Rc by @english_mcqs_quizzes Directions (1-15): Read the follo | English MCQs & Quizzes
Rc by @english_mcqs_quizzes
Directions (1-15): Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below it. Certain words/phrases are printed in bold to help you to locate them while answering some of the questions.
The outside world has pet answers concerning extremely impoverished countries, especially those in Africa. Everything comes back, again and again, to corruption and misrule. Western officials argue that Africa simply needs to behave itself better, to allow market forces to operate without interference by corrupt rulers. Yet the critics of African governance have it wrong. Politics simply can’t explain Africa’s prolonged economic crisis. The claim that Africa’s corruption is the basic source of the problem does not withstand serious scrutiny. During the past decade I witnessed how relatively well-governed countries in Africa, such as Ghana, Malawi, Mali and Senegal, failed to prosper, whereas societies in Asia perceive to have extensive corruption, such as Bangladesh, Indonesia and Pakistan, enjoyed rapid economic growth.
What is the explanation? Every situation of extreme poverty around the world contains some of its own unique uses, which need to be diagnosed as a doctor would a patient. For example, Africa is burdened with malaria like to other part of the world, simply because it is unlucky in providing the perfect conditions for that disease; high temperatures, plenty of breeding sites and particular species malaria-transmitting mosquitoes that prefer to bite men rather than cattle.
Another myth is that the developed world already gives enty of aid to the world’s poor. Former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, Paul O’Neil expressed a common frustration when he remarked about aid for Africa: “We’ve spent trillions dollars on these problems and we have damn near nothing show for it.” O’Neil was no foe of foreign aid. Indeed, he wanted to fix the system so that more U.S. aid could be certified. But he was wrong to believe that vast flows of aid Africa had been squandered. President Bush said in a conference in April 2004 that as “the greatest power the face of the earth, was have an obligation to help the lead of freedom. We have an obligation to feed the angry”. Yet how does the U.S. fulfill its obligation? U.S. to farmers in poor countries to help them grow more runs to around $200 million per year, far less than $1 person per year for the hundreds of millions of people in subsistence farm households.
From the world as a whole, the amount of aid per African per year is really very small, just $30 per sub-Saharan African in 2002. Of that modest amount, almost $5 was actually for consultants from the donor countries, more than $3 was for emergency aid, about $4 went for servicing Africa’s debt and $5 was for debt-relief operations. The rest, about $12, went to Africa. Since the “money down the drain” argument is heard most frequently in the U.S., it’s worth looking at the same calculations for U.S. aid alone. In 2002, the U.S. gave $3 per sub-Saharan African. Taking out the parts for U.S. consultants and technical cooperation, food and other emergency aid, administrative costs and debt relief, the aid per African came to grand total of 6 cents.
The U.S. has promised repeatedly over the decades, as a signatory to global agreements like the Monterrey Consensus of 2002, to give a much larger proportion of its annual output, specifically upto 0.7% of GNP, to official development assistance. The U.S.’s failure to follow through has no political fallout domestically, of course, because not one in a million U.S. citizens even knows of statements like the Monterrey Consensus. But no one should underestimate the salience that it has around the world. Spin as American might about their nation’s generosity, the poor countries are fully aware of what the U.S. is not doing.
