THE AFRICAN CONSERVATIVE AS UNCLE TOM

Preaching Free-Market Gospel to Skeptical Africa (Jason DeParle, New York Times, November 18th, 2006)

On a continent where socialists have often held sway, Mr. Shikwati is now a conservative phenomenon. He has published scores of articles hailing business as Africa’s salvation; offered free-market lectures on five continents; and, defying the zeitgeist of the Bono age, issued scathing attacks on foreign assistance, which he blames for Africa’s poverty. When Western countries pledged to double African aid last year, an interview with an angry Mr. Shikwati filled two pages of Der Spiegel, the German magazine.

“For God’s sake, please stop the aid!” he told the magazine.

So modest was Mr. Shikwati’s start in the policy world, he walked nine miles on muddy roads just to get Mr. Reed’s e-mail messages. Yet nine months after he started his group, Western supporters flew him to the United States, where he joined a dinner of the conservative Heritage Foundation and toasted an A-list crowd that included Edwin Meese III, the former attorney general.

The unusual collaboration between a Midwestern mentor and his African protégé can be read in contrasting lights — as a crafty effort to export Western dominance or an idealistic joining of minds in the cause of freedom. While Mr. Reed salutes his protégé as a “passionate advocate for liberty in an unlikely place,” Jeffrey D. Sachs, a Columbia University professor who is a leading aid advocate, calls Mr. Shikwati’s criticisms of foreign assistance “shockingly misguided” and “amazingly wrong.”

“This happens to be a matter of life and death for millions of people, so getting it wrong has huge consequences,” Mr. Sachs said. [...]

Critics see a sleight of hand, in which Western conservatives created a faux expert, then cite him to justify their views.

“The truly hard-hearted have been looking for a developing country ‘economist’ to sing this song for years,” said Neil Gallagher, a spokesman for the United Nations World Food Program in Rome, which feeds about three million Kenyans a year. “It justifies their meanness.”

Mr. Sachs of Columbia University said Mr. Shikwati was “part of a game” the conservative movement played to create an impression that Africans oppose foreign help. Although he agrees that some aid programs have failed, he said others had eradicated smallpox, slashed polio rates and started Asia’s green revolution, saving hundreds of millions of people from famine.

Telling a professional tranzi that Africa would be better off without them is as terrifying to them as is telling a marxist functionary that the state really is going to wither away soon.