Friday, February 03, 2006
A failure of purpose
Jeevan Vasagar asks whether well-meaning western aid agencies are what Africa really needs
Excerpts:
Excerpts:
It was kind of the foreigners to dig the borehole, but the Sudanese villagers were a little bemused by it.
They had been drinking water from the river since time began, and they would keep on doing it.
As one of the elders explained to me, the river water might be murky but it had a nice flavour, while this transparent stuff from the borehole just tasted of nothing.
In that village, a timeless landscape of mud huts standing amid thickets of long grass, it seemed that aid was an addiction.
In the meantime, average income per head has failed to grow and the continent's already marginal share of world trade has shrunk even further.Full Article
