Sachs Ironies: Why Critics are Better for Foreign Aid than Apologists

Official foreign aid agencies delivering aid to Africa are used to operating with nobody holding them accountable for aid dollars actually reaching poor people. Now that establishment is running scared with the emergence of independent African voices critical of aid, such as that of Dambisa Moyo. Jeffrey Sachs, the world's leading apologist and fund-raiser for the aid establishment, has responded here with a ferocious personal attack on Moyo and myself, "Aid Ironies."

Allow me to defend myself (I'll let the formidable Moyo handle herself). It's not so much my pathetic need to correct slanders, as if anybody cared. Sachs' desperation shows when he peddles what I will show he knew were falsehoods. Besides, the sight of two middle-aged white men mud-wrestling on African aid may entertain the audience.

Sachs accuses me of such a hard heart as to deny "$10 in aid to an African child for an anti-malaria bed net." Sachs offers: "Here are some of the most effective kinds of aid efforts: support for peasant farmers to help them grow more food, childhood vaccines... roads, .. safe drinking water...."

Sachs likes a lot more another writer whom he quoted in his book Common Wealth:
"Put the focus back where it belongs: get the poorest people in the world such obvious goods as the vaccines,... the improved seeds, the fertilizer, the roads, the boreholes, the water pipes...." Wait, that was me!

Sachs was earlier quoting from my book, The White Man's Burden, which far from wanting to deny an African child bed nets, denounces the tragedy of aid impunity, in which "The West spent $2.3 trillion and still had not managed to get four-dollar bed nets to poor families."

Sachs complained that "most Americans know little about the many crucially successful aid efforts, because Moyo, Easterly, and others lump all kinds of programs -- the good and the bad -- into one big undifferentiated mass." Sachs again prefers another writer whom he quoted in Common Wealth: "Foreign aid likely contributed to some notable successes on a global scale, such as dramatic improvement in health and education indicators in poor countries."

You guessed it -- that was me again, illustrating how aid COULD work if only aid agencies were accountable for their actions.

Sachs denounces my callousness when I myself benefited from a government scholarship for grad school: "Easterly mentioned his receipt of NSF support in the same book in which he denounces aid," and now I am "trying to pull up the ladder for those still left behind." Either this is an intentional falsehood or Sachs inexplicably failed to read the next paragraph in the book: "Could you give many more scholarships to poor students? ...Could you give the poor "aid vouchers" that they could spend on aid agency services of their choice?"

Sachs suffers from the same acute shortage of truthiness as did the Bush/Cheney administration, all of whom have contributed to the current climate of fear and intimidation in foreign aid. Any aid critic is immediately denounced as a heartless baby-killer, which protects the establishment from the accountability so badly needed to see aid reach the poor.

My colleagues and I at Aid Watch have documented in recent months such examples of aid impunity as:

--USAID was caught red-handed by its own Inspector General mismanaging one multi-million project in Afghanistan so badly that millions disappeared without a trace, and among the few tangible outputs was a bridge, reported as "completed," that was so life-threatening that nobody could use it.

--The World Bank's own evaluation unit criticized them for having only 2 percent of its communicable diseases projects focus on TB, despite the huge mortality from this disease and the availability of effective treatments. For good measure, the World Bank also cut nutritional projects in half, despite the huge benefits from cheap and effective nutritional supplements for children so malnourished that they will suffer permanent brain damage.

--the World Health Organization faked malaria statistics to make false claims of victories against malaria in the New York Times. The WHO later withdrew and then contradicted the numbers, but never issued a public retraction. How to know when and where to fight malaria if the numbers are faked?

None of these organizations suffered any consequences for their misbehavior. Only poor people suffer the consequences, and they are powerless.

As an alternative to the impunity of the establishment that Sachs defends, the emergence of a new wave of independent aid critics in Africa is most welcome. This new wave includes many more besides the remarkable Dambisa Moyo -- such as the Ugandan journalist Andrew Mwenda and two extraordinary colleagues of mine at NYU: the Ghanaian economist Yaw Nyarko and the Beninese political scientist Leonard Wantchekon. Instead of Sachs' attempt to shout down critics with slanders and falsehoods, let's have a climate of open debate in which we learn from past mistakes, the guilty suffer, the good are rewarded, and we can hope that aid does start to reach the poor.

