My last article on the negatives of developed nations sending aid to less developed nations produced much reaction – extreme apathy and indifference from most people, anger and outright denigration of my thinking from others.
Anger came largely from those of us fighting to create a planet that mirrors the utopian visions some have been blessed with. The sad truth is, ultimately, when we give, we have to acknowledge to ourselves and the recipient that this will not be forever.
We need immediate solutions for immediate problems and long-term solutions for long-term problems. With this in mind, we can see there are a number of immediate benefits in sending aid to developing nations.
Aid has been used as a means of stabilizing some nations politically and promoting democracy. It comes as no surprise that stable governments and democracies tend to come from prosperous nations. Hence, developed nations try to use aid to create and promote prosperity in developing nations.
This works in the short term but not in the long term. A case in point is Somalia and the Mogadishu event, when a humanitarian food drop in Mogadishu became a war in which gun toting rebels took the food and turned humanitarian efforts into an all-out war with aid agencies and donor nations.
Aid has been known to promote economic development by improving investment climate and promoting entrepreneurship. Foreign money has the ability to rejuvenate economies that were in hibernation or were dead. Foreign investment can help sprout competition and encourage localized markets to step up to the demands of competing with international firms which will help raise local standards. This has always been a good way of encouraging growth but ultimately still is ineffective in the long-run.
Foreign aid also results in a cultural engagement of sorts on a human level. This happens a lot if the aid being provided is provided by a private non-governmental organization on a grassroots level. It allows humans in relatively comfortable environments to reach out and positively impact the lives of others. It further results in a human exchange that allows the more privileged person to realize what’s really valuable in their lives and allows the receiver to realize they have people out there who are thinking about them.
Foreign aid goes a long way toward building schools, hospitals and basic infrastructure in many nations worldwide. This aid is particularly helpful when it comes from religious organizations and has resulted in millions of people getting education and health care worldwide.
The biggest role of aid is as a means by which people are lifted out of poverty, one of the most inhuman tragedies of the 20th Century. Aid is often the only way people can even get a bite to eat in many sub-Saharan nations. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimates that 680 million people live in poverty and 250 million of these people are in sub-Saharan Africa.
So, world aid is a double sided coin that is hard to eradicate, but needs to be eradicated in the long term. Nations of the world are very capable, but their governments are often too greedy or driven by useless, petty agendas to even care. That’s why developing nations need to unite, stand together and try to solve these issues for themselves.
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