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What really makes a difference
Published 04 June 2007
I like to think I've developed an instinctive humbug detector
As a journalist, you spend a lot of time listening to other people articulate their ideas. I like to think I've developed an instinctive humbug detector, an internal editing machine that kicks in even when the conscious mind isn't fully engaged. I may set out, pen poised over notebook, determined to capture and record. But if the speaker's arguments don't come up to scratch I'll always end up staring at a blank piece of paper.
That instinct was certainly put to the test by the Reith Lectures, delivered this year by Professor Jeffrey Sachs, guru to concerned pop stars, UN special adviser and one of the inspirations behind the Make Poverty History campaign. Already popular with New Labour, Sachs has also been publicly embraced by George Osborne. Given Sachs's cross-party approval, I was keen to hear his latest thoughts on globalisation, climate change and world poverty.
Yet as soon as his sonorous voice began rolling across the room my hand reached, like a thing possessed, for the radio's "off" button. Come the repeat, the same thing happened. The BBC's playback function was no better - I'd sit down to listen, then find myself wandering out of earshot. The only way of forcing myself to ingest the Reith Lectures, I discovered, was to print the bloody things out and read them.
There was a lot here I was already familiar with from his The End of Poverty. Sachs believes that Africa's salvation is ours to bestow. It's that simple. We have the know-how; all we need is a huge hike in western aid. History-lite, politics-free, unashamedly populist, his vision of the world is utterly appealing. It just doesn't happen to bear any relation to the world I live in. I guess that's why I find him so tiresome.
Sachs is in the air again this week, thanks to the G8 summit. Two years after Gleneagles, only Japan and the UK look set to meet their commitments to double aid to Africa by 2010. Some might regard this generalised backtracking as a reflection of the utopianism that lay behind the original promises. Not the aid agencies involved in Make Poverty History. They want delivery, not re-evaluation.
Well, here is my suggestion for the well-meaning souls preparing to heed the campaigners' call. This year, before donning a plastic wristband and heading for the agreed march route, why not buy a copy of The Bottom Billion, just published by Professor Paul Collier? It's such an accessible read, you could get through a chunk of it while on the march. If you're really interested in world poverty, you won't be able to put it down. It'll make you realise that fretting over which G8 signatories will hit the 0.7 per cent of GDP mark is the modern equivalent of obsessing over the sex of angels.
Professor of economics at Oxford and a former World Bank director, Collier has spent three decades studying poverty. Where Sachs resorts to emotional rhetoric, Collier examines what the statistics show about the factors keeping a billion people mired in abject poverty.
He comes up with some surprising conclusions, many of which will raise hackles in the development world. Aid, he argues, just isn't that important. It has been hugely oversold, both by those who think it works miracles and by those who blame it for Africa's woes. It has probably added just one percentage point to the annual growth rates of the poorest countries in the past 30 years - hardly the economic Viagra that Sachs suggests. What's more, aid is subject to the law of diminishing returns: "As you keep on increasing aid, you get less and less bang for your buck."
Even before Gleneagles, many African countries had nearly reached their absorptive limits. The doubling of aid touted by campaigners begins to look like a distraction.
Teasing out what actually does make a difference, Collier challenges a host of oft-repeated aid mantras: that project aid is less effective than direct budget support (it's the other way round); that flooding a traumatised country with expatriate consultants is a bad thing (they're exactly what's needed in a country whose educated class has moved abroad); that military interventions are a disastrous waste of money (there are few more cost-effective ways of stabilising entire regions); that democratic elections are desirable in countries emerging from conflict (the risk of new violence soars post-poll).
He is particularly damning when it comes to trade policy, a topic on which he believes aid agencies show either horrific cynicism ("it's too complicated to summarise in a slogan the stupid public will understand") or criminal ignorance. What Africa needs is special protection for its exports to western markets. What it gets is NGOs campaigning for the maintenance of African trade barriers that allow parasitic domestic businesses, preserves of the corrupt elite, to keep ripping off the public.
What Collier makes clear, in beguilingly readable form, is that Making Poverty History is difficult, and that the public, if it wants to engage with the issues, needs to raise its intellectual game. In the run-up to the G8 summit, anyone who tells you different is either a fool, or treating you as one. Listen to your own critical voice.
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