Periscope
16 NEWSWEEK.COM
sierra leone’s economy is “donor-
driven,” i.e., dependent on foreign
aid, both from Official Development
Assistance and private. The country
is inundated with aid workers and
missionaries who’ve come to build
schools and roads, install wells and
solar systems and teach. Every public
structure has a sign saying it was built
by an aid agency. The problem is that
aid doesn’t work. It alleviates the pain
of poverty, but doesn’t cure it. Sierra
Leone’s been getting aid continuously
since 1787, when Freetown (Granville)
was established with funding fromthe London-based Committee for the
Relief of the Black Poor. John Lahai,
a Sierra Leonean who’s worked on
numerous aid projects, explained the
problems. Aid is wasteful, inefficient,
encourages corruption and destroys
self-reliance on the part of recipients.
But it’s not easy to end aid depen-
dence. Collier estimates that aid has
added around 1 percent to the annualOthers are even more bullish, like Jake
Bright and Aubrey Hruby in their book,
The Next Africa: An Emerging Continent
Becomes a Global Powerhouse.
That isn’t what I found in Sierra
Leone. I found a country not a whit
better off than the one I’d left almost
a half century before. And a place
where people have not only lost just
homes, lives and limbs—but even
their memories.
I discovered that when I visited
the small bush village of Nyandeama.
I was there to search for old Peace
Corps friends Bockrie Sallu and his
daughter. The last I heard from Bock-
rie, via a letter to a mutual friend,
was in 1995. He said the rebels had
attacked and his family was safe and
accounted for, except for “my daugh-
ter Jeniba, who have been lost and up
till now I have not set eyes upon her.”
I’d brought some pictures taken
by my friend Guy Washington,
another former Peace Corps volun-
teer. I pulled them out for the chief
of the village. Without speaking, he
extended his hand. I handed him the
entire stack. He went through each
one slowly, handing it to the person
beside him as he finished. His hands
began to shake. People shouted. Soon
a crowd formed. They handed the pic-
tures around, tapping excitedly when
they recognized a relative and laugh-
ing. People handled each picture rev-
erentially, carefully, by the edges. They
stared, some wiping away soft tears,
and then handed it on to the next
person. It was a wonderful moment.
I got a similar reaction in the vil-
lage where I’d been stationed, Majoe.
When I left, the chief gave a speech.
“Thank you for coming. Thank you
for the gifts you have brought us. We
will use the money well. But most
of all, thank you for bringing those
photographs. You have given us back
our memories.”
growth rate of the poorest countries
over the past 30 years, and that with-
out aid, many of them instead would
have suffered severe decline. If aid
to the continent were simply cut off
tomorrow, millions would starve.
There’s an obvious alternative. For-
mer ambassador and head of the U.N.
mission in the Congo, Roger Meece,
says the answer is, “jobs.” And every-
one agrees that the way to create jobs
is a strong private sector. The ques-
tion is: How to get there?
One suggestion is to go small. In
1961, Africa was self-sufficient in food
production. By 2007, there was a 20
percent shortfall. Ghanaian econo-
mist George B. N. Ayittey wants to go
back to that “golden age of peasant
prosperity.” He espouses a bottom-up
development model built around vil-
lages and agriculture. His plan calls
for providing basic infrastructure
and using microfinance. Many aidOCTOBER 18, 2019