According to the way most people think about it, poverty is a problem caused by lack of money. The answer is simple: teach people who are poor how to make money. If they don’t have enough money it must be because they’re not smart enough to make it, so they need to listen to us while we give them the solution. That isn’t a very fair characterisation of foreign aid, but there are often overtones of superiority in the way aid is provided.
William Easterly, professor of economics at New York State University, explains why foreign aid has been so unsuccessful in his book The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good. According to Easterly, there are two types of foreign aid workers: Planners and Searchers. Planners keep coming up with utopian plans which don’t work, whereas Searchers keep looking for small ways to make a positive difference. Unfortunately, the aid world is dominated by Planners.
Easterly’s views are quite controversial, and they are obviously unpopular with the people who bear the brunt of his criticism. It is very difficult in this argument to know who is right, but judging from the responses of bloggers to his ideas, Easterly’s ideas are getting the upper hand. The book is a very entertaining and thought-provoking read, one of the best that I have read this year.