AFRICA IS “kicking off” and developing in ways “we can’t possibly imagine”, activist Bob Geldof said last night.
The continent would jump the gap from being a rural economy to an industrial economy just as Ireland had, he told students at Trinity College Dublin.
Over half the population is under 15 and, in 10 years, Africa will have a greater working population than China, he said.
Africa is developing beyond any model a developmentalist can come up with, people are getting online and it has the fastest growing mobile markets, he said.
He was speaking at a College historical society debate against the motion that development aid has done more harm than good.
Development aid had worked as a “hopeful little spur to infrastructure growth and governance” he said.
He warned against a cynicism which has developed towards aid. Charity has been wrapped in 21st century irony , he said.
“Charity is what most human beings can do to stop another hurting. If we lose that then something that is purely human withers and dies,” he said.
A million individual donations was “political” and would “shift the wheel slightly in favour of those few,” he said.
Since the G8 summit in 2005 some 39 million more children have gone to school. “That’s 39 million people switched on,” he said.
Prof Yash Tandon, a Ugandan professor of political economy argued that aid was “simply a tool camouflaged as charity to conquer Africa”.
Ireland received billions of aid from the EU and is considered a success, he said. However, referring Ireland’s current economic woes, he asked was this a success.
He said that hundreds of thousands made homeless in the Haiti earthquake last year was a result of aid. In the 1990s, food aid to Haiti, destroyed the wheat farmers and forced them to move to Port Au Prince, he said.
The motion that “development aid has done more harm than good” was opposed by the house.
