I think Africa has actually got WORSE since we started sending them cash. Before that they didn't have money to buy guns.
The reality is that money in Africa isn't funnelled to the most in need the same as it isn't funnelled to the most in need in any country you could name.
There is a thriving middle-class in Africa every bit as well-off as the middle class here.
And the leaders (+pals) drive fleets of Bentleys.
Globalisation has given birth to a middle class and an elite that is no longer located in any one country. It hasn't (and won't) reduce poverty. But poverty is now not so much a geographical concern - it's purely a class concern now. The whole world has its upper, middle and lower classes, the upper echelons of which are quite comparable the whole world over.
Now what I've been told/read is this: in places like India, Africa - to a large degree their middle classes really couldn't give a single toss about the poor in their own country.
Someone (I forget who) said that, "Charity is a scam which funnels money from lower-class Westerners to fund wealthy Africans." I'm not sure that's 100% correct but you can easily see how funds could be misused or wasted - once people donate how many of them bother to track the way the money is spent (if that information is even made available). It is said that by far the largest (numerically) group of donors tend to be people in western countries on fairly modest incomes themselves. The begging adverts on TV don't play to logic they attempt to use emotional blackmail. Personally I don't trust these charities anyhow. Nor their CEOs on 6-figure salaries. Charity is run like big business, and business doesn't have a "heart".
