Argument: Financial contributions from the West have proved detrimental for Africa.

Between 1970 and 1998 when aid was at its peak, poverty rose alarmingly from 11% to 66%. This statistic alone suggests aid is damaging to African welfare. Africa began borrowing money in the 1970s when interest rates were low, but a rising rates in 1979 caused 11 African countries to default. Even after restructuring, they fell deeper into debt. While the Marshall Plan had been a success, the same approach would not favor Africa; as Dambisa Moyo contends, it lacks the required institutions to utilize capital efficiently. Debt servicing meant money was passing from the poor to the rich, leaving Africa in a precarious global position. Furthermore, countries which have rejected aid as an approach to combat poverty have prospered, indicating an additional correlation between aid and a ruined economy 1.

1 Edemariam, A. (2009, February 19). 'Everybody knows it doesn't work'. Retrieved July 20, 2011, from The Guardian:

Candidate 1: "Trade does not allocate resources effectively

Aid allows for money in a given country to be allocated well against need. At the micro- level as well as the macro, trade is an inefficient distributor of resources in a developing country. Under it, most if not all of the benefit of the trade will stay with a small elite of people who are often amongst the richest in the country in the first place. They may then move the money offshore again. Alternatively, if it remains within the developing country, it may well simply be used to buttress their own position in a way which further entrenches their social and economic position. So, the benefits of trade flow to few people and often they are the least needy. Aid, by contrast, may be targeted against specifically identified groups or areas on the basis of need, often being given through local groups, such as churches, mosques, health clinics, etc. If one looks at the Gini index (income and wealth equality) ranking, it is plain that the top (most inequality) is occupied by Sub-Saharan countries, fortifying the point 1.

1 Mongabay. (2010, January 25). Distribution of Family Income. Retrieved July 21, 2011, from Mongabay:"
Candidate 2: "Trade may not help those most in need.

Aid is linked to need. Trade rewards those who are able and willing to engage in trade. This involves a number of elements – as well as having the rights sorts and quantity of goods and services and being willing to sell at the desired price, a country may need to meet certain other criteria of a purchasing country. For example, that country may make demands in terms of corruption, human rights, political support at the United Nations, or any other of a large number of possible preconditions for a trading partnership. This will suit some countries in the developing world. But for others it will act as a bar to trade. They will therefore not receive the redistribution of wealth that is claimed for the global trading web. In this way, trade can distribute its benefits very unevenly. By contrast, aid can in theory be more evenly distributed and can be targeted against identified need rather than against the ability to compete in a trading marketplace. While aid has not always been targeted effectively and has sometimes been wasted there have been efforts to increase accountability and coordinate aid better such as the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness 1.

1 Development Co-operation Directorate, 'Paris Declaration and Accra Agenda for Action', OECD, Retrieved 2 September 2011 from oecd.org:"
Candidate 3: "Resources will only be scarcer without aid; further chaos and corruption will ensue. There would be no need for fighting should resources be shared out equally. If aid is transferred to governments there is surely a centralized method of doing so; aid itself is not the problem. Africa could escape the issue of receiving payments according to donors’ vested interests by administering a list of causes for which it desires support, accepting contributions where demands fall exclusively within its categories. Again, aid is not detrimental but its careless distribution and allocation is."
Candidate 4: "Trade requires infrastructure

Trade does not exist in a vacuum. It needs a wider infrastructure to support it, e.g. roads, railways, ports, education to produce capable civil servants to administer trading rules, etc. For example Malawi as a landlocked country needs roads and railways to link it to ports in neighboring Angola and Mozambique. Without foreign aid, developing countries are not able to develop this kind of support, and so cannot participate effectively in international trade.

This is even more the case when it comes to creating the necessary legal infrastructure and effective civil service. Aid is not always in the form of money - it may also be given through expert advisors who help countries prepare for the challenges of globalization. Such were the efforts in the 1960s by the developing world, but they were dropped in favor of poverty relief. If restarted and restructured, they would yield much better results, without the fear of commodity prices dropping, enabling African countries to eventually stand on their own two feet. Corruption is a potentially huge problem as recognized by Sudan People’s Liberation Movement Secretary General Pagan Amum "We will have a new government with no experience at governing. Our institutions are weak or absent. There will be high expectations. Hundreds of millions of dollars of oil money will be coming our way, as well as inflows of foreign aid. It's a recipe for corruption.1" As a result it is not physical infrastructure that is needed but rather mechanisms for preventing corruption. Something that aid will always be much better at achieving than trade.

