How to aid Africa

In response to "End aid, save Africa", Matt has a lot to say:

[This] problem is a function of a common information processing bias, of overestimating efficacy. In other words, you attribute a problem in the world to a presence or lack of direct human agency instead of to complex causal factors -- blaming executives getting too many bonuses as the cause of our latest economic problems is a good example of the efficacy bias (as if simply being less greedy would make the economy work better). It is a helpful bias, usually, though because it directs human efforts at what can be changed.

Military intervention is one thing that this fellow Collier, who I'm guessing (based loosely on reviews) wrote a better book than the lady you cite, argues for (see below). It's a bit too simplistic to see the "solution" as our needing to stop giving directly/having pity and focusing exclusively on macro "root" causes all of which are quite controversial (see The GiveWell Blog: The root causes of poverty). In fact, I think that we should continue to give, but to give more strategically. Better than relying on scattershot private charities as we currently do and as a dogmatic libertarian would suggest, (where people end up often as not giving to something disgusting like suburban soccer teams or music programs for elite suburban youth) would be a built in form on your tax return that you have to choose to OPT-OUT on that would contribute to the best reviewed charities in the world. Maybe even better, would simply be more government taxes going directly to defensible aid projects, AND macroeconomic strategies (which are controversial). Free trade as you welcomely suggest, is a no-brainer. However, some protectionism for those in the most poor billion (i.e., Africa) that are getting crushed by the cheap labor in Asia right now just for the time period for their businesses to start up might make good sense.

Here's a snippet of the Collier (who also sees problems with development aid) book review:

"Reflecting on the tendency of postconflict countries to lapse back into civil war, he argues trenchantly for occasional foreign interventions in failed states. What postconflict countries need, he says, is 10 years of peace enforced by an external military force. If that means infringing national sovereignty, so be it.

At a time when the idea of humanitarian intervention is selling at a considerable discount, this is a vital insight. (One recent finding by Collier and his associates, not reproduced here, is that until recently, former French colonies in Africa were less likely than other comparably poor countries to experience civil war. That was because the French effectively gave informal security guarantees to postindependence governments.) Collier concedes that his argument is bound to elicit accusations of neocolonialism from the usual suspects (not least Mugabe). Yet the case he makes for more rather than less intervention in chronically misgoverned poor countries is a powerful one. It is easy to forget, amid the ruins of Operation Iraqi Freedom, that effective intervention ended Sierra Leone’s civil war, while nonintervention condemned Rwanda to genocide." [As Collier says] “If Iraq is allowed to become another Somalia, with the cry ‘Never intervene,’ the consequences will be as bad as Rwanda.”

...he pins more hope on the growth of international law than on global policing. Perhaps the best help we can offer the bottom billion, he suggests, comes in the form of laws and charters: laws requiring Western banks to report deposits by kleptocrats, for example, or charters to regulate the exploitation of natural resources, to uphold media freedom and to prevent fiscal fraud.

...As Collier rightly says, it is time to dispense with the false dichotomies that bedevil the current debate on Africa: “ ‘Globalization will fix it’ versus ‘They need more protection,’ ‘They need more money’ versus ‘Aid feeds corruption,’ ‘They need democracy’ versus ‘They’re locked in ethnic hatreds,’ ‘Go back to empire’ versus ‘Respect their sovereignty,’ ‘Support their armed struggles’ versus ‘Prop up our allies.’ ”

[ NYT: The Least Among Us ] 

I think utilitarian justifications (such as you claim in the earlier post) are always better than libertarian ones, even if libertarianism is a useful heuristic for a lot of helpful policies. It's just, it should be treated as a heuristic and not a moral principle otherwise it provides unneeded rationalization for the idea that we should just leave things alone and magic will happen.

Giving aid is good and highly defensible from a utilitarian stand point once you figure out where to give it, I think. See GiveWell.

Also potentially helpful, Brookings Global Economy and Development Conference: "What Works in Development? Thinking Big and Thinking Small” (.pdf)

Heuristic is a good word for how I see libertarianism; more so than ideology. Libertarian principles are not a perfect answer to everything, but I've found them to be a very strong and effective heuristic.

I'm sure some forms of aid are much more helpful than others, and GiveWell looks like a good resource.  I'm certainly not going to argue against $10 bednets and 5-cent nutrient packs for children.

But I think it's clear that most aid has been of a harmful welfare sort or been lost to corruption.  When you leave people alone, what happens is not so much magic as self-sufficiency.  This is not an 'unneeded rationalization', but an essential understanding of what makes humans tick.

I'm no expert on how to best carry it out in practice, but my first stab at a solution would be to only provide free aid to children. This should not be administered through parents, because they cannot be trusted to distribute it solely to the kid. Preferably I think it should be provided in exchange for the child getting some basic schooling. Then, after hitting puberty (say, age 14), people should care for themselves.

Training can be provided if necessary.  What they do might be subsistence farming, or a more marketable trade (including agriculture for others' consumption), but regardless people need to learn to work for their own advancement and not rely on free aid to survive.

As for preventing wars and other conflicts, my first stab at a general solution is to come up with a framework for providing security until locals can take over and police themselves. Once they can, leave. Train the police force and help set up a basic civil law system if it helps. When would going into a country and providing this to prevent another Rwanda be warranted/advisable? I can't begin to guess, and I imagine there are many pro and con factors to weigh in avoiding all possible disasters.