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I kept thinking they missed one interesting point when discussing why Biya might still be neglecting the roads after 20 years--the point at which it's supposed

I kept thinking they missed one interesting point when discussing why Biya might still be neglecting the roads after 20 years--the point at which it's supposed to become in his interest to rebuild them so he has more to steal. If the World Bank or other agency keeps giving them development money, they can take from that instead of building the roads, so the incentive is gone. But, if you remove the outside donations and the infrastructure is useless, you remove all incentive for them to stay. Thus, you get a chaotic power vacuum. If you were callous, you could think of this as a reboot, but with nasty humanitarian consequences. If you keep donating from the outside, then you are pretty much just funding the dictator. Is that about right?

cabalamat 18y ago
Make donations conditional on a certain level of good government. More importantly, make the president's Swiss bank account conditional on the same.
- eru 18y ago
  The IMF loans often come with strings attached.
markessien 18y ago
Your statement is a bit ignorant. You really think that the camerounian government is financed by the world bank? You really think that the world bank are just giving money to someone who is obviously using it all up? You think that the president of the country as well as the entire team of economists at the world bank have missed this great discovery you made? The world bank is not a development fund, they lend money, they don't give it. And countries like Cameron have a GDP of 40 billion USD a year, external money is totally irrelevant to its survival. Most of these countries don't need external money for the government to stay in power, they just take it because it's free.
- justindz 18y ago
  Yes, this is definitely out of my area of expertise. Fair criticism. Is there a good resource to understand how the loans are repaid and what enforcement exists? That would be crucial to understanding the degree to which they aren't donations or couldn't be treated as donations even if they weren't. And, no, I don't think Cameroon is financed by the World Bank. I just wrote that poorly. I was interested in understanding whether the natural incentive to build an economy to increase the scale of possible graft (not my theory, from the article) could be killed by getting outside funding that, perversely, wouldn't result in a more successful economy if it were being hoarded. Perhaps that just doesn't happen.

cabalamat 18y ago

Make donations conditional on a certain level of good government. More importantly, make the president's Swiss bank account conditional on the same.

eru 18y ago
The IMF loans often come with strings attached.

markessien 18y ago

Your statement is a bit ignorant. You really think that the camerounian government is financed by the world bank? You really think that the world bank are just giving money to someone who is obviously using it all up? You think that the president of the country as well as the entire team of economists at the world bank have missed this great discovery you made? The world bank is not a development fund, they lend money, they don't give it. And countries like Cameron have a GDP of 40 billion USD a year, external money is totally irrelevant to its survival. Most of these countries don't need external money for the government to stay in power, they just take it because it's free.

justindz 18y ago
Yes, this is definitely out of my area of expertise. Fair criticism. Is there a good resource to understand how the loans are repaid and what enforcement exists? That would be crucial to understanding the degree to which they aren't donations or couldn't be treated as donations even if they weren't. And, no, I don't think Cameroon is financed by the World Bank. I just wrote that poorly. I was interested in understanding whether the natural incentive to build an economy to increase the scale of possible graft (not my theory, from the article) could be killed by getting outside funding that, perversely, wouldn't result in a more successful economy if it were being hoarded. Perhaps that just doesn't happen.