Foreign Aid Funds to Africa (FromMrs DOMBOUE, Provincial High School of Kaya)
Africa is at once the world’s richest and poorest continent. It is rich in natural resources, but poor in the harnessing of
these resources for its suffering masses. It is a continent of widespread famine, ignorance and disease ; where the death of one half of all children under the ago of five is not unusual. Most of Africa’s fifty nations have a per capita income below
$500 a year and many of them experienced no growth whatever during the past fifteen years. Predictably, eighteen of the world’s twenty-eight least developed countries are located on the continent.
The US Congress re-designed the nation’s foreign program in 1973 : Aid funds could no longer be used to build airports, port facilities, steel mills, high-level dams, highways and other capital intensive projects in underdeveloped countries. Rather, the poorest people within those countries could receive priority attention. Us aid would aim at improving their agricultural productivity, heath, education, family planning and other basics of survival and self development. Special attention was directed to Africa’s drought problems particularly in six Sahelian countries, where an estimated 100,000 persons die during the peak of the crisis in 1972-74.
Through a recent address at Howard University ? President Julius Nyerere of Tanzania gave the perspective of an Africa on the whole issue of foreign aid ; “a man who needs to sell his labor in order to buy bread, and a man who controls both his
employment and the price of bread are not equal. Their relationship is one of dependence and dominance…The world’s poor nations remain poor because they are poor and because they behave as if they were equal in a world dominated by the rich”.
Besides, “the whole idea of aid is wrong because it is both ineffective with the problem of poverty and it humiliates the
receiver”.
Alex Poinsett, Ebony, December 1977
Vocabulary
Harnessing : using
Basics : Fundamental things
Peak : the highest point
Per capita : par personne/habitant
Re-design = reconcevoir
Labor = travail, babeur, main-d’œuvre
I - Guided commentary
1) Why is Africa considered to be the world’s richest and poorest continent ?
(2pts)
2) How much is the per capita income of most African nation ? (1pt)
3) What is the new nation’s foreign program of the US ? (2pts)
4) What is the main aim of US aid for poor countries ? (2 pts)
5) What does President Nyerere want to say when he says ; “a man needs to sell is labor in order to buy bread, and a man who controls both his employment nd the price of bread are not equal.” (6 pts)
II – Translation
Translate the third paragraph of the text into French.