This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, July 8, 2008.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The G8 Summit hopes to improve aid for Africa,

but what aid works.

Does aid or debt forgiveness to Africa bring a self-sustaining growth?

Cato Institute Policy analyst Marion Tupi suggests that world leaders interested in helping

Africa should open Western markets to African goods and clear the way for organic

institutions to develop there.

The G8 leaders are meeting in Hokkaido to discuss a number of important issues ranging from climate change to the state of world

economy all the way to economic development in Africa.

The focus on Africa partly has to do because this is one of the one of the

follow-up summits on on the Glen Eagle Summit which happened in 2005, when the G8 leaders met in Glen Eagles in Scotland,

to really push for economic development, come up with policies that could solve the problems of African poverty.

And over the succeeding years, this year included, they are really going to be taking stock and see how much of the

promises, how many of the promises they have made have been accomplished, how much additional

work there needs to be done.

Some of the issues are going to be old issues such as a question of foreign aid,

some of the questions are going to be new, for example, what to do about the high food prices and so on.

What is the record of development aid to impoverished countries, particularly even African countries over the last several decades?

Well, the rich countries approach to Africa is really three-pronged approach.

It is give more aid, reduce debt, and open up trade.

I think the first two are largely inefficient, certainly in the African context. Over the past half a century we have

...