Message-ID: <KF16+tz24nA@ssc.msu.edu> Date: Sat, 1 Mar 1997 10:28:59 EST From: Don Osborn <mailto:don.osborn@SSC.MSU.EDU> Subject: Re: Foreign Aid To: mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU
Dan Clark wrote in reply to Dick Tinsley: >Indeed. And what portion of that "aid" goes to "prime the pump" for U.S.
>weapons sales? In late 1995 a colleague and I presented several (USIA
>funded) "conflict management" seminars in East Africa. While in Nairobi,
>our USIA host took us to the USAID headquarters to discuss "conflict
>prevention" with our regional development honchos there. They told us "we
>aren't throwing money at problems anymore"--now that we don't have any
>money or political will for aid. Instead we are listening to local folk
>and building partnerships with them in response to their initiatives! So I
>asked what about the criticism I'd read in a local news magazine and heard
>from local folk that Kenya has no money for development because of the cost
>of buying U.S. fighter jets. "Military assistance is a different branch;
>we can't do anything about that," came the USAID reply. In Addis Ababa, an
>elder (a retired banker) implored us to tell our people and tell our
>leaders: "We need more of the implements of AGRICULTURE, and we need NO
>MORE of the implements of WAR!"
Problem is that old paradigms still hold sway even as the theories and justifications, techniques and approaches to development aid are modified. As for the elder's sentiment, "Hear hear!" Yet a younger generation might also plead for something more fundamental than transfer of agricultural implements / technology...Don Osborn mailto:osborndo@pilot.msu.edu don.osborn@ssc.msu.edu