There are two strands to the solution to poverty. One strand argues that all the answers lie with the G8 members: Forgive the debt, provide cheap AIDS drugs, and give more financial support, and poverty will be obliterated. The other strand argues that all the help the G8 can give will do nothing to end poverty: The support provided to date does not get to the people who need it; it goes into government coffers to maintain the lavish lifestyles of African dictators who prosper while their subjects starve. What are the benefits of giving millions of dollars or euros of aid annually when those funds go to help corrupt governments keep their power? The rhetorical response to this is obvious: Is doing nothing any more of a solution?
This does not suggest it is impossible to "make poverty history". It does suggest that to make that happen, the two strands of the theory must weave together to find the whole solution.
Finding that solution is a very complex process - which is why poverty remains a problem. The crux of the quandry is that asking the G8 to solve poverty implies state-to-state aid. Previously mishandled state-to-state aid keeps the poorest African states in their status as the poorest African states. Perhaps it is a natural and self-perpetuating vicious cycle.
Imagine you are a member of the US Congress, the Canadian or British Parliament, the Italian or French Assembly, the Japanese Diet, the Russian Duma, or the German Bundestag. Anti-poverty campaigners solicit your help to provide millions of additional dollars or euros of aid to these states: Sudan, Mahli, Benin, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe, and the Central African Republic. You realize all these states received World Bank and IMF funds. You also realize all these states have access to vast amounts of natural and mineral resources that could provide abundant wealth if state corruption were confronted. Control of these natural and mineral resources are the cause of incessant civil conflicts - which your advisers tell you are funded indirectly by all that development aid. You do not want it on your hands that you supported appropriating tax payer funds that might be used to help leaders like Robert Mugabe with their campaigns to destroy farms and villages in the name of social reform, but you know if you support more aid to Africa, that is likely where it will go. On the other side you understand the depth of the crisis, and you do not want to seem disconnected from the realities that are modern Africa. What do you do?
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