Ashraf Ghani: Don't donate to Afghanistan, invest in it

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Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai, Chancellor of Kabul University, gave a compelling talk at a TED conference about two years ago:

“The aid system is broken,” says Ashraf Ghani in this powerful, reform-oriented talk. He discusses how to mobilize capital for state-building; why technical assistance fails; and why classic economic theory proved useless in Afghanistan, which is “dominated by the drug economy and a mafia.” He emphasizes the necessity of investment (“A dollar in private investment is equal to 20 dollars of aid”) and design ingenuity to rebuild broken states. And he offers a blueprint: the 10 key functions that a state should perform, from providing infrastructure to enforcing the rule of law.

Watch the video of his controversial talk:

Here are some thought-provoking refutations:

So far in my TED explorations, this is one of the most difficult vids to watch/listen to because Ashraf Ghani appears so well intentioned yet so uninformed. He begins with the notion that capitalism has a world-wide consensus as the preferred form of economic system. Sorry, but as a citizen of what appears to be the most rampant capitalistic country on the globe, I do not consense to this nonsense. In fact the illusion of a world-wide consensus for capitalism comes from the media organs that are owned and controlled by the capitalsts who have used capitalism in their efforts at world domination and control. This consensus is manufactured by misrepresenting capitalism and portraying it with a glamour it does not deserve. So since Ghani says we should look at assumptions, it is important to look at the assumption of a consensus for capitalism and see that the consensus is manufactured by capitalists. Ghani’s talk is a perfect example of the uncritical assumptions.

- Gregory Wonderwheel

Mr. Ghani western elites, in their blindness and arrogance, are not interested in giving you anything. They want to use your country as a justification to generate money for the transnational that put them in power.

The AID system is just a cruch to get money to the unemployed graduate from thousands of universities.
If they do not provide “work” for the upcoming university students, there will be another 1968.
They are not interested in creating states.

- Harris Pohl

What do you guys think about Ghani’s approach to combating poverty and corruption in Afghanistan?