I know... I'm just being obstreperous... but I disagree. We should not be taxed to support Africans. Sorry. It's a bad idea, and in my humble opinion it won't work.
This is what I think, my opinion, which is open for discussion and subject to change:
Giving money to Africa will only inflate prices on the same miserable supplies of goods that they have now. And, in the longer term, a very large portion of it would inevitably end up in the hands of the very concentrated African upper class, who in turn would invest it in American and European corporations via the stock markets and would do NO good for long term African development. Additionally, this would only cement Africa's position in the world as a perenial addict to Western cash, and would place their population into one of institutional inferiority to Western charity.
While I fully agree with the goals of Live 8, there is a part of me who thinks that such efforts, in a way, are condescending to Africans and portray them as stereotypically backward and needy. Africans, on the whole as a peoples, are NOT needy, the continent is chocked full of intelligent and talented people who could do better for themselves if given the right context.
Africa is a continent that is already blessed with massive natural wealth. Debt relief, YES, but grants NO! Africa does not need money, Africa needs help developing a modern economy. Instead of giving them money, we should give banks some sort of financial incentive to underwrite small business loans to Africans, and have these loans partially backed by Western governments. We should be sending in teams to assist African governments in reforming judicial procedure, protecting and encouraging laws that regulate and nurture commerce, and helping them with constitutional reforms that add in elements of federalism to allow flexibility in nations with cliquish existing political systems. Actually, I just made the exact wording for that stuff up because it sounded good, I don't know exactly what we can or can't do legally, etc, but I think that is 'these kinds' of things that we should be playing in a role in. That is how we should help Africa.
And lastly, we should generously support the African Union, getting African nations to work together to be able to self-monitor each other and intervene so that Africa can self-police its own continent when one of the constituent nations faces natural disaster or political turmoil.
It is on this last point that I am most cynical. Look at what Mugabe is doing in Zimbabwe, he is making his nation's problems worse. Yet, not one African head of state, not ONE, not even Mbeki in South Africa will utter one peep of disagreement against him. I can understand Mugabe's land redistrubution from a philosophical point of view, but to literally destroy slums which are functioning neighborhoods in which entire families are living just for some point of vanity at best, political revenge at worst, is abhorrent.
The African nations' absence of leadership on this issue is why I am so cynical about just tossing money in their direction.
