As regular readers will know my free marketish ideas on how to make the poor world rich come under regular fire from one commenter (Hi Jim!). So, much to his surprise, no doubt, I thought I’d try thinking about the subject instead of resorting to my  usual knee-jerk reactionary ways (y’know, Smith, Ricardo and Cobden were all correct and no revision is possible).

As is generally agreed Sub-Saharan Africa is the major problem…..this is the one area of the world that has gone backwards in recent decades. Yes, there are examples (Burma?) in other regions as well but we know what’s caused that those, grossly incompetent government. So, here’s a list of the countries in that area with some interesting observations.

First, political and civil freedom, as defined by the Freedom House rankings. A country can be Free (F), Partly Free (PF) or Not Free (NF). Second, economic freedom as defined by the Heritage Foundation study. Here a country can be Free (F), not that there are any of those in Southern Africa, Mostly Free (MF), Mostly Unfree (MU) or Repressed (R). They can also be so badly off that they are not measured (NM). Third, the Corruption Index as compiled by Transparency International. This provides a number, a country ranking. The higher the number, the worse the corruption. Now, this can be a little subjective but we all know that the President of France would be in jail if he were not President and France is at number 21, and we have seen the manouvres of Silvio Berlusconi in Italy as he dives and dodges to avoid corruption charges and Italy is at 42. Russia is at 87….and yes, there are countries worse than that, much worse. I’m actually going to use a slightly different scale, one out of 10 which is what is used to get these rankings. Countries in the top 5, like NZ, Denmark and Iceland have scores well above 9.0. Places like Nigeria and Haiti, bywords for corruption, have scores around 1.5 (meaning that there are actually a few honest people in the country).

The definition of countries is a little difficult…are the Seychelles really part of Sub-Saharan Africa? Mauritius? Not all are included in each index. However, here goes, with the results. Remember, political and social freedom first, economic freedom second and then corruption:

Angola            NF NM 2.0
Benin              F   MU 3.2
Botswana        F    MF 6.0
Burkina Faso   PF  MU  NM
Burundi           PF  NL  NM
Cameroon       NF  MU  2.1
Cape Verde      F    MF  NM
CAR                NF  MU  NM
Congo Rep.     NF   NL   2.3
Congo DR.       PF   NL   2.0
Djibouti          PF   MU  NM
Eq. Guinea      NF  MU  NM
Eritrea            NF  NL   2.6
Ethiopia          PF  MU  NM
Gabon             PF  MU  3.3
The Gambia     PF  MU  2.8
Ghana             F    MU  3.6
Guinea            NF  MU  NM
Guinea Bissau  PF  MU   NM
Ivory Coast      NF  MU  2.0
Kenya              PF  MU  2.1
Lesotho           F    MU  NM
Liberia            PF  NR   NM
Madagascar     PF  MU  3.1
Malawi            PF  MU  2.8
Mauritius         F    MF  4.1
Mozambique     PF  MU  2.8
Namibia           F    MF  4.1
Nigeria            PF  MU  1.6
Rwanda           NF  MU   NM
Senegal           F    MU  3.0
Sierra Leone    PF  MU  2.3
Somalia           NF  NL   NM
South Africa     F   MF   4.6
Swaziland         NF MU   NM
Tanzania          PF  MU  2.8
Togo                NF  MU  NM
Uganda             PF  MF  2.6
Zambia             PF  MU  2.6
Zimbabwe         NF  R     2.3

So what do these wonderful numbers actually mean? Well, the first set, the Freedom House numbers are a useful measure of how badly the government lies. Yes, really. Freedom House measures by using the UN Fundamental Charter of Human Rights. As far as I’m aware, each and every country on that list is a member of the UN and has promised to abide by the rules inside that declaration. Out of 40 countries, only 9 do. 18 are partly liars. 13 are definitely liars, big time.

The Heritage numbers are a useful guide to the economic literacy of the rulers. We know that internally at least (let’s leave all that nasty free trade stuff out of it for a moment shall we?) things like security of contract, property rights, free markets, the usual liberal economic nostrums, are a necessary precondition of economic growth. Please, don’t argue over this, the arguments between the various wings of economic thought are about whether they are only a necessary condition or a sufficient one. There are no economically free countries in our list. There are only 6 which are mostly free. The rest are mostly unfree with comrade Bob bring up the rear with the one Repressed economy. OK, we can see that most of the rulers don’t know their arses from their elbows in matters economic.

The corruption index is a useful sign of how much the rulers care for the people of the country as opposed to care for themselves. I mean you’re not going to go out and bribe some banana growing peasant in order to get a favour off the Govt now are you, no, you bribe the rulers to get something at the expense of said peasant (disclaimer, yes I have bribed people but not in Africa. So I know about it but am impartial here.)
Note that there’s only one country that manages to get a score of over 5.0, or mid-way on the scale that Transparency International use. We can also use these numbers in reverse….the lower the number the more likely any money sent is going to go on the rat run to Switzerland.

So, we seem to have an area of the world run, for the large part, by  economic illiterates who lie about their treaty commitments and don’t give a shit about the citizenry, likely to take any aid and spend it on themselves.

Now, it is part of the UN Millenium Development agenda that rich nations should send 0.7% of their GDP in aid to sorely afflicted places like these. Adding the EU the US and Japan we get around $25 trillion of annual GDP, meaning $17.5 billion a year that is supposed to be sent. We are, of course, talking about government to government aid here for things like the charitable donations winging their way to SE Asia at present do not count, the countless sponsor a child schemes paid for out of Friday’s beer money do not, foreign direct investment by companies or people do not.

OK. Can someone tell me how sending $17.5 billion a year of our hard earned money to lying, thieving, economic illiterates is going to solve world poverty?

Oops! Got my percentages wrong. That should read $175 billion.