Opinion A stranger’s suffering

The very fact that $2.1 billion has been donated to help the victims of the famine is a testament to human generosity. But that fact of our generosity also explains why I am so frustrated by the increasing opposition in many rich countries to foreign aid. According to public opinion research,many people believe aid is either stolen by corrupt leaders or wasted on ineffective programmes. Naturally,no one is eager to make investments they’re convinced won’t pay off. There is also the argument that aid doesn’t work even when it gets to its intended recipients. This claim is not convincing either. In the past 50 years,the number of children who die every year has gone down from 20 million to fewer than 8 million. Meanwhile,the proportion of people living in extreme poverty has declined by more than half. These massive improvements are due in large part to aid-funded programmes to buy vaccines and boost farmers’ productivity.

I am confident that we can get the price of AIDS drugs down to $300 per person per year in the very near future. That will mean that every $300 a country gives to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS,TB and malaria represents a person who will stay alive for another year. Every $300 that’s not forthcoming represents a human being who will almost certainly die. That is a stark but realistic way to think about the choices we’re making when we debate aid budgets. Many of those suffering in the Horn of Africa were going hungry before there was a recognised emergency in the region. In fact,more than 1 billion people in the world don’t have enough food to eat. One of the most powerful solutions to this problem is to help poor farmers get more out of their tiny plots. In parts of South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa,farmers plant low-yielding seeds,climate change is starting to shrink their harvests,and diseases are invading their fields. New seeds and other tools can help farmers cope. For example,my foundation helped fund the development of a variety of rice that can survive flooding and will feed an extra 30 million people every year in Bangladesh and India.

The question is,how do we continue to do the research needed to develop these new tools? Poor countries are investing more in their own agricultural sectors,but they don’t have the resources to lead on R&D. Aid is a key piece of the puzzle,and right now the entire research budget of the group responsible for agricultural science for the poorest is just $300 million per year. It’s a shame to see such a high-leverage opportunity generate such ambivalence.

I am proud to live in a world where a stranger’s suffering matters. Yet foreign aid,the best way to address that suffering,has a growing legion of critics. That is a contradiction we must remedy,and the best way to do it is to tell the truth about aid.

The writer is co-chairman of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation