[afpx]

Having worked with the World Bank in the past, I think that’s a very uninformed and biased view. They have been very effective in reducing poverty and improving infrastructure in Africa.

I recommend that you read facts about what they do before reading random opinions online (from brand new accounts, especially).

Also, I know dang warns us about pointing out potential propaganda, but this seems like this post is a good example of what I’m talking about.

[dang]

Yes, you can't break the site guidelines by insinuating astroturfing and bad faith by another user. If you think you're seeing abuse, you're welcome to email [e-mail] so we can look for evidence. Someone else having a different view than yours is not evidence.

Nor is it a problem if people are inspired to create an account to comment. As long as they follow the rules, that's how HN is supposed to work.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[sah2ed]

> They have been very effective in reducing poverty and improving infrastructure in Africa.

I'm sure Joe Stiglitz, a Nobel prize winner in Economics, would disagree. In fact, he clearly articulated why in his book: Globalization and Its Discontents.

"[It] is a book published in 2002 by the 2001 Nobel laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz. The book draws on Stiglitz's personal experience as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under Bill Clinton from 1993 and chief economist at the World Bank from 1997."

[afpx]

That’s called the Appeal to Authority Fallacy.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority

[r00fus]

It's not really; Stiglitz actually worked at the World Bank - and wrote a book about it.

Another book to read is "Confessions of an Economic Hitman". Both describe essentially what both the USA and China appear to be doing - increasing global power and influence using subtler means than gunboat diplomacy.

[changchuming]

And your argument is just an anecdote. Now who would we trust more, a random stranger on the internet or a Nobel laureate?

[creaghpatr]

That’s an awfully dismissive comment to a well laid out argument, you’re not really helping make a case for World Bank, which has been rife with corruption for decades.

[afpx]

Sorry, I seem to have missed the ‘well-laid out argument’.

All I’m asking is that people read facts about the World Bank and make their own opinions.

[kolikotime]

The World Bank had free reign largely in Africa from the 1960s until the early 2000s. They and the IMF had an untrammeled monopoly for the most part, which was further supercharged by the 1980s Washington consensus. In that time period African states on the whole became poorer and state infrastructure crumbled. Now its not entirely on the World Bank/IMF of course, as in many countries there was misgovernance, but we can wholly agree they did not create Eden in Africa.

What has changed the equation for the continent started in the 2000s, the commodities boom along with telecommunications improvement, along with the entrant of new players such as China, India, Turkey, and until recently Brazil(in the Lusophone states).

So if we choose to look at those historical datapoints, without even getting into abuses at the IMF/World bank, we can effectively agree that the Bretton Woods sisters have done very little to move the needle on African prosperity.

Can anyone blame Africans for ignoring the World Bank and IMF when the countries that did ignore its orthodoxy, from China in the late 1970s to then India in the early 1990s, prospered?

[forapurpose]

Can you back up this claim? My understanding is that, speaking very generally about a large continent, most African countries did not implement the economic fundamentals preached by the World Bank and IMF, but failed to due to corruption and institutional problems, including a lack of the rule of law. What African country adopted the rule of law, open markets, stable monetary policies, a significant reduction in corruption, and failed to prosper?

> the countries that did ignore its orthodoxy, from China in the late 1970s to then India in the early 1990s, prospered

China and India did not at all ignore the 'orthodoxy', but enacted it and that is credited with their economic expansion. China and India adopted capitalism, opened their markets, and adopted economic fundamentals such as stable monetary policy.

[kolikotime]

It is to my understanding that China was a relative latecomer to the World Bank and has never been a particularly heavy lender from the bank or the IMF, not to the extent that African states were subjected to. And furthermore while China did follow certain strains of the orthodoxy, it retained heavy state control and influence over many sectors and industries, something very few African states were able to retain following the Washington Consensus.

African states on the other hand, about 40 states in the 1980s underwent what we would call Structural Adjustment programs. State owned enterprises were sold, huge slashing cuts were made to education and healthcare(This in part decimated Nigeria's regional class university system), and various legal reforms for the benefit of Western investors. The results of those experiments were generally failed and led to a disastrous late 1980s and 1990s on the continent.

In terms of a country that implemented many of those reforms and failed to get that far. I would say both Ghana and Tanzania are pertinent examples. Ghana has implemented about three to four rounds of IMF engagement since the 1980s and is hailed regionally for its rule of law and stable political and investment climate, it still only has a GDP per capita of $1,641. Then you have Tanzania which since the 1980s has largely abandoned state socialism and embraced a mixed market economy, its GDP per capita? a whopping $936.

[marnett]

Please discuss which points are biased and how so. Dismissing a long form, fact-specific write up on some of the positive impacts of Chinese investments in Africa as propaganda and adding nothing to the conversation seems to me as lazy-mans propaganda.

[paraditedc]

> I recommend that you read facts about what they do before reading random opinions online (from brand new accounts, especially).

I could make the same argument against this website:

https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=africanstand.com