Cutting Aid to Africa

So, I am seeing some people on other topics straying away from the original question. One that I saw that was interesting was some people talking about helping people in the third world. I know that some people think we should cut financial aid to these places. I am genuinely interested to see what people think about this. To try to keep people from going back and forth with broad posts ending in rhetorical questions with the intention of sounding deep and intelligent, I will try to make the question a little more narrow then "should we help people in the third world or not" or something lame like that. Should we (rich countries, rich citizens) be supplying Aid to places such as central or subsaharan africa?

well in terms of society, and we earned our money, no. We worked for it, why should we give it? but what i believe is yes, it is a moral decision of we got lucky, and even "won the birth lottery" as one person said, so really we had the same chance to end up where they are in the world...so why not give to them? help them? if you were in a position with no food, no water, no family...wouldn't you want out?

yes i think we should pull out of south, north(jk) africa. The amount of money dumped into africa for aids(HIV)should be going to researching a cure instead of prevention. Doing this would make aid much more effective and less costly in the long run. As for the violence that is constant there; i have no clue.

Morally, a lot of us want to help, and want the goverment to sent millions upon millions of dollars as foreign aid. However, I personally do not think what they are doing is affective.

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/17-10/ff_smartlist_moyo


read the article. She has a point. and it ties in with the "abusing power" arguments. If you give aid money to governments...which you have to, to distribute effectively, how can you make sure that the money will be spent as effectively as possible?

She does present the idea well. The way I look at it though, is that Africa is almost a dead cause. They have no leadership, or resources. You wouldn't buy stocks in a company that has no resources and is full of Corrupt CEO's. So when they receive millions of dollars in foreign aid, there is no possible way for you to expect them to thrive. We can save their souls, but we can't expect them to catch up with the western world.

So maybe they shouldn't be sent money, as it can go to buy weapons, help the dictator, etc. The money should go towards buying food and supplies, and those being sent to people who are in need, rather than cold, hard cash. In some situations, money can be beneficial, but not when it can be exploited by corrupt people in power.

but how do you get that kind of aid (food, supplies etc.) to the people who need it? you need the government's cooperation.

you do it your self in person

so you want to walk into a desperate, unstable country and distribute food and other necessities in person right underneath a potentially corrupt government?

I definitely think that's just asking for trouble. Going in by yourself could cause harm to you, could potentially damage the relationship between the two countries and that's when conflict starts. So what do we do to help those who can't help themselves? smuggle supplies in? parade in right under the government's nose and hope they don't notice, or, if they do, pretend not to?

but then if we don't we are leaving this country and its citizens out to dry. Is that right?

is it our responsibility to bail out countries that are having issues?