[ajmurmann]

There is a dead comment by someone whose grandma kept donating to charity for Ethiopia. The grandma died poor save the poster is upset that nobody from Ethiopia ever thanked her and now they are prospering. I don't like that comment, but it is actually quite interesting, especially if taken together with another comment on a parallel discussion about the huge growth in Africa and the very visible Chinese influence.

It makes you wonder how China's involvement has lead to do much growth in such short time, while the West had been focused on providing to poor, starving African children for decades. I wonder how much the attitude reflected in the comment about the donating grandma is common and how it contributed to the connotative lack of results from Western aid efforts. Did we deep down not want results, but instead mainly make ourselves feel good while keeping Africa in a position where they can provide that feeling to us? What concretely is China doing that we failed to do? How will this pan out on the long term for Africa? So many interesting topics in here!

[_Microft]

The progress after 2000 does not really look too different from the time before. GDP per capita is a bit of an exception though.

GDP per capita: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/average-real-gdp-per-capi...

Literacy rate: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cross-country-literacy-ra...

Life expectancy: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy?time=1950...

Hunger and undernourishment: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/prevalence-of-undernouris...

(I removed the HDI as there was only data from 2000 on.)

[oefrha]

Not sure how your links support your argument. Literacy rate data is from 1994 onwards, steadily up except one hiccup (by the way I can’t imagine how literacy rate could drop 6% in a year; short of mass extinction of a literate group it must be a change of methodology); life expectancy growth accelerated from ~2000 and is slowing down a bit again; hunger data is from 2000 onwards, same for HDI which you already removed.

So, how is GDP per capita, an important metric, “a bit of a exception” among two other random stats (one of which even accelerated)?

Meanwhile, annual GDP growth rate does seem a lot more steady since 2004: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?locat...

[yorwba]

> Literacy rate data is from 1994 onwards, steadily up

Supporting the argument, since progress keeps following the trend.

> life expectancy growth accelerated from ~2000 and is slowing down a bit again

Slight waviness superimposed on the overall trend.

> how is GDP per capita, an important metric, “a bit of a exception”

GDP per capita had a trend reversal in 2000, unlike the other metrics.

> annual GDP growth rate does seem a lot more steady since 2004

Most likely a change in methodology that gives less noisy estimates.

[oefrha]

> GDP per capita had a trend reversal in 2000, unlike the other metrics

Two other less important and less immediate metrics. The “exception” easily outweigh them both.

[yorwba]

I spent some time browsing the World Bank's data portal and found another metric that shows similar exceptional growth: number of pupils in primary education https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.PRM.ENRL?locations=E...

That one takes off in 1993, about a decade before GDP exploded. Maybe the secret to Ethiopia's growth is just that the population became educated enough to do something useful with the money invested by foreign entities?

[oefrha]

Certainly could be.

[lallysingh]

The Western influences weren't exactly positive: https://africanarguments.org/2017/06/21/ethiopia-was-colonis...

The food sent over via charity often had a religious conversion implied.

China's belt and road initiative has specific goals in Africa that require something closer to real economic development. With a tether of course, but real development.

[kriro]

Very anecdotal evidence here but I worked in the African Union in the 2000s. There were already many Chinese businessmen around which surprised me a bit. To be honest the difference in the interactions couldn't have been much clearer. Most European and U.S. consultants/business people that I met basically treated Africa as a lesser continent to be exploited. I got a very colonial vibe, except with some sugarcoating. Either that or a obnoxious "we need to save poor Africa" attitude.

At the same time the Chinese almost religiously mentioned that they saw Africa as an equal partner. It seemed like a very conscious and deliberate strategy.

So my anecdotal summary would be...the Chinese got involved early, went in guns blazing (money wise) and didn't behave like total pricks out for a quick buck but rather like friends and real business partners.

[ChuckNorris89]

>Most European and U.S. consultants/business people that I met basically treated Africa as a lesser continent to be exploited.

Not just Africa. For US/Western Europe even their close Eastern European neighbors are seen as a lesser continent to be exploited.

An Austrian colleague kept boasting how his dad made a fortune buying illegally chopped wood from Ukraine.

That pretty much sums up how most of the western countries are wealthy today, by exploiting less fortunate countries.

Like you said, it's a modern form of colonialism except it's done with money instead of bullets.

[corporate_shi11]

It's important to look at the political component of our approach as well. The Western political-economic growth model for the third world - fostering democratic institutions while giving basic aid to the poor - is not productive from the perspective of nation building and wealth creation. Democracy is not conducive to growth for poor, diverse nations, especially those still deeply rooted in genuine tribalism as many nations in Sub Saharan Africa are.

While I fundamentally disagree with China's political model, we may have better luck in third world development deemphasizing democracy and focusing instead on rule of law, stability and cultural cohesion.

