You won't hear this everyday...

You might think that this interview from 2005 in the German magazine Spiegel would be counterintuitive coming from mouth of a Kenyan economics expert. But think about it and it makes perfect sense (H/T: Instapundit):

The Kenyan economics expert James Shikwati, 35, says that aid to Africa does more harm than good. The avid proponent of globalization spoke with SPIEGEL about the disastrous effects of Western development policy in Africa, corrupt rulers, and the tendency to overstate the AIDS problem.

SPIEGEL: Mr. Shikwati, the G8 summit at Gleneagles is about to beef up the development aid for Africa...

Shikwati: ... for God's sake, please just stop.

SPIEGEL: Stop? The industrialized nations of the West want to eliminate hunger and poverty.

Shikwati: Such intentions have been damaging our continent for the past 40 years. If the industrial nations really want to help the Africans, they should finally terminate this awful aid. The countries that have collected the most development aid are also the ones that are in the worst shape. Despite the billions that have poured in to Africa, the continent remains poor.

SPIEGEL: Do you have an explanation for this paradox?

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 the whole thing. Mr. Sikwati clearly understands basic economic principles better than many of his western colleagues. But I think only someone in his situation, living in a country that has been the "beneficiary" of so much foreign aid, can truly understand the complexities of the situation and the damage that large multinational bureaucracies can have on a people and a country.

Foreign aid is oft described as a transfer of wealth from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries. And that description is accurate....