If you had control of the World Bank, would you make loans to Zimbabwe?Of course, you would not. You would recognise perfectly well that the money would be plundered, never repaid and would only shore up a totally corrupt regime with the side effect of precisely nothing reaching the increasing numbers of poor.
It is being nothing other than realistic to point out that exactly the same problems exist to a lesser, and sometimes equivalent, degree in most African nations today. Few are functioning democracies.
Systems are corrupt and encouraged to be so in order to ensure that army, police and so-called civil servants can extract monies from the populations by misuse of petty rules, madcap bureaucracy and naturally, intimidation. This helps to keep despots in power.
Systems discourage enterprise and continued poverty is then guaranteed, irrespective of any funds these governments have received from outside.
Solutions? - Sorry, other than possibly suggesting a return to benevolent colonialism - I have none.
What I do know however, is that the people who chant their mantras of "Take one year's weapons budget for the world and abolish Third World poverty for all time" are so detached from reality that it is arguable that they should not be allowed out into public places.
