I'm conscious that in this scenario, I am biased towards the seen harm, rather than the unseen--I'll never identify the people who might have been pulled out of poverty if we hadn't screwed up their economy, so my tendency is to discount them.
Recognizing and counteracting this cognitive bias is one of the Big Ideas that I took from economics classes. (See also Predictably Irrational.)
Here's a hypothetical discussion between an environmentalist and an economist that brought it home for me. The topic is whether to pave over something pretty to make a parking lot.
Environmentalist: If we pave over the prairie, we'll lose the prairie forever. Even if you might want to have the parking lot, you can always get the parking lot tomorrow. Don't pave!
Economist: If we don't pave over the prairie today, we'll lose the use of the parking lot tomorrow forever. There will never be a tomorrow in which we'll have the parking lot. Pave it!
There is one thing and one thing only that would help Africa and that is the dismantling of the trade walls between Africa and the US+EU.
Africa's current financial ecosystem is deeply flawed as there is no way or very little way to spiral outwards instead of inwards.
The current scenario is like saying to Microsoft that they can only sell their products internally in the company. It creates an inward spiral that have very hard terms for growth and is deeply depending on money from the outside.
"On the other hand, I'm not sure I'm quite willing to walk up to a woman dying from malnutrition to tell her that I'm sorry, we'd like to help, only unfortunately it would distort the local economy and so I'm afraid you'll need to lean into the strike zone and take one for the team."
That isn't the only, necessary alternative. There's nothing wrong with charity done right. Just because the NGO's methods are work doesn't mean one has to abandon their work altogether. If the doling out of aid is done by local entrepreneurs, and the causes of poverty are being attacked by entrepreneurs funded and overseen by NGOs, the results could be far different.
Dambisa Moyo has given talks and written a book about how aid is harming Africa in a big way. I hightly recommend people check it out. Here's a short version of her talk: http://bigthink.com/ideas/21626
She does a good job of distinguishing between emergency aid (think Katrina or the Indian Ocean Tsunami) which she supports and permanent aid which she says supports corrupt governments and creates a culture of dependency.
Not entirely true. She has been as critical as many NGO interventions - "The types of aid that I’m talking about, I’m not talking about humanitarian or emergency aid, sort of the aid that goes for tsunami, for example. Nor am I talking about NGO or charitable aid which is relatively small beer. I myself sit on the board of a number of charities. But I think it’s important where charities are concerned to understand what they can and cannot do. So they can provide Band-Aid solutions. So we can send a girl to school for example, but they cannot deliver long-term economic development growth and growth or alleviate poverty on the level that we want to see across the continent." (http://www.kendallharmon.net/t19/index.php/t19/article/21352...)
Removing the NGOs from the equation wouldn't solve the fundamental problem of African entrepreneurs having little probability of significant rewards. You have to consider the possible upside of NGOs offering the ambitious an easier path to money as well.
What if instead of learning English and working for an NGO, these brightest and best learned English and emigrated?
What if the individuals who work for NGO, learn skills and earn cash (paid for by foreigners) that encourage them to think much bigger when it comes to enterprises in future?
Recognizing and counteracting this cognitive bias is one of the Big Ideas that I took from economics classes. (See also Predictably Irrational.)
Here's a hypothetical discussion between an environmentalist and an economist that brought it home for me. The topic is whether to pave over something pretty to make a parking lot.
Environmentalist: If we pave over the prairie, we'll lose the prairie forever. Even if you might want to have the parking lot, you can always get the parking lot tomorrow. Don't pave!
Economist: If we don't pave over the prairie today, we'll lose the use of the parking lot tomorrow forever. There will never be a tomorrow in which we'll have the parking lot. Pave it!