Micro-Fnance: A New Path Forward?

When thinking of new and effective ways to reform how aid is given, does Micro-finance come to mind? Do you know what micro-finance is? Micro-finance is when lenders give money to poor people who are usuallly denied accesss to banking & other financial services because many lenders are wary of thought of not being able to be repaid or they may get ripped off. However, with the advent of Micro-finance, pioneered by Muhammed Yunnus, many of millions of destitute farmers and slum dwellers are given access to capital to pay down debt or to start a business. This has given me an idea: Shoudn't the U.S. set up a global Micro-finance fund to aspiring entrepreneurs across the developing world? Will it run in to difficulties in the short-term? Yes. But long term this program has real potential to lift millions out of poverty and create goodwill for the U.S. across the developing world. Domestically this could breath a new lifeline into struggling small businesses who suffer from lack of credit in the economy.

Malaria: A Bright Spot on Bush's Legacy?

Many American are understandably dismayed with former President George W. Bush's legacy; First he had the United States involved in a costly war with Iraq , which has cost many hundreds of billions of dollars, Hundreds of Iraqis and five thousand American troops dead, and it did great harm to the country's image abroad. Furthermore, he poor steward of the economy allowing the casino that was Wall Street and he allowed the U.S. to carve up a huge debt. However there is one bright spot that even his most vehement critics cannot deny: the fight against malaria. malaria, a deadly Mosquito-born disease, kills a million people a year- mainly little children in Sub-Saharan Africa. Responding to this health-crisis then President George W. Bush launched the The President's Malaria Initiative (PMI) in 2005, which has benefited nearly 2 million african children from Angola to Tanzania. The initiative has put emphasis on handing out bed nets, insecticide, treatments to pregnant women and little children. Why not apply Bush's initiative on a more global scale? Why not try to venture into dangerous hotspots, like the Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan, and hand out disease preventative medications and supporting infrastructure? Why not partner with governments far-and-wide to bring relative prosperity and decency to their countrymen?

Neglected Tropical Diseases: A New Frontier in Fighting Poverty?

Do you know what neglected tropical diseases are? Very few people in the industrialized world have ever heard of them because they have been largely eradicated by new vaccines and drugs. However, outside of the developed countries, they are major drag on productivity in the developing world, and major blight on poorest billion souls. Ranging from leprosy, to, onchocerciasis, and river blindness, among many others: N.T.D.'s are non-lethal tropical diseases with a whole array of symptoms that cause blindness, inflated limbs, fatigue, and risks to pregnancy. However, unlike HIV Aids, they are not fatal, and by and large curable; they are also cheaper to cure than Aids. Besides the cheaper costs there several other advantages to focusing more R&D on N.T.D.S: many of the drugs are effective even if taken once a year, and various studies have proven that demonstrated the possibility and safety of simultaneously delivering three of the most commonly used drugs that target all six major worm infections at one time, while an antibacterial drug for trachoma can be administered at a later date. I am not suggesting that we scrap funding for HIV or neglecting it as second-tier priority, but we should give N.T.D. more prominence in U.S. Global health policy. Many good consequences- for the U.S. and the world- can come from an assertive world-wide initiative against NTDs.

Around half of those infected hail from majority Muslim countries where suspicion of U.S. motives run deep: Yemen, Sudan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, and Iraq. For U.S. foreign policy to be successful we need to find ways to win hearts and minds: this where combatting NTDs come into play. However, there are major challenges to this approach: endemic corruption, violence, and intense suspicion of outsiders. But if the U.S. can find reliable partners in those parts of the world to distribute the aid, the initiative could very well succeed in its mission; good will for the U.S. By alleviating their diseases, in effect, we alleviate their poverty. Beyond the Muslim world, this approach could yield big dividends in Latin America ( river blindness), and Africa (elphantiasis). Behind the moral arguments of eradicating N.T.D.s, there are practical ones as well: Falling poverty, equals greater demand for goods, equals greater demand for American goods. Obama just announced a five year-initiative for doubling American exports world-wide to bring down our debt and unemployment rate, and by focusing on alleviating poverty, we create a bigger market for American goods ( airplanes, agriculture, computers, cell phones and software), which could go long way to reducing our debt and brining down our stubbornly high unemployment rate.

Strings or no Strings Attached?

