PASSAGE 15 (Questions 1-5)

The outside world has pet answers concerning extremely impoverished countries especially those in Africa. Everything comes back, again and again, to corruption and misrule. Western officials argue that Africa simply needs to behave itself better, to allow market forces to operate without interference by corrupt rulers. Yet, the critics of African Governance have it wrong. Politics simply can't explain Africa's prolonged economic crisis. The claim that corruption in Africa is the basic source of the problem does not withstand serious scrutiny. During the past decade I witnessed how relatively well-governed countries in Africa, such as Ghana, Malawi, Mali and Senegal, failed to prosper whereas societies in Asia perceived to have extensive corruption, such as Bangladesh, Indonesia and Pakistan, enjoyed rapid economic growth. What is the explanation? Every situation of extreme poverty around the world contains some of its own unique causes, which need to be diagnosed as a doctor would a patient. e.g. Africa is burdened with malaria like no other part of the world, simply because it is unlucky in providing the perfect conditions for that disease-high temperatures, plenty of breeding sites and particular species of malaria transmitting mosquitoes that prefer to bite humans rather than cattleAnother myth is that the developed world already gives plenty of aid to the world's poor.

Former US Secretary of the Treasury, Paul O'Neil expressed a common frustration when he remarked about aid for Africa: "We've spent trillions of dollars on these problems and we have damn near nothing to show for it", O'Neil was no foe of foreign aid. Indeed, he wanted to fix the system so that more US aid could be justified. But he was wrong to believe that vast flows of aid to Africa had been squandered. President Bush said in a press conference in April 2004 that as "The greatest power on the face of the Earth, we have an obligation to help the spread of freedom. We have an obligation to feed the hungry". Yet, how does the US fulfil its obligation? US aid to farmers in poor countries to help them grow more food runs at around $200 million per year, far less than $1 per person per year for the hundreds of millions of people living in subsistence farm households. From the world as a whole, the amount of aid per African per year is really very small, just $30 per sub-Saharan African in 2002. Of the modest amount, almost $5 was actually for consultants from the donor countries, more than $3 was for emergency aid, about $4 went for servicing Africa's debts and $5 was for debt-relief operations. The rest, about $12, went to Africa. Since, he 'money down the drain' argument is heard most frequently in the US, it's worth looking at the same calculations for US aid also.

In 2002, the US gave $3 per sub-Saharan African. Taking out the parts for US consultants and technical cooperation, food and other emergency aid, administrative costs and debt relief, the aid per African came to the grand total of 6 cents. The US has promised repeatedly over the decades as a signatory to global agreements like the Monterrey Consensus of 2002, to give a much larger proportion of its annual output, specifically up to 0.7% of GNP, to official development assistance. The US's failure to follow through has no political fallout domestically, of course, because not one in a million US citizens even knows of statements like the Monterrey Consensus. But no one should underestimate the silence that it has around the world. Spin as American might about their nation's generosity, the poor countries are fully aware of what the US is not doing. 

[Bank of Baroda (PO), 2010]

The passage seems to emphasise that the outside world has?