“For God’s Sake, Please Stop the Aid!”

There’s a fascinating interview on Spiegel with James Shikwati, an “African economics expert,” in which he explains how foreign aid is preventing many African nations from rising out of poverty and the host of other problems they face. “If the industrial nations really want to help the Africans, they should finally terminate this awful aid…. As absurd as it may sound: Development aid is one of the reasons for Africa’s problems. If the West were to cancel these payments, normal Africans wouldn’t even notice. Only the functionaries would be hard hit. Which is why they maintain that the world would stop turning without this development aid.”

What does this attitude mean for people working in open educational resources?