Book Review: The White Man’s Burden “Why The West Efforts To Help The Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good”

The white man’s burden investigates that despite over a trillion dollars aid to the underdeveloped world, yet poverty counted a major challenge and big tragedy that threaten the third world. Out of trillion dollars of aid, the rest have not benefited well and the major part of aid wasted by planners. It, therefore, argues that the only way to development is to rely less on western assistance and more on their own untapped economic potentials. To make the foreign aid more effective and productive, the international aid agencies should rely on searchers (the free market enterprises). This study is based on secondary data, extracted from various sources like World Bank, world development indicators, and related articles.

Objective: To investigate the role of foreign aid on the economic development of underdeveloped world and poverty alleviation.

Methodology: This review is from the book (The white man’s burden by easterly), which is based on secondary data.

Findings: In this study, we found that to achieve the development goals and to alleviate poverty, the underdeveloped countries must rely more on indigenous searchers (free market enterprises) and less on big plans followed by planners. After WW2, the west started to aid underdeveloped countries in the process of democratization of countries, fixing failed states and poverty alleviation through funding and advice. West spent billions of dollars through different agencies; yet over a billion people live in a condition of extreme poverty. According to World Bank report, one in five subsists on less than $1 per day in developing countries. Easterly does not follow completely the abolition of aid notion as argued by Bauer. Easterly focused on the positive role of foreign aid based on past experiences of successful countries. As a free market advocate, he criticized the policies followed by the west to aid the rest through big plans followed by planners, who could not manage to get 12% medicine to children to protect them from malaria. Here we outlined 4 elements in what is wrong with big plans. There is: Lack of 'customer' feedback from recipients of aid; Lack of incentives in the collective action model; Lack of accountability in donors; Lack of omniscience-planners cannot have complete information. To make the foreign aid more effective and productive, the international aid agencies should rely on searchers (the free market enterprises), who could manage to deliver nine million copies of Harry Potter children book on July 16, 2005, in a single day to their eager fans.

Application: Truly independent scientific evaluation of specific aid efforts, continuous evaluation of particular interventions from which agencies can learn, availability of feedback facilities and improvement of accountability positively affect the process of aid allotment and aid utilization.