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Capital Commentary <capcomm@cpjustice.org> wrote:
Date: Fri, 08 Jul 2005 09:46:34 -0400
Subject: Africa and the G-8 Summit
[Reprinted with Permission]

CAPITAL COMMENTARY
A Publication of The Center for Public Justice
July 11, 2005
Africa and the G-8 Summit

Just before leaving for the G-8 summit in Scotland, President Bush announced a new aid package of $1.7 billion primarily to fight malaria in Africa. In his speech announcing the aid he said of his administration's wider efforts, "We've tripled our aid to Africa; we plan to double it again [by 2010]. But more than this, we're standing for good government, and energy development, and debt relief, and expanded trade, all of which will help African peoples live better lives and eventually overcome the need for aid."

Indeed President Bush has done more than any other U.S. president to address debt, disease, and bad governance in Africa. David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World, applauded Bush's latest effort as "a powerful boost to a summit that could bring historic change to Africa" (Washington Post, 7/1/05). This comes against the backdrop of American leadership among wealthy countries to cancel $40 billion of debt owed by 18 of the world's poorest countries, 14 of which are in Africa.

There remain legitimate questions about why Congress and the Bush administration are not doing even more to aid Africa because the United States is capable of doing much more. But none of this gainsays the significant achievements and promises by the Bush administration.

The fact that the summit of the eight major industrial nations last week gave so much attention to the plight of Africa is itself remarkable and encouraging. It reflects the growing awareness and moral concern of people throughout the world who realize that something is terribly wrong when economic development and the fight against preventable diseases in Africa lags so far behind that in the rest of the world.

Nevertheless, despite all the attention given to increasing aid, there are concerns among Africans themselves about deeper, underlying problems that debt forgiveness and more aid will not overcome. A report in the Washington Post (7/3/05) based on interviews with African farmers, business people, and intellectuals said this: "Instead of debt relief and more aid, many Africans said they wanted the G-8 to focus on ending corruption and on improving roads, courts, banking and secondary education."
"Another useful step, many Africans said, would be to end Western countries' trade subsidies for their own farmers, which make it impossible for African industries to do much more than survive." The cotton, for example, that some African countries grow is not bought by any of the G-8 countries. "Instead [Western countries] subsidize their own cotton farmers and then dump used clothing on the African markets, crippling Africa's domestic clothing industries."

An article in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs, titled "How to Help Poor Countries," argues that development "is something largely determined by poor countries themselves." Aid and debt relief are not what those countries need most. Wealthy nations can take "positive steps to directly benefit developing countries-specifically, by taking action against corrupt leaders, assisting research and development, and enhancing global labor mobility."

The biggest challenge "for countries in the poorest parts of the world, especially Africa," say the authors, "is governance. The African continent has been ravaged both by civil war and conflict and by rapacious leaders who have plundered the natural wealth of their nations." The Bush administration has worked to tie debt relief to evidence of change from bad governance to good governance. But much more needs to be done along this line.

Let's call on the G-8, by 2010, to bring together their aid and debt relief measures with increased efforts to promote good governance in the poor countries and to open Western markets to the products of poor-country farmers and entrepreneurs.

      -James W. Skillen, President

-----Original Message-----
From: TheReformingReformed [mailto:TheReformingReformed@yahoo.com]
Sent: Friday, July 08, 2005 2:48 PM
To: Nathan Wilson
Subject: RE: On missions

Dear Rev. Wilson,

What are the implications of such non-Christian based yet Western-initiated kind of events as the G8 Summit on what you guys are doing for Africa? Also, all the Liberals are doing is to pour money in.  We have created a co-dependency situation.  I'll be interested to know how you guys deal with the problem.

The Western missions have made a lot of mistakes, as we all know.  Plus, Christianity from the West had spread with Western Imperialism. Perhaps it is understandable why the African churches are resisting Western missionaries now. Just like the African churches, the Asian churches react against the Western missions by wanting to develop their own contextualized theology (we often hear things like "African theology", "Latin Americam theology", "Asian theology" etc., which are no biblical theology at all, in my view!)  I do not see much "theology" there, but mere a negative/ hostile reaction toward the West.  The Chinese (the the Asians) are very much like the Africans---we are too proud to let the foreigners dominate over us, yet we are too greedy to resist the foreign money.  So what do we do? 

We find ways to seduce foreign money yet make sure also we keep the foreigners under control. Likewise, by allowing short-term missionaries, the African churches could keep the Westerners at an arms length yet gurantee monetary helps from the West. In order for the Western church to continue to bring in money, the African churches play the card of poverty, while the Chinese has one additional card---the card of lack of religious freedom.  Despite modern technology of communication, the West and the rest have not really met!