1 Klitgaard, Robert, 'Making a Country', ForeignPolicy.com, 7 January 2011, Retrieved 2 September 2011 from ForeignPolicy.com"
Candidate 5: "The opportunities for trade are severely limited because of barriers imposed by the international system. The arguments made by pro-trade proponents are often couched in the rhetoric of market economics. Yet the international trade arena represents anything but a free market. Instead, tariffs, taxes, subsidies, regulations and other restrictions operate to disadvantage some countries. Because of their weaker bargaining and economic power, it is typically developing not developed countries that are on the losing end of this equation. The agricultural protectionism of the EU and USA, in particular, means that developing countries are unable to compete fairly.

Furthermore, even if we were to accept that trade is more important, they should not be seen as alternatives; they can readily be complements. Trade is not inevitably magic and aid is not inevitably damaging. They depend on complementary policies. For example, aid-for-infrastructure programs that encourage trade could enable African exporters to compete with their Asian competitors 1.

1. UNIDO, Industrial Development Report, 2009."
Candidate 6: "Free trade is dangerous

Exposing fragile developing economies to free trade is very risky. There is a short-term danger that a flood of cheap (because of developed world subsidies) imports will wreck local industries that are unable to compete fairly. For example China’s dominance in textile manufacturers has reduced the amount African countries can export to the US and Europe and is causing protests in Zimbabwe and South Africa against cheap imported Chinese clothing. 1

In the longer term economies are likely to become dangerously dependent upon "cash crops" or other commodities produced solely for export (e.g. rubber, coffee, cocoa, copper, zinc), rather than becoming self-sufficient. Such economies are very vulnerable to big swings on the international commodity markets, and can quickly be wrecked by changes in supply and demand. For illustration, one only needs to look at Greenfield’s “Free market-free fall” 2. He writes: “Trade liberalization encouraged increased production, leading to overproduction that pushed down prices, driving down farmers’ incomes…” Combined with the protectionism of the West (the CAP in the EU) trade is dangerous for Africa. Aid is more stable and certain, and is better for frail countries.

1Africapractice, 'The Impact of the Chinese Presence in Africa', 26 April 2007, retrieved 1 September 2011 from David and Associates

2Greenfield, G. (n.d.). Free Market Free Fall. Retrieved July 21, 2011, from UNCTAD:"
Candidate 7: "Trade can be as short term as aid is; demand is very cyclical so if a country specializes in providing that good or service it can soon find that the product they are providing is no longer desired by consumers, or that there is a new product that makes what they provide obsolete. Even if there is a long term partnership between two trading partners it may simply mean tying the poor country into a different kind of dependency. Instead of the poor country being dependent upon handouts it is dependent upon the richer country buying its products or not trying to undercut it."
Candidate 8: "While aid appears unsuccessful for Africa, the approach itself should not be criticized on the basis of results in one continent. Western countries have simply provided African countries with generous payments allowing them to stabilize their economy. It many aspects of life, emphasis is not often attributed to what resources are available but how they are used. Though more guidance on how to invest the money may have been useful, Africa itself must take responsibility for how it has spent the money. The evil behind aid is allegedly overreliance: a country becomes dependent on receiving more and more aid. However, a focused approach to budget and organization of capital could certainly put aid to good use."
Candidate 9: "The global economy is not welcoming to African players

The international trade arena represents anything but a free market. Instead, tariffs, taxes, subsidies, regulations and other restrictions operate to disadvantage some countries. Because of their weaker bargaining and economic power, it is typically developing not developed countries that are on the losing end of this equation. The agricultural protectionism of the EU and USA, in particular, means that developing countries are unable to compete fairly. In the EU, for example, each cow gets over 12 USD every day, which is many times more than what the average Sub-Saharan person lives on 1. Furthermore, Africa has yet to break into the global market for manufactured exports: this is very difficult precisely because of the success of low-income Asia.

1 BBC News. (2008, November 20). Q&amp;A: Common Agricultural Policy. Retrieved July 21, 2011, from BBC News:"

While aid appears unsuccessful for Africa, the approach itself should not be criticized on the basis of results in one continent. Western countries have simply provided African countries with generous payments allowing them to stabilize their economy. It many aspects of life, emphasis is not often attributed to what resources are available but how they are used. Though more guidance on how to invest the money may have been useful, Africa itself must take responsibility for how it has spent the money. The evil behind aid is allegedly overreliance: a country becomes dependent on receiving more and more aid. However, a focused approach to budget and organization of capital could certainly put aid to good use.
