This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, April 3rd, 2008. I'm Caleb Brown.

Much of the international aid devoted to Africa these last decades hasn't just failed to help poor countries develop to find their own footing,

it's actually subtracted value. That's the conclusion of Edward Lutveck,

senior associate at the Center for International and Strategic Studies.

In light of that, he argues, money stolen from corrupt governments

often means that it's helping families.

We spoke yesterday.

Over the last decade, economists have come to understand I think better the failure of aid programs to help countries that are in need,

but only recently have economists come to examine the fact that a lot of these

aid programs are actually subtracting value and doing some lasting damage

preventing many days of reckoning for these countries.

Could you talk about that?

Well, there are two dimensions to it.

One is the specific project dimensions,

which is well-meaning foreigners arrive in an African countries and set up a well-meaning scheme.

At the end of that scheme, disaster.

The classic cases which have been studied minutely were big cases. For example, river management

schemes in French West Africa with the idea of using the water to have rice cultivation,

modern agro-industrial rice. So before there were fishermen who

fish the river, they were herdsmen, it would bring the herds to the river edge after

the harvest to feed the herds to the after the harvest to feed the herds,

and before that farmers who would farm along the river.

...