Some people say that the developed countries should give in cash the equivalent of 0.7% of their GDP to the underdeveloped countries. Doing the math for the share of the United States whose GDP approaches 14 trillion dollars, the amount comes to 98 billion dollars. If you add to that the share of the other countries in the developed World, the amount comes close to a quarter of a trillion dollars. And guess what, this is the price of all the food at the farm level that is produced in North America, Europe and Australia put together.
But what else can we do with all that money, anyway? Well, it all depends on what the question means. If you mean to ask what good can we do for the poor people of the World, the answer is nothing because nothing good can come out of a scheme like this. Most of the money will go to the White charlatans who will stand between the treasurers of the donor nations and the Colored charlatans in the recipient nations, and the rest of the money will go to the colored charlatans themselves.
If you are serious about helping sub-Saharan Africa and wish to see it to develop and become like East Asia or North Africa, there is a much better way to approach the task. Tell those countries to come up with a long term plan for development by looking at the plans that were successfully implemented elsewhere, and by adapting them to their own situation. If need be, assist them to draw up the plans or tell them to seek assistance from the United Nations or elsewhere. Plenty of good people around the World will do this sort of work for the sheer pleasure of doing it. It is a creative sort of work and it yields a tremendous amount of satisfaction.
At the same time, form a consortium of the donor countries and assess the capabilities of each country to help in the implementation of those plans. Create a kind of Clearing House whose task will be to match up each project in Africa with a company or an institution in the donor countries that is best suited to carry out the project. And then let it all happen; it is a simple as that.
When China began the drive to industrialize three decades ago, 500 million people participated in the move and the ride has been breathtaking. The other 800 million waited until now to participate and their move, when it comes, will not be less breathtaking. Well, there are 500 million people in sub-Saharan Africa who could benefit from a similar move down there. And if you liked doing business with China, you will love doing business with Africa not for any sentimental reason but for many practical reasons.
First of all, Africa has a lot more natural resources than China; you will not have to run around looking for these resources and bring them to Africa. Second, you will participate directly in the implementation of the projects without having to wait for the Chinese bureaucracy to issue a permit or give the green light or whatever. Third, the money that will be invested to carry out the projects in Africa will be mostly invested in the donor countries, especially during the out years. At the beginning, some cash will go to Africa to launch the process but the little that will go there will do a lot of good because it will pay the local simple folks who will work on the projects.
This is a much better approach than spending nearly 250 billion dollars a year every year for an indefinite period on something that has not worked in the past and will not work in the future because it is a plan that was designed to fail. In fact, nobody who comes up with a plan like this has altruistic motives; these people only work for themselves.
They are people whose hearts bleed for their own bank accounts and whose props are images of the suffering that goes on anywhere. They want to see the suffering continue because replenishing their bank accounts continues to be their only mission. They rip off the World on account of every suffering in the same way that they ripped off the American treasury on account of the Katrina tragedy. If they can do it to their own people and congratulate themselves for being so smart at being so heartless and get away with it, they will do it to anyone anywhere in the World and congratulate themselves no less.
And if they must, these people will use some of the money they rip off their victims to foster unrest, foment revolutions, and start civil and cross-border wars so as to keep the misery going and the cash flowing into their wallets.
My submission, therefore, is to the effect that if you start with Africa on the right footing, there will be no need to help that Continent until it becomes like Dubai. All you need to do is start the process of development, educate enough local people to take over the work as soon as possible and then see your creation sustain itself from that point on. Thus, instead of spending 250 billion dollars every year going nowhere, you will spend 25 billion a year for 10 years and score a brilliant success that will be permanent and become a monument to your generosity.
And that is all it will take to pull sub-Saharan Africa out of its eternal slump. Just consider this, when a country is as poor as these countries are, you can create a super excellent job by local standard with only 5,000 dollars. Thus, in the first year of operation 25 billion dollars will create 5 million jobs that will sustain 5 million families at a level they could not dream of before. This is almost 6% of the total population and almost 15% of the desperately poor in those countries.
These people will work on the infrastructure and on the development of the agricultural and mineral resources that will pay their wages and salaries the following years as they move into the next phase which will be their industrial development. That phase will consist of the installation and the starting up of the industries which will export goods and services made in Africa for payments from the rest of the World not in response to a request for aid but in response to a commercial invoice.
All the work and the raw materials to establish those industries will be supplied by and from local sources but the machinery will be donated by the donor countries. Year after year more sophisticated industries will be established; and after ten years of this sort of effort, most of the countries in sub-Saharan Africa will have reached the point when they will no longer need any assistant.
But the work will not be finished because the sky is still the limit. It is only that the limit will now be one that the Africans themselves will aim for by the power of their imagination and the sweat of their forehead.