Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2014 19:27:54 +0100
The flaw in Bill Gates' approach to ending global poverty
The first step is not identifying technical solutions, but ensuring poor
people's rights, writes guest columnist William Easterly.
By
<http://search.nwsource.com/search?searchtype=cq&sort=date&from=ST&byline=Wi
lliam%20Easterly> William Easterly
March 26, 2014
Special to The Times
SOMEHOW - probably my own fault - I have wound up on Bill Gates' list of the
world's most misguided economists. Gates singled me out by name in
<http://annualletter.gatesfoundation.org/#myth-one=§ion=myth-two> his
annual 2014 letter to his foundation as an "aid critic" spreading harmful
myths about ineffective aid programs.
I actually admire Gates for his generosity and advocacy for the fight
against global poverty through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in
Seattle. We just disagree about how to end poverty throughout the world.
Gates believes poverty will end by identifying technical solutions. My
research shows that the first step is not identifying technical solutions,
but ensuring poor people's rights.
Gates concentrates his foundation's efforts on finding the right fixes to
the problems of the world's poor, such as bed nets to prevent malarial
mosquito bites or drought-tolerant varieties of corn to prevent famine.
Along with official aid donors, such as USAID and the World Bank, the
foundation works together with local, generally autocratic, governments on
these technical solutions.
Last year, Gates cited Ethiopia in
<http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142412788732353980457826178064828
5770> a Wall Street Journal guest column as an example, a country where he
described the donors and government as setting "clear goals, choosing an
approach, measuring results, and then using those measurements to
continually refine our approach."
This approach, Gates said, "helps us to deliver tools and services to
everybody who will benefit." Gates then gives
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ndation25xml.html>
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progress to the rulers. When the tragically high death rates of Ethiopian
children fell from 2005 to 2010, Gates said this was "in large part thanks
to" such a measurement-driven program by Ethiopia's autocrat Meles Zenawi,
who had ruled since 1991. Gates later said Meles' death in August 2012 was
"a great loss for Ethiopia."
Do autocratic rulers like Meles really deserve the
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ndation25xml.html>
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Gates' technocratic approach to poverty, combining expert advice and
cooperative local rulers, is a view that has appealed for decades to
foundations and aid agencies. But if technical solutions to poverty are so
straightforward, why had these rulers not already used them?
The technical solutions have been missing for so long in Ethiopia and other
poor countries because autocrats are more motivated to stay in power than to
fix the problems of poverty. Autocracy itself perpetuates poverty.
Meles violently suppressed demonstrations after rigged elections in 2005. He
even manipulated donor-financed famine relief in 2010 to go only to his own
ruling party's supporters. The donors failed to investigate this abuse after
its exposure by Human Rights Watch, continuing a long technocratic tradition
of silence on poor people's rights.
Rulers only reliably become benevolent when citizens can force them to be so
- when citizens exert their democratic rights.
Our own history in the U.S. shows how we can protest bad government actions
and reward good actions with our rights to protest and to vote. We won't
even let New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie get away with a traffic jam on a
bridge.
Such democratic rights make technical fixes happen, and produce a far better
long-run record on reducing poverty, disease and hunger than autocracies. We
saw this first in the now-rich countries, which are often unfairly excluded
from the evidence base.
Some developing countries such as Botswana had high economic growth through
big increases in democratic rights after independence. Botswana's democrats
prevented famines during droughts, unlike the regular famines during
droughts under Ethiopia's autocrats.
Worldwide, the impressive number of developing countries that have shifted
to democracy includes successes such as Brazil, Chile, Ghana, South Korea
and Taiwan, as well as former Soviet Bloc countries such as the Czech
Republic, Poland and Slovenia.
If the democratic view of development is correct, the lessons for Gates are
clear: Don't give undeserved
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ndation25xml.html>
credithttp://savingsslider-a.akamaihd.net/items/it/img/arrow-10x10.png and
praise to autocrats. Don't campaign for more official aid to autocrats.
Redirect aid to democrats. If the democratic view is wrong, I do deserve to
be on Gates' list of the world's most misguided economists.
William Easterly is professor of economics at New York University and author
of "The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights
of the Poor."
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