Madam, - Jason Fitzharris (July 7th) argues that to be free from poverty African countries need to embrace free-market policies. Mr Fitzharris is coming up with a solution that has been tried and tested and has failed. Throughout the 1980s Africa went through unprecedented economic liberalisation. Under the IMF's structural adjustment programmes, African countries were forced to implement economic policies based on free-market orthodoxy - reducing state regulation of the economy, opening markets to international trade and abolishing subsidies to local industries. These policies have done little or nothing for the people's welfare. The majority of Africans still have to live on less than $1 a day, there has been no improvement in access to health and education, and life expectancy and infant mortality have remained much the same.
Furthermore, these policies have failed even by the rules of market fundamentalists with economic growth slower in many countries than before liberalisation. How can an electrical appliance made in Africa be a sign of freedom and prosperity if that appliance was made by a company that went into that African country circumventing ethical labour standards on pay and safety because the Western values of the free market allowed it to do so?
Making poverty history is a more complex process than we are led to believe. Development does not come about simply by promoting the dogma of market economics. - Yours, etc,
CHRIS BOND, Allenton Drive, Tallaght, Dublin 24.
Madam, - In Kevin Myers's misanthropic piece on the "Make Poverty History" campaign (An Irishman's Diary, July 7th) - or what he refers to as "this Western fever about Doing Something For Africa" - we are told: "The witch doctors of this religion tell us that if Africa is forgiven its debts, then in essence all will be well". Wrong from the start.
Debt relief is only the first step in the big push to increase aid, improve African governance and introduce a level playing field in international trade. Irrespective of Mr Myers's disdain for the politically energised masses (I believe it's called democracy), most people involved with this campaign are fully aware that the road to African recovery is going to be a long one. - Yours, etc,
ENDA KILROY, Whitehall, Dublin 9.