One of the biggest developments in international aid in the past decade has been the rise of China and its increasing economic presence in the developing world- specifically in Africa. In the past two years alone China has promised to: train 15,000 African professionals, $ 3 billion in preferential loans, and $ 2 billion in export credits in a three year period and a development fund to help create hospitals and schools. In exchange, many African countries have been granting Chinese companies access to trade contracts and natural resources. The Chinese are not demanding that leaders respect human rights or transparency and it seems to be increasing their influence on the African continent, shouldn’t the U.S. follow suit? Is it any of our business what goes on in those countries? In my opinion, we should focus more on building infrastructure, institutions, and develop connections with important power broker instead of focusing on democracy and human rights. Besides, international criticism of oppressive regimes rarely bares fruit, and, usually backfires because it angers our partners. Only if the U.S. develops connections and improves lives can pressure have any meaningful effect. In order to be a world leader you must adapt, if not you get left behind.

For information go to:
http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/a-13-Chinese-Aid-Flows-into-Africa.html
http://gyanguru.org/china-aid-africa/

Consistency and the Application of Foreign Aid

How does consistency matter when one governments dole out aid to another government? Many argue that consistency is key for aid to be successful. Will some of the financial or material aid (medical, military, telecommunications , radars, etc..) be misused? Yes. When transfering large amounts of financial and or material from one country to the other requires significant logistic challenges. Many questions abound, such as: How do we get the aid in question to the destination? Which government ministry or department receives the aid? Will the aid end up in Swiss bank accounts or will the aid be resold in the black market ? Who can be an effective partner with in distributing the aid? For foreign aid to be successful it requires patience and consistency. Countries such as Pakistan, Yemen, and Egypt are case studies of the art of applying material and economic aid.

In 1985, the Pressler amendment was passed, named after Larry Pressler (R- SD), which prohibited the United from giving aid to Pakistan unless we could verify that they were not working on a nuclear weapon program. In 1990, then President George H.W. Bush could no longer verify, then all military contacts and aid were suspended. The result: mistrust between the two sides. From the Pakistani perspective, not only did the U.S. abandon Afghanistan and let it implode, we sanctioned them once we did not need them. The suspension of aid not only denied contact between the two military for more than ten years, it also denied us influence and trust from the Pakistani military- the strongest institution in the country. While cooperation has deepened between the two militaries since 9/11, many Pakistanis still remember the 1990s with great bitterness and will take many years to overcome it. Yemen is another country where aid has been misused- though on far smaller scale than Pakistan

Prior to 1991, Yemen was a recipient of U.S military and civilian aid. By 199o the United States had a $42 million US aid program. On top of the civilian aid, then Northern Yemen received F-5 aircraft, tanks, vehicles, and training to counter Socialist South Yemen. As a result of Yemen supporting Saddam Hussein during the first Gulf war the Bush administration cut all non-humanitarian aid- including military aid- to Yemen. By 2006, there was an uptick in American aid to Yemen, but there was a prison-break by a high-level Al-Qaeda operative, Jamal al Badawi- a mastermind of the USS Cole bombing in 2000-as a result Bush scaled down the aid. The Obama administration, however, has significantly accelerated the aid levels to Yemen around a hundred million annually and in return Yemen has allowed U.S. special operation units to hunt down Al-Qaeda cells and use drones. Some analysts argue that if we did not abruptly cut off the aid we would have found more willing partners in the Yemeni government and Al-Qaeda may have been denied a sanctuary in the lawless tribal badlands of Shebwa, Marib, and Abyan. For the U.S. to succeed in the fight against Al-Qaeda analysts are encouraging of finding ways to bring jobs in those impoverished areas through development projects and building basic services. Egypt is another country that received large amounts of American aid, though, with more encouraging results than either Pakistan or Yemen

After Israel, Egypt has been the second largest recipient of American aid for the past thirty years due to Egypt signing a peace treaty with Israel in 1979. For the past thirty years Egypt has played a vital role in mediating the peace process between the Israelis and the Palestinians and the Egyptian security apparatus cooperates with the CIA in counter-terrorist issues. Despite the frustrations some American officials hold about transparency, many credit the aid with keeping the relationship through the tension following the American invasion of Iraq and the Bush administrations pressure on democracy. Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian President, reportedly has much better relations with Obama than Bush and is cooperating with the U.S. and Israel in pressuring the violent Hamas movement to renounce violence and join the peace process and he is helping international efforts in containing Iran's nuclear program. While the immediate impact of foreign aid is often frustrating and tedious, long-term it can yield hefty dividends in the form of goodwill, or cooperation, and/ or influence.