health aid. Economic aid seems to have failed to have any dramatic effects on per capita GDP, while public health aid has drastically extended lifespans and reduced infant mortality in Africa and elsewhere. Bill Easterly, the leading critic of ‘foreign aid’ spends hundreds of pages critiquing World Bank type economic aid and very briefly mentions that public health aid (one bright spot) has saved hundreds of millions of lives. It is the latter that groups like GiveWell and the Gates Foundation identify as offering value. Controlling malaria, tuberculosis, smallpox, etc offer very large benefits to the recipients, success is comparatively easy to measure, and are less subject to theft (thieves can only use so many malaria drugs).
Africans do mostly feed themselves. Most countries (and regions of the U.S., for that matter) don’t make their own medicines, they buy them. When will poor countries or people in poor countries buy all those drugs themselves in adequate quantity (although note that rich country governments paid for mass vaccination and treatment of infectious diseases, as well as eradication of disease vectors, since reducing infectious disease has big externalities and is a public good)? China and India have undergone significant development, but certainly Africa has some additional problems facing it. It looks unlikely that Africa will surge forward (although there has been some growth in the last decade) in a sustained way in the near future, but there remain various possibilities for change, and in the long-term technology should radically change the game.
It’s important to distinguish between economic aid and public health aid. Economic aid seems to have failed to have any dramatic effects on per capita GDP, while public health aid has drastically extended lifespans and reduced infant mortality in Africa and elsewhere. Bill Easterly, the leading critic of ‘foreign aid’ spends hundreds of pages critiquing World Bank type economic aid and very briefly mentions that public health aid (one bright spot) has saved hundreds of millions of lives. It is the latter that groups like GiveWell and the Gates Foundation identify as offering value. Controlling malaria, tuberculosis, smallpox, etc offer very large benefits to the recipients, success is comparatively easy to measure, and are less subject to theft (thieves can only use so many malaria drugs).
Good points. But when are they going to start feeding themselves and making their own medicines?
Africans do mostly feed themselves. Most countries (and regions of the U.S., for that matter) don’t make their own medicines, they buy them. When will poor countries or people in poor countries buy all those drugs themselves in adequate quantity (although note that rich country governments paid for mass vaccination and treatment of infectious diseases, as well as eradication of disease vectors, since reducing infectious disease has big externalities and is a public good)? China and India have undergone significant development, but certainly Africa has some additional problems facing it. It looks unlikely that Africa will surge forward (although there has been some growth in the last decade) in a sustained way in the near future, but there remain various possibilities for change, and in the long-term technology should radically change the game.