"Stop giving us aid, say Africans"

reports The Telegraph's Daniel Hannan:

"I've just been talking to a very clever man. He's called Thompson Ayodele, he's from Nigeria and he thinks that overseas aid is making African countries poorer. The statistics he produces are jaw-dropping. They suggest a direct correlation between the receipt of development assistance and low growth. This is true whether you compare neighbouring countries, or whether you look at different periods within the same country. Foreign aid, he suggests, isn't useless; it's actively harmful. It discourages enterprise, fosters dependency and bolsters corrupt regimes. A similar correlation exists between debt remission and insolvency: countries which have their bills periodically written off become re-indebted more quickly than countries which don't."

This is why I never set out for Bloom to be an NGO, relying on handouts, but as a social enterprise, so Cambodians can learn a skill and to make products people want so they can trade with the international community. I've written about this elsewhere on this blog.

If people need jobs, give them jobs; don't give them handouts. Because if you pay people to be poor, you'll never run out of poor people.