Doing nothing for the poorest of the poor 'not an option'

Jeffrey Sachs tells Paul Cullen he wants Ireland to double its aid and get other EU states to follow suit

If there is a more famous economist in the world than Jeffrey Sachs, someone should tell Bono. After all, it isn't often that you get a rock star writing the foreword to an economics text, as the singer has done for his friend Jeff's new book, The End of Poverty.

Yet there is more logic to their alliance than you'd expect. Both men bring an evangelical, big- thinking zeal to their work, as well as an effortless ability to network, build campaigns and garner publicity. When Bono berates world leaders about their failure to tack global inequality and help poor countries, he draws on Sachs's ideas to do so.

"This book is about ending poverty in our time"; the first line of Sachs' book is as direct as any U2 anthem in announcing its ambition, without a hint of qual- ification or awe at the task ahead.

We shouldn't be surprised, though, because Sachs, the rock star's economist, the special adviser to Kofi Annan, the fixer of broken economies, has always aimed high.

In the 1980s, as a Harvard academic in his 30s, he toured the world as a trouble-shooter, administering "shock therapy" to countries suffering hyper- inflation and currency freefall.

The cure worked in Bolivia and Poland, though his formula flopped badly in the chaos of Russia in the early 1990s.

Sachs moved his big thinking on to the problems of global inequality. With evangelical zeal, he criss-crossed Africa in search of a solution to the continent's woes. He became the chief critic of the IMF's structural adjustment policies for poor countries and an early advocate of debt relief. Nelson Mandela and other statesmen claimed him as their confidante, but he also spent time road-testing his solutions in impoverished African villages.

His book condenses this experience into a sort of "great leap forward" proposal, a call on the West to provide a massive injection of aid to poor countries to solve the problems of poverty once and for all. Sachs was in Dublin last week for a brief visit to promote his work and keep up the pressure on political leaders to increase aid spending.

"What I'm talking about is that a sixth of the world's population are stuck at the bottom in such conditions of extreme deprivation that it's a struggle to survive," he explains. "In many of those places, the situation is worsening rather than improving, so time alone isn't going to solve the problems for them."

His thesis is that the poorest of the poor need a massive burst of aid - about $150 billion from the wealthy countries - to get on to that first rung of the ladder. After that, he believes, they will largely be able to take care of themselves.

Well thought-out strategies, he believes, will not only end a lot of suffering but also tackle sources of world instability. "Neither does it mean a population explosion, because when people gain a foothold on the ladder of development, they also choose to have fewer children."

Doing nothing is not an option. "This is a horrendous situation. About 20,000 people a day, or eight million a year, die of extreme poverty because they don't have the means to stay alive.

"That three million children are dying of malaria, a treatable disease, each year is not only a tragedy, it's a morass and a development disaster of the first order. It can be solved in a pretty short period of time and we ought to solve it."

Sachs bristles at suggestions that he's encouraging waste or corruption. "What I'm suggesting is not throwing money at anyone, and certainly not a blank cheque. I've no time for tyrannies like Zimbabwe, but I also have no time for generalisations that say there's nothing to be done."

A lot of aid has not been well spent, he acknowledges. "Not because it went missing, but because we chose to do things, for various reasons - to fight the cold war or fight a war in Iraq - where we put in aid of a character completely different to what I'm recommending."

So no aid tied to strategic or trade interests, then; Sachs wants us to spend the money on eradicating malaria, improving irrigation methods, creating a "green revolution" in farming and providing basic infrastructure.

For example, $1.5 billion would buy 300 million anti-mosquito bednets for African children and make a big difference in the fight against malaria.

A Democrat swimming against the political tide in his own country, he says that while he believes in markets, he doesn't think they can solve all the problems he wants to tackle.

"So I believe in trade, but to be engaged in trade you need a road, a port, electricity and access to markets. Africa doesn't have even the most basic infrastructure to be able to develop textiles, footwear and other income- generating industries.

"This book is really saying that it's not globalisation that's keeping people impoverished. It's their physical isolation, it's disease, it's their climate, it's bad luck, bad history. But I'm also saying that globalisation is not going to save the poor."

Sipping a diet Coke in his hotel room, Sachs, in his standard-issue shirt and tie, could be any globe- trotting executive. Not many, though, would help the waitress serve his room-service lunch.

While he makes common cause with anti-globalisation campaigners on many issues, he defends sweatshops and other forms of low-paid industry in poor countries. "The apparel industry, while not glamorous and poorly remunerated, is in many countries a stepping stone to better things. It's not a dead-end, it's a way up the ladder of development."

Sachs believes those who dismiss Africa as a basket case with corrupt governments verge on the racist. "I'm there regularly, I've seen a lot of Africa. There is a lot of variation across 49 countries and generalisations won't work, except to say they're all poor."

Countries such as Ethiopia have relatively good, "clear-head and right-minded" governments, he claims, an assertion that might strike some observers as naïve.

During his visit to Dublin, Sachs told Conor Lenihan, the Minister responsible for the Government's aid budget, that he hopes Ireland will lead an EU drive to increase aid spending to the 0.7 target set by the UN.

Reminded that the Government has already reneged on a commitment to reach this target by 2007, he stresses the importance of setting a year-by- year timetable for reaching the goal.

Sachs is not by nature a modest man, but even he admits that his prescription won't solve all the problems of the world. "Even if everything were done the way I would hope, it would not solve all the issues on the planet."

Asked if he is an optimist, he shrugs his shoulders and answers: "It's worth fighting for."

After that, as Bono writes, it's up to us. "We can choose to shift the responsibility or, as the professor proposes, we can choose to shift the paradigm."

The End of Poverty by Jeffrey Sachs with a foreword by Bono is published by Penguin, price £7.99