Charity hopeth all things

Should rich nations give to poor nations? Put bluntly like that, the question of international aid demands the answer ‘yes’. Anyone who tries to qualify the ‘yes’ is liable to be criticised as selfish, unfeeling and inhuman. In his The End of Poverty Jeffrey Sachs sharpens the question. Should very rich people in very rich nations give to very poor nations, especially to the nations of sub-Saharan Africa? His answer is an unqualified ‘yes’.

He urges all the leading industrial nations and, in particular, the USA to raise official development assistance to 0.7 per cent of gross domestic product in order to meet the Millennium Development Goals proposed at the United Nations by Secretary-General Kofi Annan in September 2000. Many of these goals are rather general (‘eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education’, a reduction of two-thirds in the under-five mortality rate between 1990 and 2015, a halving by 2015 of the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water) and their statement amounts more to a wish list than an agenda. But Sachs’ own concerns are quite specific. He wants the focus to be on the control of disease — notably malaria and AIDS/HIV — in sub-Saharan Africa so that the nations there can get on the first rung of the development ladder.

Sachs is far from being a stereotypical anti-American, anti-globalisation groupie who wears his heart on his anorak sleeve. On the contrary he is an internationally respected economist who strongly supports privatisation, trade liberalisation and globalisation, and was a rigorous fiscal disciplinarian in his advice to the governments of Bolivia in 1985 and Poland in 1989. His plea for extra-official assistance carries more weight because of his sound-money, free-market credentials.