The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
“Instead of just wishing me a ‘Happy Birthday’ I’d love for you to consider donating $3 towards eradicating Malaria in Malawi. I’m turning 24 and want to raise $240 to support this great cause.”
Although I spend little time on Facebook these days, I saw this status of a close friend of mine who was raising money for a former classmate of his. While such holier-than-thou signalling is common on Facebook, this request caught my eye. His friend “is doing great things in Malawi” such as building houses for Malawians, supporting widows and orphans, fighting malaria and HIV. His NGO’s Facebook page reminded me of The Sims, a video game in which you build housing for helpless automata and then help run their lives. In Malawi, he was building his Sims homes, buying them schoolbooks, paying their school tuition, and then watching them make even more Sims. “Oh look!” reads another update, “Their first baby has been born…. Changing the world is easier than you think,” writes their patron.
“Simply donate $2.”
It seems so fun and harmless at a first glance: a SWPL donates some cash and a Malawian gets a house or, a mosquito net, at least. The SWPL thinks he’s being a good Samaritan and the Malawian’s happy for the help. Everybody wins. In reality, things are not that simple. In the long-run, a dollar does nothing for Malawi; Malawi need the forces of evolution and natural selection acting on its population for many many generations to really improve its situation.
International aid NGOs pour billions of dollars annually into the poorest countries with the belief that if they tackle those countries’ immediate challenges, such as hunger, epidemics, housing shortages, and lack of basic hygiene, the counties will “escape from poverty.” What they don’t do is help the underdeveloped countries to become capable of addressing those challenges without external assistance. Multiple studies have indicated over and over again that foreign financial aid is just a permeable bandaid solution to persistent problems. In the long run, aid programs make these countries more dependent on assistance. International handouts cannot give Malawi the mean IQ of China, South Korea, or Ukraine, three countries that used to be desperately poor but subsequently developed. Iodine and Iron supplementation might help Malawians marginally close the gap, but the truth is Malawians need to experience the same selection pressures as Europeans on a thousand-year timescale.
Turning back to a specific intervention, the anti-malaria nets, for which he was raising money, often fail to serve their intended purpose. Prioritizing the immediate problem of hunger over the distant risk of getting malaria, Africans use these nets for fishing, which has caused an ecological disaster in local waters. Fish are harvested so quickly and so extensively that their population stocks have crashed. As a result, Africans are back to the brink of famine. The average New York Times reader exclaims, “Oh, what a vicious circle!”
“Spend $10 on a net and save a life”—what an easy sales pitch for the kind and noble NGO worker. In whites across the world, the average fertility rate is 1.8 offspring per woman. In Malawi, it’s 5.47 per woman, meaning that a single Malawian man might have up to 15 children in his life span, as polygamy is still widespread in primitive African cultures. Malawi has a population of over 17 million. By 2100, the population is forecast to increase five fold to over 87 million people. Where will Malawi get food and medicine for another 70 million Malawians? Likely the same NGOs as today, bulked up to handle even greater problems.
Although their motivations were generally not humanitarian, European colonization brought Africa revolutionary declines in child mortality, as well as access to basic hygiene and medicine. The result has been a staggering continent-wide population boom.
Africa’s share of global population rose from 9% in 1950 to 12% today. On top of the positive legacy of colonialism (e.g. infrastructure, schools, roads, mines, irrigation, etc.), today, Africa receives generous international handouts that further cut African mortality rates. The African population boom continues unabated. Right now, the annual growth rate is 2.6%, implying a population doubling every 28 years. With this growth rate as a backdrop, Africa’s share of global population is expected to rise to 25% by 2050 and 39% by 2100.
In a sort of dark humor, the UN recently raised African estimates because unlike every other population group, whose rising wealth led to falling birthrates, Africans show very minimal reductions in fecundity, regardless of their economic conditions. Meanwhile, the global white population is growing at a rate of 0.5% per year. Although the U.S. population is projected to grow by 89 million residents from 2010 to 2050 and amount to 401 million, much of that growth will be Asians, blacks and Hispanics. Whites are expected to represent only 44%. From 2000 to 2100, Europe’s share of world population is expected to be cut in half: 12.0 to 5.9%.
The rapid population growth in the world’s poorest countries like Malawi will only exacerbate hunger, malnutrition, and the spread of infectious diseases. Additionally, the African population boom will mean an even greater flood of African immigrants streaming towards developed countries. Absent massive political changes in Europe, the “migrant crisis” of 2015 will seem like a joke in 2025. Even America is going to be subject to this surge. A recent Pew Research study showed that African immigration to the U.S. has increased from 80,000 in 1970 to 1.83 million in 2013, and the rate shows no signs of falling.
People donate to Africa for many reasons—some do it to publicly status signal, others do it because of pathological white guilt, and I admit there are some pure altruists. In this case, however, the fact that it was an evangelical Protestant operating the NGO makes his motives more transparent. First and foremost, helping those “in need” likely does produce positive “feels.” Second, his work in Africa is closely tied to his church, which should help them gain converts. These good works should help grease the skids into heaven. Lastly, founding and leading an NGO which helps Africans gives him a golden ticket to Stanford GSB or Kennedy School of Government. The bottom line remains. Even if his motivations are kind and pure, raising funds for charity programs in Africa is, at best, a waste of money, and at worst, contributes to a population explosion that will more than likely end with a combination of famine, pandemics, and mass migration to the West.