For God's sake, please stop the Aid

This interview with Kenyan economics expert James Shikwati entitled "For God's sake, please stop the Aid" highlites the disastous effects of Western development policy in Africa.

Here are a few choice bits from his interview with Speigel:

Huge bureaucracies are financed (with the aid money), corruption and complacency are promoted, Africans are taught to be beggars and not to be independent. In addition, development aid weakens the local markets everywhere and dampens the spirit of entrepreneurship that we so desperately need. As absurd as it may sound: Development aid is one of the reasons for Africa's problems.

The Aids epidemic:

If one were to believe all the horrorifying reports, then all Kenyans should actually be dead by now. But now, tests are being carried out everywhere, and it turns out that the figures were vastly exaggerated. It's not three million Kenyans that are infected. All of the sudden, it's only about one million. Malaria is just as much of a problem, but people rarely talk about that.

AIDS is big business, maybe Africa's biggest business. There's nothing else that can generate as much aid money as shocking figures on AIDS. AIDS is a political disease here, and we should be very skeptical.

The article is fantastic, and is a must read if you're looking for a little ammo against the world's guilt mongers, like Bono and Geldof(and all the other garden variety do-gooders).