President Obama has "enlisted leading powers" to give $15 billion in agricultural aid, according to the New York Times. The effort reflects many philanthropists, economists, and African government's predictions that efforts to reduce poverty in Africa will fail without a far greater investment in agriculture.
I don't think $15 billion is an impressive sum at all, but considering only $5 billion was being spent on agriculture, it's a tremendous improvement. I've never agreed with the current approach to helping Africa, which is shipping food and throwing money at local governments to fix things. It prevents starvation in the short term, but if eradicating poverty is the goal, then everything we've done has been completely ineffective. We should be trying to make Africa more attractive for investment and helping the people feed themselves.
"We should be trying to make Africa more attractive for investment and helping the people feed themselves."
ReplyDeleteEasy to say. How?