Comments

[Michael Strong]

Hurrah for Bill Easterly, one of the great moral heroes of our time!

Sachs manages to combine absurd ideas with a personal arrogance and vindictiveness that makes him insufferable.

The folllowing articles focus on Easterly-consistent solutions to eliminating African poverty, supporting "searchers" rather than "planners,"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/magatte-wade-and-michael-strong/africa-the-new-edge-the-n_b_179225.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/magatte-wade/beyond-the-romance-of-mic_b_207392.html

[William Easterly - Huffpost Blogger]

Reply to NourCA: I'm sorry Sachs, Moyo, and I are frustrating you with our ongoing debate. But debate is what makes both science and politics progress -- there should be a competition of many different ideas, and may the best ideas win!

[solodafox]

It is great that a woman with African heritage has raised her voice into the debate about the problems surrounding AID. The problem is there seems to be a lot of baggage surrounding her motives to argue against aid. She needs to answer those before she gets the trust. As she admits, there is not much new/novel stuff in her book. What is written in her book has been the policy/development agenda of governments such as Ethiopia. Dr. Dambiso needs to read what has been written/debated from the Ethiopian side before she mis-represents Primer Zenawi's position on this issue. He has been very clear for many years now about how aid should work. Even the suggestion about innovative ways to development and to declare “China is our friend” has been already in the policy books of the Revolutionary Democrats of Ethiopia. They have close relationship with China and against Dr. Dambiso's advise for Africa to copy Asia, the Revolutionary Democrats have declared Developmental state that is developmental and democratic ! Remember that the ideas that the Sachs of the world are promoting recently is partially the result of their experience with countries like Ethiopia and its leaders who have been helpful in pushing their belief about how the aid model should work. I remember attending NGOs conference in AddisAbaba in the early 90s and the main theme was how to use aid for development instead of for managing aid.

[Joel Ng]

The problem is state-to-state aid does not work when one state blatantly has other interests in mind than that of its people. Foreign inflows have to enter the economy to have a long-term effect, but the majority of aid does not

The propensity for unaccountable actions to get away via government-to-government relationships is very high. What happened in the 2000s regarding aid after the great 'good governance' drive was not that standards of accountability and transparency improved all across the board, but that standards of faking accountability and transparency (or stalling if all else fails) 'improved' all across the board, and Western governments are none the wiser

The solution to push towards a market-based allocation of foreign inflows has some merit - how much of China or India or Vietnam's growths have been due to foreign aid? The anti-aid rhetoric isn't actually all that new, and the principles have been around for a long time. No one would question the need for injection in investment/aid in the right areas to kickstart an economy. What really needs to be questioned is where this goes, and whether state-to-state 'aid' (it only becomes 'aid' because it's not a market transaction and comes cloaked with rhetoric about good intentions) is really the right vehicle for future interactions with emerging economies.

[David Grundy]

Dambisa Moyo has also responded to Sachs' obfuscating attacks:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dambisa-moyo/aid-ironies-a-response-to_b_207772.html

[NourCA]

Man, not even the sally aid people in this country can get along. I always agree with accountability and transparency; especially with tax payer money. But can't you two get along? What's the deal? I want you both to have a debate and have that debate posted on Huffington Post. I doubt any of your are in the business to not have effective aid reach the right people.

[alexandra hamilton]

So your point is then that foreign aid is not really about aiding people who need help or assistance but to enrich the helpers?
And your solutions is what? To cut-off the the aid entirely or do you intend to go after the fraudsters?
Maybe you would like to be more explicit about who those members of the aid 'establishment' are and who funds them?
I venture a guess, its the same rotten people who we find responsible for the current economic crisis.
That's the way capitalism works, Jeffrey knows that and by attacking you personally, he diverts attention from that fact.
Criticing the institutions that help is of little us - that's all poor people have to save them from total annihiliation. Going after the fraudsters and profiteers is the wise move here.
Expose them, if you are not doing that, you are hurting more than you help.

