A rock star and a hard place

Jeffrey Sachs, author of The End of Poverty and development economist to the stars (Bono wrote the foreword to his bestselling book and Angelina Jolie co-starred with him in an MTV documentary on Africa), spoke last night in Nairobi to the foreign correspondents association. Despite his Midwestern insurance adjuster's demeanor, Sachs has become something of an economic rock star for arguing passionately that development assistance to poor countries works, and that extreme poverty could be eradicated if rich countries gave more -- more medicine, more agricultural technology, more money -- with fewer restrictions.

Because the talk was off-the-record, I can't reveal what was said. But Sachs's comments over the course of about 90 minutes of Q&A wouldn't have surprised anyone who's familiar with his book or heard him speak. In the past, he has chastized rich countries -- primarily the industrialized nations of the G8 -- for not giving enough humanitarian aid, especially to Africa. He has calculated the amount of aid to Africa as $16 per poor person per year, over the last 60 years. That's a measly amount, he says, although he argues that it has had a positive impact.

When the United States and Western institutions such as the World Bank withhold aid from countries for corruption or other bad government practices, it only hurts the poorest people, Sachs says. Meanwhile, China, which is fond of saying that it gives aid with "no strings attached," has become a big player in Africa by cozying up to countries like Sudan and Zimbabwe, no friends of the West. To Sachs, China's growing involvement in Africa is, on balance, a very good thing.

It was interesting to hear him speak on the same day that President Bush imposed fresh sanctions on Sudan in an effort to pressure the government to end the crisis in Darfur. One thing we've heard over and over again from analysts is that friendship with China allows the government of Sudan basically to ignore the West. Sudan doesn't need to do business with us, so it doesn't need to listen to us -- and therefore, one analyst told me yesterday, new U.S. sanctions don't really mean that much.

Viewed in that light, some have asked: Shouldn't China's massive investment in Sudan's oil sector and other industries be more troubling to Sachs? This is a man who believes passionately that we can end extreme poverty in our lifetime, and he knows that conflicts like Darfur are a huge obstacle in the way of that ideal. In the case of Sudan, an argument can be made that Chinese investment is prolonging the suffering of some of the poorest people on the planet.

Contrast Sachs's position with that of activists like the Save Darfur Coalition, which launched an ad campaign today in major newspapers in the U.S. and Asia to urge China again to do more on Darfur. “As Sudan’s largest trade partner, foreign investor and military provider, China could play a crucial role in ending the violence and returning peace to Darfur,” said the director, David Rubenstein. The campaign faces an uphill struggle in part because countries like the U.S. aren't willing to confront China over Darfur when there are more quote-unquote important policy objectives at stake, such as North Korea.

With more than 250,000 dead and 2.5 million forced from their homes, Darfur is probably the most serious policy quandary in Africa at the moment. Perhaps it's not a question for Sachs, who's not a policy maker after all but an economist, and one of the most celebrated of his generation at that. But Darfur seems to be a place that's crying out right now for political solutions, not economic forecasts.