Charles Kenny thinks the appeal to African helplessness poisons real efforts to spur global development:
Even people of goodwill in the West are stuck with a bad case of the white man's burden complex, then: We must help, because they are so helpless. That attitude leads to bad aid — the type run out of donor-country capitals with little involvement of beneficiary governments or citizens on the ground — with the irony that reams–worth of evaluation studies suggest it is exactly this aid that is some of the most likely to fail. It also leads to aid fatigue: "What? They're still helpless after all our help?" Worse, it surely depresses other powerful forms of engagement between North and South — like private investment, trade, and travel. Who would think of setting up a factory or going on holiday to a region supposedly engulfed in war, run by crooks and psychopaths, and starving to the last man?
(Photo from The Library of Congress)
The Dish 