Madam, - I felt nauseous over the weekend at the hypocrisy of some of the supporters of the "Make Poverty History" campaign. This campaign is supported by the religious right and the loony left, both of which persistently condemn materialism, wealth and capitalism. Can someone please explain to me how you can end poverty without creating wealth?
One thing Africa doesn't need is another bunch of sanctimonious white people trying to assuage their white guilt and making themselves feel good by hosting a happy-clappy singalong, when it is the very same people who, through their fanatical loyalty to failed and flawed religious, economic and political ideologies, contribute to African poverty.
We have the religious zealots who believe that preventing contraception is more important than preventing death because of Aids, and who are more interested in saving souls than lives. We have the environmental zealots who believe that preventing GM food is more important than feeding the hungry. And we have the socialist zealots who believe that preventing jobs being exported to Africa is more important than creating employment there.
For 40 years we have been sending billions in aid to Africa, and what has it achieved? And what do the so-called champions of the poor say is the answer? They say that we should send more aid! It is like fire-fighters trying to put out a fire by dousing it with petrol, and when the fire gets bigger, the fire-fighters exclaim that if they had more petrol, they could put out the fire.
Africa needs more aid like a fire needs more petrol. Aid only treats the symptoms and not the underlying cause of African poverty. More aid will only create a welfare continent that will be perpetually dependent on the white man's generosity.
What Africa really needs is trade. Africans need us to open up our markets so that they can trade themselves out of poverty. Africans need us to allow them to establish modern industries to provide jobs and goods. They need us to stop subsidising our rich farmers, to remove our protectionist tariffs, to privatise our lazy public sector industries, and to embrace the same free-market policies that we expect from them.
Africans need us to stop treating them as dependants enslaved to Western aid, and start treating them as equals on the world market.
And what is this solution called? It is called globalisation. And who opposes globalisation?
Perhaps the people who oppose globalisation secretly want Africa to stay poor so that they can always feel sorry for it. Maybe they want Africa to stay poor so they can use it as emotional propaganda against Western values in order to promote their own failed ideologies.
Poverty will be made history on the day when you can walk into an electrical shop in Ireland and buy an appliance with a sticker on the side saying "Made in Africa". On that day Africa will no longer be a slave to the so-called champions of the poor. On that day Africa will truly be free, because it won't need the pity of the white man any more. - Yours, etc,
JASON FITZHARRIS, Rivervalley, Swords, Co Dublin.
Madam, - I am sure many of the people saying "Make poverty history" are Roman Catholics. If so, they are "the Church", a fact of which the clergy constantly remind us. Therefore I expect Pope Benedict to refrain from making bland statements such as "People from the world's richest countries. . .should urge their leaders to fulfil the pledges made to reduce world poverty, especially in Africa, by 2015". Instead I urge him to lead by example and reduce the debt by divesting the Vatican museum of some of its countless treasures held in the name of "the Church". - Yours, etc,
MAURA KEOGH, Knockaire, Knocklyon Road, Dublin 16.