Our Government needs to use Ethiopia as a model, they might learn something.

[Guest TankerHC]

So I am reading the news and I see there was another Dreamliner Fire. (Had one last week). The Fire was on an Ethiopian Airlines plane. Ethiopia? Isnt that one of the poorest economies on Earth? Nearly every night I see the fat guy with the Santa beard on his commercial "in a nation where less than 10% have access to a job, education and even food, and wont you give, only 23 cents a day can feed a starving child for 10 years", or something like that. So how can one of the poorest countries on earth own a brand new 250 million dollar aircraft? More than one, with at least two more coming later. Their peple cant even eat, they cant go to school, have no shoes to wear, yet they spend 100's of millions of dollars on Aircraft? We are still sending them aid, in the last reported numbers, 800 million (560 million in cash and the rest in food aid) in 2011. Obama has a three tier Aid Initiative for Ethiopia that is going to cost the taxpayer billions.

 

So I had to look.

 

Ethiopia is one of the fastest growing economies on Earth. After the junta was replaced, the Government did away with the Marxist economics and started working towards a Market based economy, took the money they had (And some aid) and invested it in Agriculture, Telecommunications, Transportation, bringing back tourism, and they have completely rebuilt their Transportation and Telecommunications infrastructure from the ground up.

 

There is still poverty in the rural areas, but that is down by 50% in just the last 10 years. Overall wages have increased, the GDP has grown 100 fold. According to the Center for Global Development, this puts Obama in a conundrum. For two reasons, they recommend not sending any aid to countries who's leaders remain for more than three terms. The reason being once in power that long they are less likely to leave power and have little reason to Govern efficiently. Secondly, why, this country is one of the fastest growing economies in the world.

 

The US is the single largest donor in bilateral aid to Ethiopia. Bilateral aid means we are giving our money to other countries and entities to spend in Ethiopia, supposedly on "projects" except that bilateral aid is loaded with corruption. Who is keeping track of all of these taxpayer dollars. Here is Obama's three tiered plan (And then some). not all countries have taken all of them, Ethiopia has, taken all of them or will take all three.

 

• The largest aid recipient in Africa.
• A selected partner country in all three US presidential development initiatives: Feed the Future, Global Health Initiative, and the Global Climate Change Initiative.
• One of the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition’s three focus countries, announced by President Obama in the run up to this year's G8 Summit. (Some attendees may recall the outburst of one participant while Meles was on stage.)

 

Here's a plan, they can feed a child for 23 cents a day. Just buy one less 250 million dollar Dreamliner and you can feed all of your kids for 100 years.