Forum 6

1/7/2019 Geography Lessons: Correcting Sachs on African Economic Development | HuffPost

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-easterly/geography-lessons-correct_b_208879.html 1/4

T H E B L O G 06/29/2009 05:12 am ET | Updated May 25, 2011

Geography Lessons: Correcting Sachs on African Economic Development

By William Easterly

Professor Jeffrey Sachs continues the debate on aid to Africa originally prompted by

Dambisa Moyo’s book Dead Aid. As usual, I will of course let Dr. Moyo defend herself

against specific criticisms made by Sachs and his co-author John McArthur. But Sachs

unveils such a strange geographic theory of Africa’s poverty, with strong implications for aid

policy, that I am forced to respond.

It’s nice to move back to doing what professors are supposed to do — examine other

professors’ ideas on their own merits, not attack their persons. Sachs is an inspirational and

hard-working intellectual, just one whose ideas on Africa happen to be sometimes totally

wrong, and other times only seriously wrong.

A good rule for all theories, including theories of global poverty, is Occam’s Razor — make

the theory as simple as possible, but no simpler. Another way to put it is beware of

explanations with too many Ifs, Buts and Excepts in them. Sachs’ geographic theory of

Africa’s poverty has gotten few takers among other economists, perhaps because it fails

Occam’s Razor. Sachs starts off by saying that being in the tropics is bad for development

(he gave a very terse summary here, I am drawing from his articles to articulate more fully his

geographic story). Isn’t rapidly growing India also in the tropics? Yes, but they have

snowmelt-fed irrigation instead of rain-fed agriculture. Isn’t rich Singapore also in the tropics?

Yes, but they are coastal instead of landlocked. Don’t Latin America and Asia also have

 E D I T I O N

    

1/7/2019 Geography Lessons: Correcting Sachs on African Economic Development | HuffPost

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-easterly/geography-lessons-correct_b_208879.html 2/4

tropical diseases like malaria, just like Africa? Yes, but they have a better kind of mosquito.

So a region will be poor if they are tropical, if rainfed, if landlocked, and if they have the

wrong mosquitoes — which, yes, fits many African countries. The reason for Occam’s Razor

is that with enough Ifs, Buts, and Excepts you can fit any theory to any set of facts. If I am a

balding, grey-bearded, bespectacled, white male economic development professor residing

in Greenwich Village, I will write a post on Occam’s Razor — yes, that theory also fits the

facts.

The consensus among most academic economists is that destructive governments rather

than destructive geography explains the poverty of nations. Robert Mugabe was a lot worse

for Zimbabwe than Anopheles mosquito. Corruption is more fatal for oil-rich Nigeria and

Angola than latitude. Health is determined more by public actions against disease than by

species of parasite. Other factors that Sachs mentions such as illiteracy and poor

infrastructure are also symptoms of bad government services. Geography may have had

some influence on history, but through institutions — good government spread along lines of

migration and communication through most temperate regions more easily than it did to

tropical regions. The latter were also victims of colonialism (and in Africa’s case, the slave

trade as well, which goes some way to explain bad government in Africa today).

Of course, it is a lot easier to justify giving a lot of aid to African governments if they are

helpless victims of geography rather than (mostly) just being — bad governments. Is this why

Sachs offers a bizarre geographic theory of Africa’s poverty and is oblivious to the bad

governments that many courageous African dissenters have fought at great sacrifice? I don’t

have enough evidence to test any one theory of Sachs, but I know it makes for bad aid

policy. Make sure that aid reaches poor people, which usually means it should not go to

poor governments.

Follow William Easterly on Twitter: www.twitter.com/bill_easterly

William Easterly  Professor of Economics, New York University, author “White Man’s Burden”

M O R E :

Jeffrey Sachs Foreign Aid Africa Dambisa Moyo Third World Countries

You May Like by TaboolaSponsored Links    