[Jason Houdek]

You may want to read his blog (Aid Watch), or the body of the article, before posing such pointed questions. Going after the fraudsters is exactly what he's doing, and he's given three poignant examples in the article. And if you read most of his work, (and again, the article) you'll find that he is not at all in favor of turning off the aid spigot--just holding accountable the people aiming it.

Part of the problem is that there is little explicit profiteering going on. The development establishment is a product of history and was born of a certain mentality. As such, it has evolved into dynamic, complex machine that influences the people working within and around it. Pick up a copy of Ferguson's "The Anti-Politics Machine" for an introduction into the workings of the development establishment and why even good intentions can lead to what seems like willful exploitation.

[nkhogan]

I have your book, but still need to read it. I've read one of Sach's books. So, I don't speak with all knowledge of the arguments and facts. However, as a former aid worker and someone writing about the ethics of humanitarian intervention and aid, the topic is near and dear to my heart.

I think you're right to be critical of the aid business and demand accountability and transparency. There is a lot that is flawed with the way in which aid is currently done. There are some fundamental ethical problems that need to be sorted out. I personally never give money anymore to any emergency crisis as I know the money will not go to those who need it most. I do try to find grassroots initiatives where possible in a crisis, but even then, I am skeptical that the aid goes to the people who need it most as so much of the money gets siphoned off in bribes to government officials in order to even do the project in the first place.

[Balzac]

There's a lot of finger-pointing and moral ambiguity in the business of aid in countries suffering lack of basic necessities.

I'll explain why and how to clear things up. The moral ambiguity is mostly subjective and its on the part of those who can't quite see eye to eye with the people they're aiding.

Sachs has some very basic points I'd like to reinforce, but I can't comment on his criticisms directed at you and others.

Sachs was right to call attention to the fact that some people have an attitude like Marie Antoinette.

The idea that it's ok to let some people starve for the sake of allowing "self-correction" of supply/demand for food is inhumane.

We're all connected socially, so that laze faire response to a humanitarian crisis is unacceptable. This is not merely a market, it's an emergency.

There is a scarcity of resources of all kinds, so it is easy for people to begin to blame each other for the systemic failures.

The origin of the problem appears to be intellectual conceit emanating from cultures with a literary history in their relations with cultures which are based on oral, not written history.

When people stop churning out pseudo-scientific thesis which try to pursuade people that "this ethnicity is smarter than that ethnicity", we'll be a lot closer to the goal of geo-political stability.

Then things will be seen from the point of view of solidarity rather than charity.

[BlueTide]

One problem that I have with your analysis is that you can run history only once; so how do you know Africa would be better off if the West never gave aid to Africa (or at least the type of aid the UN and Western governments give to Africa). Are you sure that without aid that there would be less disease and starvation in Africa? I don't disagree with you that there may be better ways to give aid to Africa, but I don't agree that we actually know that Africa is worse off because of the aid we have given them.

I do agree that understanding culture is important. The west colonized Africa and demanded that they be Europeanized in a few decades. The culture evolution of the West which took thousands of years, was forced upon Africa in a few decades. In many ways, before Western colonialism, Africa was self-sufficient .

Nevertheless, colonialism did occur. Africa was forced to become westernized. Adam Smith's philosophy of specialization in trade was forced upon the Africans. The result was that many African countries were forced to specialized in a few cash crops; when market conditons for those crops dropped, many African economies suffered. Because the West was the cause of much of this condition, they have to find a way to help fix the problem, too.

[Munyaradzi Musamba]

The points you raised are very valid BlueTide!

[liberani]

Thanks for this article, Professor. I'm glad you've set the records straight: that you're not against aid but for sensible and effective aid. I also agree that we need more transparency and accountability from the 'aid industry'. It is also refreshing to read alternative view points to the prevailing wisdom on aid.