http://www.scholarsandrogues.com/2009/10/01/the-failure-of-the-un-millenium-development-villages/ Think - it ain't illegal yet... Sun, 21 Mar 2010 19:49:54 -0600 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 http://www.scholarsandrogues.com/2009/10/01/the-failure-of-the-un-millenium-development-villages/comment-page-1/#comment-72042 wufnik Fri, 02 Oct 2009 11:34:12 +0000 http://www.scholarsandrogues.com/?p=11763#comment-72042 Another sad failure reflecting the inability of Western Aid agencies or governments to ever learn anything from their mistakes. The record of agricultural "development" over the past sixty years has been one disastrous intervention after another, all premised on the notion that what Africans really need is a western agricultural model. There's a more insidious explanation than a collective inability of organizational learning, of course--it's the intentional creation of a dependency of an entire subcontinent on western agribusiness with the aid agencies as the principal enablers. Back to the distinction between corporatism and capitalsim. These projects do nothing for capitalism, but they sure push a corporatist agenda (as I define it anyway). I'm agnostic these days--in general it's a race to the bottom betweeen stupidity and mendacity. Another sad failure reflecting the inability of Western Aid agencies or governments to ever learn anything from their mistakes. The record of agricultural “development” over the past sixty years has been one disastrous intervention after another, all premised on the notion that what Africans really need is a western agricultural model. There’s a more insidious explanation than a collective inability of organizational learning, of course–it’s the intentional creation of a dependency of an entire subcontinent on western agribusiness with the aid agencies as the principal enablers. Back to the distinction between corporatism and capitalsim. These projects do nothing for capitalism, but they sure push a corporatist agenda (as I define it anyway). I’m agnostic these days–in general it’s a race to the bottom betweeen stupidity and mendacity.

]]>