Hungry for Improvement

Despite decades of "domestic reforms" and "generous aid and debt relief" (land-grabbing, resource-stealing and thug-grooming, in Standard English) Africa is still not fulfilling its potential as a reliable plantation for human capital, according to the International Monetary Fund's continental undermanager. Unless western corporations become more efficient at developing their Africans, the world may continue to suffer a shortage of cheap labour, thereby exacerbating global economic difficulties and forcing wealth creators to create more poverty. Thanks to current levels of generosity, three African countries are facing "acute food insecurity." This may well interfere with the capacity of Africa's human capital for sustaining business as usual, so the IMF's continental undermanager raised the question of whether development can be conveniently accelerated without too many people suffering. While the IMF may lack sufficient British decency to share the nostalgia of Her Majesty's Government for the glories of the slave trade, what quantity of suffering it would consider economically unviable remains as yet undetermined.