What should Washington's relationship with the developing World be?

[davidbfpo]

The USA offers Africa and I assume other parts of the developing world an odd mixture - the teachings of a dead economist, John Kenneth Galbraith and loads of US$ investment:http://thinkafricapress.com/economy/...aith-us-summit

This passage reminds me economists should not write:

....the US-Africa summit ended with a promised $14 billion in new US private investments in areas such as energy and infrastructure. This was also served up with the potential carrot of extended trade preferences under the US African Growth and Opportunity Act, and bathed in a thick glaze of philanthropic feel goodery sprinkled with a sugary, anodyne dash of corporate social responsibility. Africans might want to consider taking this meal with a lorry load of salt.

[KingJaja]

The USA offers Africa and I assume other parts of the developing world an odd mixture - the teachings of a dead economist, John Kenneth Galbraith and loads of US$ investment:http://thinkafricapress.com/economy/...aith-us-summit

This passage reminds me economists should not write:

US driven policy prescriptions for Africa - championed by IMF/World Bank, failed woefully during the 1980s/90s. That is one reason why China is quite popular here. Africa's affinity for China isn't totally irrational - but Westerners, as usual don't listen to Africans - they more used to doing all the talking.

[Dayuhan]

US driven policy prescriptions for Africa - championed by IMF/World Bank, failed woefully during the 1980s/90s. That is one reason why China is quite popular here. Africa's affinity for China isn't totally irrational - but Westerners, as usual don't listen to Africans - they more used to doing all the talking.

Of course Africa's affinity for China is rational, nobody's questioning that. How that works out down the line remains to be seen, but for Americans that's not a particularly important question. Again, China's involvement in Africa poses neither threat nor useful example to the US, so I'm not sure how it relates to the question of how the US ought to deal with developing countries.

It's easy to promise investment in a meeting, but whether or not those investments emerge is another question. US companies do not invest according to directions from the government, but on the basis of their own projections of risk and reward.

Coming from Asia I am sometimes surprised at what the Chinese get away with in Africa: here there is no way that foreign nationals would be allowed, for example, to engage directly in retail trade, or that a Chinese enterprise would be allowed to import Chinese laborers... but again, that's up to Africans to work out. Certainly Africans won't get a "better deal" from the US, which is not engaged in a competition to give anyone a better deal, but any time you rely on outside help - from anyone - to spur development, there will be a piper to be paid down the line.