16) Directions: Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given
below it.
Certain words/phrases are printed in bold to help you to locate them while answering some
of the questions. The outside world has pat answers concerning extremely Impoverished
countries, especially those in Africa. Everything comes back, again and again, to corruption
and misrule. Western officials argue that Africa simply needs to behave itself better, to allow
market forces to operate without interference by corrupt rulers. Yet the critics of African
governance have it wrong. Politics simply can’t explain Africa’s prolonged economic crisis.
The claim-that Africa’s corruption is the basic source of the problem does not withstand
serious scrutiny. During the past decade I witnessed how relatively well governed countries
in Africa: such as Ghana, Malawi Mali and Senegal, failed to prosper, whereas societies in
Asia perceived to have extensive corruption such as Bangladesh, Indonesia and Pakistan,
enjoyed rapid economic growth. What is the explanation? Every situation of extreme poverty
around the world contains some of its own unique causes, which need to be diagnosed as a
doctor would a patient. For example. Africa is burdened with malaria like no other part of the
world, simply because it is unlucky in providing the perfect conditions for that disease; high
temperatures, plenty of breeding sites and particular species of malaria-transmitting
mosquitoes that prefer to bite humans rather than cattle.
Another myth is that the developed world already gives plenty of aid to the world’s poor.
Former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, Paul O’Neil expressed a common frustration when
he remarked about aid for Africa : “We’ve spent trillions of dollars on these problems and we
have damn near nothing to show for it”. O’Neil was no foe of foreign aid. . Indeed, he wanted
to fix the system so that more U.S. aid could be justified. But he was wrong to believe that
vast flows of aid to Africa had been squandered. President Bush said in a press conference
in April 2004 that as “the greatest power on the face of the earth, we have an obligation to
help the spread of freedom. We have an obligation to feed the hungry”. Yet how does the
U.S. fulfill its obligation? U.S. aid to farmers in poor countries to help them grow more food
runs at around $200 million per year, far less than Si per person per year for the hundreds of
millions of people living in subsistence farm households.
From the world as a whole, the amount of aid per African per year is really very small, just
$30 per subSaharan African in 2002. Of that modest amount, almost $5 was actually for
consultants from the donor countries, more than $3 was for emergency aid, about $4 went
for servicing Africa’s debts and $ 5 was for debt-relief operations. The rest, about $12, went
to Africa. Since the “money down the drain” argument is heard most frequently in the U.S.,
it’s worth looking at the same calculations for U.S. aid alone. In 2002, the U.S. gave $3 per
sub-Saharan African. Taking out the parts for U.S. consultants and technical cooperation,
food and other emergency aid, administrative costs and debt relief, the aid per African came
to a grand total of 6 cents. The U.S. has promised repeatedly over the decades, as a
signatory to global agreements like the Monterrey Consensus of 2002, to give a much larger
proportion of its annual output, specifically upto 0.7% of GNP, to official development
assistance. The U.S. failure to follow through has no political fallout domestically, of course,
because not one in a million U.S. citizens even knows of statements like the Monterrey
Consensus. But no one should underestimate the salience that it has around the world. Spin
as American might about their nation’s generosity, the poor countries are fully aware of what
the U.S. is not doing.
President Bush’s statement in a Press Conference in April 2004 indicates tha
