William Easterly, The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good (New York: Penguin Press, 2006), 448 pp., $27.95.
PROFESSOR JEFFREY Sachs, author of The End of Poverty (2005), advisor to Kofi Annan on the UN Millennium Development Goals, and advocate for immediate multibillion-dollar initiatives to boost foreign aid spending, was in a testy mood recently when a reporter for a Toronto newspaper visited one of his development projects in Kenya. A question about corruption prompted a harsh reaction from the professor from Columbia University--as if simply posing the question suggested that Africans couldn't take care of themselves or their money.
"The whole development discussion has become unhinged from ground realities", Sachs told the Globe and Mail. "There is endless discussion about process and corruption and governance, as if these are realities of life in Africa--and it's all deflected attention away from things like growing food and drinking water."
As he spoke, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), citing Kenya President Mwai Kibaki's failure to act against graft and official corruption, were placing holds on some $900 million in aid to his country. Kenyan investigators recently turned up separate schemes designed to loot the nation's treasury in sums of $600 million, $100 million and $700 million. In response to the government's plans to offer amnesty to corrupt officials or persuade bandits in high places to voluntarily surrender ill-gotten gains, Kenyan property lawyer Isaac Ngaruthi offered this assessment: "It's naive to expect these people, who clearly have the law behind them, to give up their wealth and in so doing admit to the world, 'Yes, we are stinking corrupt', and willingly hang themselves on a cross for public crucifixion and ridicule."
