07/15/2010

New Proposals for the End of Poverty

Fair trade arrangements are part of the solution.  Is it the silver bullet?  A hail of bullets is needed to end poverty.  The bullets needed are agriculture, health, education, infrastructure, water and sanitation, and fairer trade arrangements.

Rethinking Jeffrey Sachs: New Proposals for the End of Poverty - STWR - Share The World's Resources.

Take the Democratic Republic of Congo. Canadian negotiators recently convinced the DRC government to barter away mineral concessions worth some $120 billion to China in exchange for a paltry $6 billion of infrastructural development. Why are the Congolese people so desperately poor when they're literally sitting on a goldmine? Because -- as in the days of old European colonialism -- their mineral profits are being siphoned by first-world corporations that can get away without paying them the real price of the commodities they extract or the labor that digs them up. Africans don't need aid, they need fairer trade arrangements.
Jul 15, 2010 5:43:38 PM | Africa, Congo, Poverty

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