Africa Must Fix Itself:China and the West Won't Do It

Andrew Mwenda writes in the WashingtonPost:

More aid to Africa, whether it comes from the West or China, should not give us too much hope because, at root, foreign aid is an ineffective instrument that distorts recipients' incentives for the worse. Aid is given with the assumption that its recipients lack the necessary resource base to generate tax revenue to meet their public expenditure needs. Yet in many African countries, the problem of insufficient tax revenue is caused by poor tax administration, bad policies, and institutions that undermine growth. Then, once taxes come in, there is poor prioritization of expenditures.