Maggie's Farm

"For God's sake, stop the aid to Africa"

says Kenyan economist James Shikwati:

Huge bureaucracies are financed (with the aid money), corruption and complacency are promoted, Africans are taught to be beggars and not to be independent. In addition, development aid weakens the local markets everywhere and dampens the spirit of entrepreneurship that we so desperately need. As absurd as it may sound: Development aid is one of the reasons for Africa's problems. If the West were to cancel these payments, normal Africans wouldn't even notice. Only the functionaries would be hard hit. Which is why they maintain that the world would stop turning without this development aid.

Read entire in der Spiegel (thanks, RCP)

And similar sentiments from Nobel Laureate Wangari Maathai