Even if you don't buy and read this book by Nina Munk, be sure to read this review of it. It is careful, on-the-ground research that leads to scathing condemnation of Jeffrey Sachs and his grand plans in Africa. Sachs is a quintessential elitist interventionist who would love to take over the lives of others --- to make them better off, of course. At least Bono has seen the light, but I doubt if Sachs ever will. Here are some selections from the review:
The Idealist: Jeffrey Sachs and the Quest to End Poverty is a devastating takedown of Mr. Sachs’s technocratic fantasies. It is essential reading for anyone who thinks that brilliant people with the right interventions can save the world. ...
In Dertu, Jeffrey Sachs was revered as the Great Professor. But gradually it became clear that even he didn’t have all the answers. As Ahmed Mohamed, the local Millennium Fund project manager, sighed, “What can we do? We cannot enforce. We try to explain. We want to empower. But no one can come and change them if they do not want to change themselves.”
In other ways, the project did change Dertu. The population exploded from hundreds to thousands. People were attracted to the town by the free food, water and medicine. They gave up their pastoralist ways and built shantytowns. And then the money ran out. The doctor left, and the project manager was fired, and the good times came to an end.
... What makes Ms. Munk’s critique so compelling is the legwork she put in on the ground. In Dertu and other villages, she got to know the people that Mr. Sachs set out to help. He is famous for being combative and ill-tempered, and has ferociously attacked her book. But as she points out in an interview, “I’ve spent more time in these places than he ever has or will.”
Recent history is littered with the wreckage of grand plans to save Africa. So why should we care about another? Because, Ms. Munk argues, “Oversimplification is terribly dangerous.” Promises that can’t be kept invariably result in disappointment, cynicism and donor fatigue. Western taxpayers are increasingly reluctant to fund foreign aid without some assurance that it works.
As for Africa, Ms. Munk energetically rejects the notion that there’s nothing that can be done. The good news is that things are gradually improving. And Africans themselves are increasingly taking the lead. The moral of her story is that the last thing Africa needs is more Great Professors. As she says, “I think we’d all be a lot better off if we were a little more humble.”
I added the emphasis to the last sentence of that review [quoted above]. It is very Hayekian and very true. From the conclusion of Hayek's acceptance speech when he received the Nobel Prize in Economics,
The recognition of the insuperable limits to his knowledge ought indeed to teach the student of society a lesson of humility which should guard him against becoming an accomplice in men's fatal striving to control society - a striving which makes him not only a tyrant over his fellows, but which may well make him the destroyer of a civilization which no brain has designed but which has grown from the free efforts of millions of individuals.