3 ms·
As someone who has spent extensive time in West and Central Africa, poverty is as much a second order (or third or fourth) effect as the Ebola outbreak, and muc
by mblevin 12y ago
As someone who has spent extensive time in West and Central Africa, poverty is as much a second order (or third or fourth) effect as the Ebola outbreak, and much harder to fight. System fragility (whether it's relative to disease, famine, or other natural disasters), is a function of poor leadership more than anything. What is scary is that there is plenty of evidence that government to government aid does more harm than good, and Western attempts at fixing the problems only make things worse.[1]
[1]See any of Bill Easterly's writing - http://williameasterly.org/ http://williameasterly.org/
- authatheist 12y agoBy "poor leadership" did you mean "warlord rulers taking the vast majority of the aid money thrown in their general direction"?
- mblevin 12y ago"Warlord" implies a military bent. Many of the worst culprits are bureaucrats - spending most of their time wearing $10,000 suits while being wined and dined by Western leaders and skimming millions into the accounts of their inner circle. Power is not always held by physical force.