[jjcc]

I would say the approach should be more economical than political focused. Donation is very socialistic way needs no accountability from donation receptors, while business deals require responsibilities from both side and have risks attached. In fact China doesn't care about the political system. Ethiopia Happened to be a democratic country.

[blackearl]

China is exploiting them. They're not doing it out of kindness, or for some moral self-aggrandizing.

[vorpalhex]

Yet even this exploitative relationship may prove much more helpful than the grain and occasional squad of observers the US or UN sends. It's a funny sort of problem isn't it - perhaps the only way to get genuine investment in these areas is an almost parasitic relationship. More interesting would be if this forces the US or other western countries to more aggressively step up to the plate...

[tristor]

The West will never step aggressively to the plate. We aren’t allowed to by our own domestic politics. One of the major reasons China can become so directly and aggressively involved is they aren’t white. They don’t have a history of African colonialism, Apartheid, or slavery in Africa. They’ve done all these (or similar) and worse, but not in Africa and not in a way which found domestic disapproval.

If the West ever entered Africa the way China has the politicians leading it would destroyed at home. It’s more domestic politics and history than geopolitics.

[blackearl]

If the US or Europe was digging in as blatantly as China we'd be accused of going back to our colonial roots. Good thing China has so many other controversies surrounding them, it makes their activity in Africa look generous by comparison.

[rumanator]

> Yet even this exploitative relationship may prove much more helpful than the grain and occasional squad of observers the US or UN sends.

Any economic program set forth by the West and any decisive intervention to stabilize a country is promptly accused of being neocolonialism.

I recall a few years ago there was a military coup in Guinea Bissau and the West stepped in to stabilize the country by getting the Community of Portuguese-speaking countries (Portuguese acronym CPLP) involved and send ground troops. Even so, it was decided that the ground troops needed to be from Angola and leave Portugal to handle logistics because having Portuguese troops on the ground would help the narrative that the former colonizer was controlling the fallen democratic government as a sockpuppet.

[EchoAce]

Unfortunately this may prove to be way more effective than “doing it out of kindness” like we do.

[corporate_shi11]

It's common that something feels good and seems nice but ends up being unproductive or even counterproductive in the long run.

[agumonkey]

They're most probably installing levers everywhere on the planet. Now how they're gonna use it is to be seen. Of course without opposing forces China will be free to exploit them to their limit but maybe they won't.

[froops]

At least the intent is transparent. "we're here to help ourselves, but it will help you too" is a lot less suspicious than "we're here because we care..."

[jjcc]

There is some historical context that a lot of people outside of China don`t know. China is a big country with a huge diversity in development as well as Chinese people( You believe Chinese are diligent? You are wrong. Not all of them. Even Han Chinese). Many places used to be historically poor areas for very long time. China used to have a very socialist policy for long time before late 70`s which resulted in the associated mentality. The policy of "helping poor" was mostly donations. This was a failure policy that resulted in the poor area stayed in poor. There were many stories such as the people kill the donated plowing ox for meat because they know next year donation will come again. The people in developed areas often feel upset about the wasted donation. The "helping poor" policy changed later towards encouraging entrepreneurship, vocational training (Sounds familiar?), etc. In other words: The policy of giving fishing tool instead of giving bread works better.

That's why most of today's "Chinese Influence" are bound with conditions like business deals. It's a better way to help others in addition to capitalist selfish greediness described in many media. It's mutual beneficial. The approach was from hard lessons that donation can not stimulate sustainable growth.

[trianglem]

China’s model seems to be build infrastructure and the rest of society will come along as opposed to providing aid for the least fortunate.

[jtbayly]

Yes, but China benefits in several ways that temper this positive take.

1. by owning the (often insane) debt from the programs

2. by getting a lot of Chinese jobs in the country

3. by gaining influence over the country (at the expense of Western influence, if you see this as a competition.

Another problem here, although it’s not a benefit to China, is that the quality of infrastructure built by China is often terrible, making the cost and debt even more problematic.

Now, having said all that, the US isn’t necessarily doing much better. And the poor quality Chinese roads (just as an example) are still infinitely better than the competing local-built roads.

[trianglem]

Yes, China benefits tremendously. However the African countries reap some rewards too. It’s hard to take away infrastructure once it’s built short of starting a war. If the African countries can figure out how to maintain and add to all the new infrastructure, they may have the upper hand in the very long term.

[jtbayly]

Yes, unless it's useless infrastructure, like the Mattala International Airport in Sri Lanka. And to be clear, roads don't generally fall into that category. And also, China owns major roads in Indiana, and I'm not necessarily opposed to that happening anywhere. I'm just saying that there are reasons to temper the rhetoric that claims China is doing such an amazing job "helping" third world nations.

And as for starting a war, China doesn't need to threaten to start a war with a country in order to have the threat of such playing into Ethiopia's leadership decisions. You don't want to piss off China any more than you want to piss off the USA.

[threeseed]

China traps a lot of these countries in debt and then forces them to sell their existing infrastructure to them when they can't service it.

