This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, April 23rd, 2009.

I'm Caleb Brown. Development in Africa is a vexing problem, but not one beyond solving.

Far from the models of aid pushed in Washington and other capitals,

trade and institutional change from within Africa

are thus far the only proven ways to give those countries sustained growth.

So says Cato Policy Analysts Mary Antupi, author of a forthcoming paper on the new push for African development.

There is no positive correlation between aid and economic growth globally,

but I think that it can be shown reasonably well that there is a negative

correlation between aid and economic growth in Africa.

Between 1975 and 2005 in

in other words over a period of 30 years

Africa was given on average

24 dollars per capita pay year in foreign aid and yet incomes per capita in Africa

over that period of time over those 30 years actually declined by 5%. So in other words, what we have seen

is in much of Africa incomes stagnate and in some parts of Africa actually incomes decline in recent decades.

In some countries incomes are lower than what they were in 1960 and that is a remarkable failure of the of the approach to economic development

in Africa in the last half a century. You say the trade liberalization is going to be the

key to pulling many of these African countries out of poverty.

Why has there been so little progress on expanding trade?

What I would say is that our meaning Western focus on aid and debt relief to Africa

creates an impression that it is what Western countries do, what rich countries do, that really

matters when it comes to alleviation of poverty on the African continent.

...