Norway has a long tradition of helping African nations financially. We send them their money, rice and their water, and then we never think about it again. I think that Africa is for many a thing that was created so that we could help our self to feel better, you put the check in the mailbox, wait a week or so and then you get a thank you from either WWO or SOS, and we all feel better. There is a few problems however, do we really know that the money reach the poor kid that is feeding his entire family by polishing shoes outside the parliament building?
No, and in many cases the government send the money to the poor countries government and thrust them to spread the money evenly throughout the country, this rarely ever happens, when the crowds are gathering outside the president’s office isn’t he more likely to send the money to give food to the hungry crowd standing outside threatening him and his family than to a random farmer 200 miles away?
Warlords is another problem, they don’t care about even pretending to be spreading the money evenly in the country, if you give them the money you will suddenly see a jump in the number of imports of Rolls Royce’s… Not all dictators are like this, some of them just buy guns or tanks or something like that and shoot the people with the money and take it. We need to ensure by military force that the money and the equipment is brought to the right people, right now the only thing people in certain regions of Africa believe in is guns and violence, they don’t care if the government sends a friendly bulletin that says that they have to share the water they get out of their well or the rice they get distributed with the guy next door. They have to be poked in the chest by a big hairy guy with a big hairy gun and told that if they don’t share their water they will have to answer to him and his big hairy gun.
A third problem is that we don’t really give enough money. The UN said in one of their fancy reports that only...