-------Original Message-------
From: Nathan Wilson
Date: 07/29/05 16:53:01
To: TheReformingReformed
Subject: RE: G-8, Imperialism, and the Majority Mindset

Dear RR,

I think James Skillen's article that you forwarded to me is very insightful.  I must confess that my knowledge of Africa is just beginning, so I probably don't have much to offer in additional insight. One thing I have seen happen in Uzbekistan and Afghanistan is that missionaries without a lot of money are often the first to offer relief and development, then the bigger organizations and government agencies move in and throw vast quantities of money around, inflating the price of everything for the missionaries and tempting the nationals who worked with those first missionaries to change their affilitation with much larger salaries. Applying that to our situation with the TentMaker Project, if the American government makes it easier for Ugandans to get larger amounts of money more easily through their development programs, then our clients may want to abandon the TentMaker Project in favor of those programs. If this happened, I would have mixed feelings. On the one hand, I would welcome an increase of wealth to the Ugandan Christians, but on the other, I would mourn the loss of opportunities to disciple Ugandan believers in the process of doing development through the church.
If Christians abroad find their problems solved - even temporarily - by American money, that will reinforce the idolatrous and ubiquitous notion that American money solves their problems, and they will respond by seeking more American money. It is telling that despite some generous measures by Bush, Africans say it's not enough money. God wants them to turn to Him to save them, not to humans in America. By the way, who helped them get into all that debt in the first place, anyway?

Skillen's article raises questions in my mind concerning economics and government as well. How will the G-8 determine what is "good governance"?  Only God has the right to define "good" from "bad." If they start with humanistic presuppositions to define ethics, they will reach wrong conclusions as to what practically is good government and bad government.  Perhaps a humanistic governor will be just as harmful to people's souls as a pagan governor who indiscriminately kills people. If America does not use God's word to form their judgements about what is good and bad, using God's definitions, then we won't be helping the Africans ultimately. Only the church can help ultimately. The article's statement that "development is something largely determined by poor countries themselves" really rings true. If people desire what is right, it will make all the difference in the world. Corruption is so innate to human nature that we cannot come in as an outside country and end corruption in another country. Only God can effect this change. What Africa needs is a generation of Biblical discipleship. By that I do not mean Americans coming over and telling Africans how to live the way we do, but struggling together to understand the Bible and apply it honestly and consistently to life. I believe that God will shower every kind of blessing upon African communities who have come into a right relationship with God and begun living in the light of His truth and love in all of life.

Maybe if the big players in economics could experiment at very small levels and learn from people who have learned from trial and error, catastrophies caused by misguided aid could be averted: the masses of Africans killed by defective Western vaccines, the destruction of the Hatian dairy and poultry industry by well-meaning Westerners flooding the market with subsidized powerded milk and chicken legs, the babies who died of malnutrition because Westerners sent baby formula overseas and abruptly quit, the millions of dollars raised for Ethiopia in the eighties that instead went to finance the oppressive regimes of  wealthy African politicians... The bigger the amount of money, the more people are liable to get hurt by it. On the other hand, as the saying goes, if you don't do anything, you'll never make a mistake!         

-----------------------------------------------------------    
From: TheReformingReformed [TheReformingReformed@yahoo.com]
Sent: Saturday, July 30, 2005 3:00 PM
To: Nathan Wilson
Subject: RE: G-8, Imperialism, and the Majority Mindset
          

I was talking to another experienced missionary to Africa not long ago, asking him the same questions about funding Africa etc.  You might find it interesting, although the missionary is involved more in the Word ministry in Africa than mercy ministries like what you guys are doing.  Let me just share part of his reply with you:

"What to do?  Not easy to answer. When we are in the mess it is hard to change. We try and tell the short termers not to drop money. It sort of works. I guess we could take their wallets and purses and that might stop it. But they see very poor people and for pocket change they can 'help', at least they think they are helping. And in some short term ways they are. But they are hurting the long term. If we stood together and said, "No more," we could loose some folks. Someone else will pick them up and feel they are doing great things. Once one starts down this road it is hard to stop. Even when we don't support guys starting out, along come others who will and they are so tempted.  If we lived very close to the edge we would be tempted also. Especially if we did not have a long term view.  How to stop it?  Don't start. But that too is no guarantee.  Perhaps start with helping them see they can do things.  That is why I am big on what Lois Ooms is doing in Kenya. No money. Just teaching them they are valuable to God and He can work thru them. It is amazing to see some of the things that happen."

Well, then, where do you draw the line between being wise and being indifference or being stingy? I don't know. All I know is I see more harm done to the churches of the developing countries or post-Communist countries by well-intended Western money on the one hand, and many well-off middle-class Chinese churches in the West seldom gives. American churches are generally very generous. Now you see, if a wealthy church is ungiving, we urge them to give because their prayers by faith must be accompanied with their deeds of compassion. But when the church is generous enough to give, we urge them to withhold themselves because they are not being wise! On the side of Africa, we face the same dilemma. Without money, they do not have sanctity of life; with the money, they are tempted by it in various destructive ways.  It seems to me that TentMakerProject is consciously designed to address this dilemma.