After repeated visits to Africa over fifty years, I concluded that foreign aid as it is conventionally practiced is essentially a failure, futile in relieving poverty, and often harmful, relieving the ills of a few at the expense of the many. Most charities are diabolically self-interested, proselytizing evangelists, tax-avoidance scammers with schemes to buff up the image of the founder—often someone in disgrace or mired in scandal or obscenely rich. Claiming to be apolitical, such charities allow authoritarian governments and kleptocracies to go on existing, because the charities do the
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