Sri Lanka had to hand over a port for example.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-01-07/sri-lankans-protest-c...

[corporate_shi11]

Unfortunately, projects with very long term benefits that require political will to maintain are not sustainable in Democracies.

[trianglem]

Is this why countries with democracies in North America, Europe, East Asia, South East Asia and South Asia have see such decades long explosive growth?

[corporate_shi11]

Actually most developed Democracies have economies that are relatively decoupled from their governments and their politics. Corporations operate relatively autonomously, and it is corporations which fuel the explosive growth we observe.

On the other hand, developing countries often have bloated bureaucracies and corrupt governments that are heavily involved in the private sector and corporate activity.

The difficulties I mentioned in my original post are those in which the Government is heavily involved. Corporate investment in properly functioning nations are free from (public) political hindrances.

[PedroBatista]

It's the type of offer they can't refuse even if they wanted to.

I get it, but this "help" has a tremendous cost, a cost many future generations of Ethiopians will pay dearly.

While the "West" has been a mixed bag between good and bad, there's always been some kind of moral "checks and balances" and pressure from their voters. You get none of that with China.

[haditab]

What are the "moral checks and balances and pressure from the voters" in the west?

As a voter in the west I don't recall ever hearing candidates talk about Africa (although I haven't necessarily been looking out for it and may be a bit too young depending on when it happened).

[true_religion]

When accepting funds directly from the US government, or a source tied to it (e.g. World Bank, IMF), a country commonly has to undergo some amount of economic reform in order to ensure that the money can be paid back in the future. In order to get money from the US, you typically also have to adhere to similar political values such as democracy.

Exceptions of course are the oil states, due to strategic need.

China on the other hand does not care who you are or what you do so long as you can pay.

In this way they are really similar to private equity markets, but unlike private markets, they do have a navy and can use it to ensure that far away governments pay back their money.

[thrower123]

China is doing what Europe did in the 19th century. Anti-colonial independence movements and wholesale nationalization of existing infrastructure put a hell of a clamp on that sort of investment after the second world war. Why would you put up money to build ports or railroads or factories when political instability could mean that next year a tinpot dictator might decide that he was taking it at bayonet-point and seizing all your in-country assets? Especially when your government had demonstrated time and again that they had no interest in retaliating for that kind of trespass.

[wiremine]

> Did we deep down not want results, but instead mainly make ourselves feel good while keeping Africa in a position where they can provide that feeling to us? What concretely is China doing that we failed to do?

I'd argue that it's more important to understand the context from the African perspective, and not just from the Western or Chinese perspective. Ethiopia, for example, has transitioned from a monarchy to a communist dictatorship/Soviet satellite to a non-communist dictatorship to a semi-democracy in just the last 40 years. They've fought a major war with a neighbor, had several famines, and are in the middle of a massive population boom.

So, "did _we_ not want results" isn't a great the best way to view the situation on the ground. China came in at a time where they had money to burn and found a semi-stable group of countries to trade with. That stability was created via the work of Western efforts and massive amounts of hard work by the Africans themselves.

Also, FWIW, the dead comment was likely just a troll: most (all?) donations to the major relief groups get a thank you letter.

Finally: it's worth noting that it's not like Western influence isn't apparent, either. The US Embassy in Addis is hard to miss and steps from the Prime Minister's palace.

[Aaron_Putnam]

GDP per capita change for 2018 was negative for sub-saharan Africa:

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.KD.ZG?locat...

Be careful what you wish for: economic growth in Africa is going to come directly at the expense of the local and international environment, in the form of land clearance and coal and oil emissions.

Africa desperately needs to stabilise its population, so that it can focus on infrastructure and capital deepening. The West can help by redirecting all food aid instead towards education, contraception and abortion for women.

[dang]

We've banned this account for repeatedly taking HN threads into race war. We don't want that here.

Would you please not create accounts to break the site rules with?

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

[kpsychwave]

1. Could you please explain the connection between economic growth and the population problem a little more?

I would expect economic development to gradually cause a decline in birth rates? Is there a GDP marker where delta GDP > delta population?

As far as overpopulation, the entire continent of Africa has roughly the same population (1.3b) as India with ~9x the land area so the absolute population density is not dire.

2. If you look at carbon emissions per capita, African countries are relatively carbon neutral. Ethiopia relies mostly on renewable energy and they are also building the largest hydroelectric power plant on the continent. I would expect younger economies to “leap frog” to cleaner and greener tech, having polluted less in total (than countries before them) by the time they attain middle income status.

[IllogicalLogic]

Sounds like a surviving version of Victorian "blame the victim" thinking. It was a popular and heavily flawed idea that the people the British invaded and robbed (of food in many cases), if faced with food shortages, should have just "had less kids".

When a parasite finds a good host, the logic can get really warped.

[rayiner]

> The West can help by redirecting all food aid instead towards education, contraception and abortion for women.

This is evil.