Africa

JohnGalt posted a few days ago on the economic meltdown in Mugabe's Zimbabwe. It astonishes me that the man is still welcomed as a world leader in European Capitals.

While his may be the worst example, most of the sub-Saharan region struggles under the yoke of collectivism. When the young men who would become the post-Colonial leaders studied in the West, they went to Oxford and Cambridge, where they were inculcated in the miracles of Socialism.

Nima Sanandaji, a student of biotechnology at Chalmers University of Technology (located in Gothenburg, Sweden) and who has been accepted at Cambridge for graduate studies in biochemistry, has an article in TCS stating that what ails Africa is not capitalism but its absence.

Africa is poor because most countries in the region lack the fundamental elements of a capitalist system: property rights, free markets, free trade and the rule of law. Africans are like everybody else, and ideas that did not work in China, North Korea and the Soviet Union will not work in Africa either. The blame for the present situation in Africa does not lie with capitalists. It lies with corrupt politicians, who have implemented bad economic policies, together with leftist intellectuals who convinced African politicians to implement anti-capitalist economic policies. The west is also responsible, by enforcing trade barriers. It is ironic that anti-globalization movements are frequently opposed to abolishing tariffs and import quotas.

The US should lead the way, not in aid that will line corrupt pockets, but in free trade.

Economics and Markets Posted by jk at May 25, 2005 10:54 PM