I read with interest Denis Mangan's recent article, calling for an end to Western foreign aid to Africa. I deployed the same arguments, and many more, in the Anti-Geldof Compilation CD I organised five years ago (and which comes with a 28-page booklet, containing a 7,000-word refutation of the Live8 / anti-poverty campaign).
But in 2010 my position is even more radical, in that I reject not just aid, but the idea of 'development' altogether.
Development is a byproduct of the Western liberal ideology, which is founded on doctrines of equality and progress, the former of which implies a totalitarian mindset while the latter implies a linear conception of history. I ask, why do sub-Saharan Africans need to be 'developed'? The egalitarian view is that given equal opportunities, even the Kalahari bushmen will eventually 'develop' themselves into a European-style, techno-industrial civilisation, with only minor anatomical differences. My view and that of others (see Guillaume Faye) is that it is absurd to think that all the peoples of the Earth can and need to be developed. Firstly, our type of civilisation presupposes certain inborn capabilities, temperament, and proclivities that are not present in all humans and cannot be implanted through education. Secondly, and as Faye points out, were the whole Earth to be developed into a global European- or American-style techno-industrial civilisation, the planet would likely not be able to withstand it: the demands on the environment would be too great and have catastrophic results.
If the peoples of sub-Saharan Africa never developed techno-industrial civilisations, it is because they never had any need for it. What is more, even some of the fundamental features of civilisation are baffling to the peoples of Africa even today, such as what they see as an obsession for counting and measuring everything: hence why so many Africans have no idea of how old they are and why a traveller will find many parts without street names of numbered houses (natives use landmarks to find their way around).
For these and other reasons, some of which you can find in the researches of Profs. Richard Lynn and J. Philippe Rushton, and others that you can find in Lothrop Stoddard's Revolt Against Civilization (1922) and Hesketh Prichard's Where Black Rules White (1900), Africa needs to be allowed to deindustrialise and to regress to pre-colonnial conditions. The nation states created there by the European powers must be allowed to disintegrate, and Africa as a whole must be allowed to re-organise along traditional, tribal lines. While North Africa will certainly remain more advanced, sub-Saharan Africa needs to be declared a natural and anthropological reserve.
Most importantly, the West must reconcile itself to the idea of a multi-tiered world, with parts of it organised along traditional or neo-Mediaeval lines, reflecting the capabilities, the temperament, and the proclivities of the peoples who inhabit those regions. This would have the further advantage of being more sustainable environmentally, as traditional and neo-Mediaeval societies do not place so many demands on the Earth.
Of course, this is a long way from happening yet. And if it happens, it will not happen because our political leadership finally reflected on their follies and decided to stop being so foolish, so selfish, and so delusional. If it happens, it will be the consequence of a systemic collapse and a fundamental realignment of values in the West.
