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Originally Posted by Clever_Iggy
Yup. The corruption in Africa is unbelieveable - the vast majority of that money would go into the warlords coffers and never reach the people that actually need it... or be lost in the ridiculous administration costs of Red Cross.
Maybe if Africa was floating on a huge bed of oil there would be incentive to go over there and "help".
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You are correct, if the money is just thrown at them it wouldn't do much good considering the prevalent corruption. However, if the effort put into Operation Iraq was spent on Africa results would be possible, but that's not my point. I believe there is a way to spend money on aid to Africa that would see the eradication of certain problems facing the country; diseases and viruses such as AIDS and malaria. The idea is to promise money to pharmaceuticals that can cause change instead of corrupt government officials and aid agencies. Here is an excerpt from an article that I found particularly interesting, the complete article can be found
here. Search for the words "Consider malaria" to find the section where the relevant subject matter begins.
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Originally Posted by The Economist
Helping the world’s poorest
August 12th, 1999
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Promise a market
The following approach might work. Rich countries would make a firm pledge to purchase an effective malaria vaccine for Africa’s 25m newborn children each year if such a vaccine is developed. They would even state, based on appropriate and clear scientific standards, that they would guarantee a minimum purchase price—say, $10 per dose—for a vaccine that meets minimum conditions of efficacy, and perhaps raise the price for a better one. The recipient countries might also be asked to pledge a part of the cost, depending on their incomes. But nothing need be spent by any government until the vaccine actually exists.
Even without a vast public-sector effort, such a pledge could galvanise the world of private-sector pharmaceutical and biotechnology firms. Malaria vaccine research would suddenly become hot. Within a few years, a breakthrough of profound benefit to the poorest countries would be likely. The costs in foreign aid would be small: a few hundred million dollars a year to tame a killer of millions of children. Such a vaccine would rank among the most effective public-health interventions conceivable. And, if science did not deliver, rich countries would end up paying nothing at all...
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