Herman Chinery-Hesse — Business vs. Aid & Charity

Chinery-Hesse on Africans Developing Africa

“Only Africans can develop Africa. I don't know of any country in the world, once again, where a bunch of foreigners came and developed the country. I don't know one: Japan? Korea? No! No country did that. The U.S. was not developed by Nigerians. I don't know where that formula is coming from; there's no precedent… We have to sink or swim ourselves. And Africa can!”

Chinery-Hesse on Why the World Bank Should Focus on Private Property Rights

“We haven't got clean title in Ghana. It's very, very difficult. You buy land, you have to buy it four, five times. Last time I had a meeting in the World Bank, I asked the World Bank officials, 'Hey, you've been working with our government all these years. You know this is at the bottom of our problems, that fundamental unknown, and what are you doing about it? Are you saying for twenty years you just forgot that we have a situation where anybody's business, anybody's house can suddenly come into question, and they might just lose their investment and that it wouldn't encourage people to invest?' I don't see that a lot of work has been done there or a lot of progress has been made there.”

Private Property Rights as Fundamental to an Economy

“The absence of land title absolutely hurts the poorest of the poor. Sixty, seventy percent of our people are farmers. Just imagine, if you have ten million farmers who have no title to the land they are farming on. They can't take it to the bank to get a loan to get farm implements. Whereas if they were allowed to buy the land, it may take them six years of share cropping to then own the land, then they could take that land out to the bank, get a loan, and get a tractor. Now, if you are stopping them from doing this for generations and generations, it's chronic poverty. You are creating chronic poverty. They need to own their land and trade their land. The good ones amongst them will become large farmers, the ones that are not so good will become medium sized farmers, and the bad ones will end up working for the large and medium farmers. And they'll have good jobs that pay them, like America, a good job that pays them a good decent wage every month. Maybe they are not entrepreneurial, but they will get a job.… You can't start an economy without ownership not being in question. This is my fundamental.”

Foreign Aid = Foreign Influence
“No, no, no, I'm not ungrateful. I just don't think that the formula that is required for Africa to develop is what they are implementing. They are implementing, in my view, what will give, the best political influence to Western governments, and therefore, to Western companies. And this has been the formula all along.”

Advice to Bono
““Three, four months ago … there was a big fan club around him, and he came in on a particular agenda. It was a World Bank type operation…. For the record, I love Bono. I happen to know Bono, so I love his music and he's cool. And I was born in Ireland, so we've got that in common. Now, I have nothing against Bono, but somebody like Bono can help the process by working with African countries to execute their own agenda, not an imported agenda.”

Invest in Africa
“Instead of giving it away, it should be put into small business loans, that kind of thing, and tightly managed by professionals, not in a airy-fairy 'we love Africa' way. That doesn't help us. The people here are not stupid. They're just disconnected from global trade, that's all.”

African Politicians Beholden to the World Bank

“The politicians sometimes can be very childish, and they'll cut their noses off to spite their faces. And they can do this, once again, because they are not depending on tax revenue. They are more interested in a smile on the World Bank country director's face than the success of my business, because they really are not depending on me as much as they are depending on the World Bank for their livelihood and their survival.”

The Mixed Agenda of the World Bank
“I think that the World Bank and a lot of the donor organizations have an agenda outside the development of our countries. They bully our governments into positions where our governments are not in a position to make the decisions that are required for the rapid development of our countries. And I don't blame them. If the World Bank officers—gave us—good advice, we'll become a developed country. If we become a developed country, then what happens to them? They are out of a job.… You can't have your moneylender determine for you how you run your business, because he'll ensure and guarantee that you stay in debt, because he's living off your interest.”

The Land Problem in Africa
“We have a serious land problem here. Nobody's attacking that, as far as I know. I haven't heard any NGO. I hear them talking about child labor, gay rights, and so on and so forth. Not to say that they aren't important. But in the scheme of things, when people need money and a livelihood, we need to focus first on things like property rights so that the land tenure problem is solved, so people can take their ancestral land and borrow money against it to set up businesses and pay tax. That's where we should be going. That's where our survival is; that's where our money is; that's where our progress will come from.”