{"id":879,"date":"2007-08-30T12:38:25","date_gmt":"2007-08-30T16:38:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2007\/08\/30\/biggest-component-of-foreign-aid-knowle"},"modified":"2007-08-30T12:38:25","modified_gmt":"2007-08-30T16:38:25","slug":"biggest-component-of-foreign-aid-knowledge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2007\/08\/30\/biggest-component-of-foreign-aid-knowledge\/","title":{"rendered":"Biggest component of foreign aid = knowledge"},"content":{"rendered":"

Seeing the legions of UN and NGO workers driving around Africa in their brand-new Toyota Land Cruisers got me wondering what the most effective form of foreign aid is.\u00a0 Jeffrey Sachs <\/a>claims that we should put more money into providing\u00a0food, education, health care, and housing.\u00a0 The caveperson thought on foreign aid of this kind, however, is that foreigners paying for this stuff will simply enable the rulers to move more of the tax and resource revenue into their Swiss bank accounts.<\/p>\n

My Weblog posting on The End of Poverty<\/em><\/a> notes that “Sachs cannot come up with a single example of a country that has been lifted out of poverty by foreign aid”.\u00a0 Upon further reflection, this is not true and I think that I’ve overlooked the biggest component of foreign aid: knowledge.<\/p>\n

Imagine a group of humans in the middle of a rainforest that has been living in isolation for 2000 years.\u00a0 What practical non-cash\u00a0items do they get when they meet the modern world?\u00a0 They get physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, medicine, public health, and business methods.\u00a0 This information is published, more or less for free, in Wikipedia,\u00a0textbooks, and journals.\u00a0 The information is also available in patents, which either don’t apply in the rainforest territory or expire 17 years after issuance.\u00a0 This information has been developed at a cost of $trillions and centuries of hard work.<\/p>\n

Has any country pulled itself out of poverty or been able to accommodate a population explosion in virtue of getting this kind of information?\u00a0 A lot of Asian countries, starting with Japan (1868 onward), Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore would seem to be candidates.\u00a0<\/p>\n

One way to look at foreign aid in Africa then is that we are already delivering a huge quantity in the form of knowledge.\u00a0 Any additional aid is likely to be most effective if it builds on this existing supply.\u00a0 What kinds of things would enable an African country to take better advantage of the scientific, engineering, and business knowledge that is currently being delivered to interested people worldwide?<\/p>\n