This was posted by a Tanzanian in response to a Guardian editorial extolling the virtues of international aid. It tells its own story.
I recall a friend returning from a period working in West Africa who declared that she would never again give a single penny to international aid charities other than for specific disaster relief.
The international aid business, from the well-paid folk who work for government agencies to the globe-trotting poverty-mongers of Oxfam, is a total shambles. It's not simply, as the Guardian commenter observed, that the aid is misspent or abused but that these agencies actively support policies specifically designed to maintain the 'rural economy' - in effect to keep subsistence farmers as subsistance farmers. I see this as active intervention by rich countries aimed as keeping poor people in poor countries poor.
....
