>>Chrystia Freeland: So I want to bring Sipho into the conversation. I want to ask, do -- we
have to turn Marc talking about how he wants to go into Africa, and if I were a minister
of health, figuratively hold a gun to my head and say use these syringes. How do you feel
when these Westerners say, "Hey, how come you're using these terrible needles? We have
a solution for you." You love it, right?
>>Sipho Moyo: I think Marc has done his homework. But you're right, there is usually the question
of the issue of just donors, you know, expatriates, foreigners, whatever you want to call them,
coming in with these grand ideas and trying to impose them on the people.
I think what is really important, you know, when you ask me this question, it just reminds
me of a very quick anecdote that I'm going to tell. When the colonialists came to Zambia
back in the colonial days, they found the Tonga people one of the rites of passage as
a coming of age for young men was knocking their front teeth out. And that was a really
big thing, if you didn't get your front teeth knocked out, you protested. You had to have
them knocked out. And the colonialists came and thought this was barbaric. So they put
in a law, some kind of a, you know, legislation to make that illegal. And that went well.
But soon after that happened, young men just started dropping dead like flies, you know,
at the time that they sort of come of age. And then they started investigating what was
the problem. What actually happened is that because, you know, they were pastoralists,
they handle a lot of cow dung, and there is a bacterium in the cow dung that transmits
tetanus. And the reason they originally knocked out their teeth was that when you have tetanus,
there's a lockjaw of some kind that takes place, so they can't feed you, they can't
give you medication. But if your front teeth are knocked out, they can drop the medication
and the food through, you know, the gap. And so they could no longer feed them or medicate
them, and they started dying. And that's when the colonialists came back and said, "Okay.
Tell us why you knock out the teeth." But they should have asked that in the first place.
So the point is, is that what the Africans want? You need to find out why they do what
they do. And clearly, for me, Marc has done his homework.
>>Chrystia Freeland: But not everybody does? >>Sipho Moyo: Not everybody does, absolutely
not. No, no, no. Absolutely not. I mean, I think development assistance has
got to -- there's got to be a shift in the way that it is done where it becomes endogenous,
meaning based on the local needs and solutions. A lot of the time, that's not very -- that's
not always very well thought out. But I think it's changing. I mean, a lot of
lessons have been learned over the last 50- or 60-odd years and I think increasingly there
is more of a dialogue and -- >>Chrystia Freeland: And what do you think,
Sipho, more broadly -- and maybe Barbara will jump in on this in a minute -- of, you know,
if I can call it the Dambisa critique, that, you know, really what's going on is we've
created these self-sustaining aid bureaucracies that actually pay quite high salaries to expats,
that they're all about really continuing the problem, and while they may, in a moment in
time, feel like a good thing -- it's great, you know, to use your story that the teeth
aren't getting knocked out -- that they're actually not only not addressing the deeper
structural problems, but maybe actually contributing to them?
Do you think that's part of what's happening? >>Sipho Moyo: Look, I think Dambisa obviously
has a point but I want to jump very quickly because we don't have time and say this: Aid
is useful. It changes lives, saves lives, you know, and, you know, it's a useful instrument
if it is, you know, carried out in an environment with the right sort of governance framework
or where the policies, you know, promote growth, promote economic growth, where you have, you
know, strong institutions and where you have the political will really to carry out the
fundamental economic reforms. You know, macroeconomic policies, public financial management, fiscal
deficits, you know, those kinds of things. So if you have the right policy framework
-- let me put it that way -- I think aid can be very effective.
Let's -- and the idea behind aid should really be to move countries to where they're on a
self-sustaining development path. The problem is when those sort of elements
are not there. But if you also look at other aspects of it,
I think aid is particularly useful when it comes to human capital development. By that,
I mean health, I mean education. Aid can be very helpful in building institutions, very
important for agriculture development. Not just, you know, food aid but really developing
the systems on the ground. So there's a lot of things that aid can do,
public good, things like infrastructure. Meaning your roads, water, energy and so on.
So I think aid absolutely has its uses. What is misplaced or misguided is thinking
that it should be a perpetual condition. You know, the idea behind aid is really to
get countries where they can be driving -- >>Chrystia Freeland: Should there be time
limits? Should countries get cut off if they turn out not to be on that self-sustaining
path? >>Sipho Moyo: You know, that discussion a
bit misses the point. You know, it's kind of -- it's too blunt of
an instrument, you know, cutting it or not cutting it.
The point really is, there should be an improvement in the way that aid is administered and the
way that aid is managed. I think that's the key.
Because, you know, we can't blame either the donors or the governments. It's really -- it's
an interactive process, and it's the -- yeah, it's much bigger and much more complex than
the simplistic sort of idea of we should cut it off at this point or not at that point.
That's my perspective. >>Chrystia Freeland: I'm sure everyone here
worries a lot about developing countries. Maybe probably particularly about Africa.
If you had sort of the option of having everybody here give some money to, you know, their favorite
ideal philanthropy or make an investment, a commercial investment, in Africa, which
do you think does more good? >>Sipho Moyo: Look, I think, you know, the
continent has changed as well. You know, if you look now, you know, a lot of the demographic,
the African demographic, has shifted to where I think 70% of the population is under 35.
So this is a new generation of Africans who are looking for opportunities.
So, you know, investment opportunities are very important. Opportunities for them to,
you know, drive businesses on their own. So for them, that's really much more important.
This is a generation that actually is very well-represented in Dambisa's book.
You know, they're very critical of aid because there is a sense that, you know, aid hasn't
delivered on all of its promises. So I would absolutely support the idea of
investment, you know, and investing in, you know, things like infrastructure that really
creates a base and a foundation for the economy to thrive and to grow.