Giant_and_Dwarf-FIN

From Diagnosing the Problems to RemediationHow to Get Africa Out of the Development TrapsAfrica is today competing with China and India. Real and inherent risks for investors.Capital drain from Africa. Remittances and the brain drain. Financial or technicalaid? The problem of high overheads. Support for MICs is more attractive and moreefficient. Infrastructure or photogenic aid for education and healthcare? Loans forthe poor and grants for the rich. Where financial aid makes sense and where it fails.Conditionality and ways to skirt the rules. Lend or your career isn’t going anywhere.Proper timing and the proper mix of experts and money. Fashionable topics andfashionable countries for development aid. The drive for something new and neglectingscaling up. The laws of wealthy countries: when banks turn a blind eye towardsmoney stolen from the poor. Initiatives for transparency in the extraction industry.The Kimberley Process and Blood Diamonds. Potential oil labelling. Freedom in theworld, Corruption Perceptions Index, MIGA and others.The incompetency and corrupt nature of African politics is a theme that could be writtenabout and discussed forever. Its scope is so evident and publicly known that it hidesa number of other factors that are the causes of poverty on the Dark Continent. In the previouschapters we have attempted to name many of them, including the four developmenttraps identified by Paul Collier. Let’s move on from diagnostics towards treatment and takea quick look at the proposals Collier makes.From a global perspective, he considers it necessary to base all action on the basic factthat all of the countries of the bottom billion have “missed the train”. Lifting them out ofpoverty will be a lot more demanding and will require more intervention than was the casefor still developing countries that are enjoying strong economic growth in Asia and LatinAmerica including China, India, Brazil and others.Let’s start with a recap:• 73 % of the bottom billion have survived or are currently experiencing a civil war.• 30 % live in landlocked countries.147