African economist pleads, "For God's sake, please stop the aid!" Can astrologers explain this week in Europe?

Has anyone else noticed that something really strange is going on across the Pond? Dave Schuler at The Glittering Eye has just sent Pundita this bombshell: an online newspaper interview with a Kenyan economist who charges that aid to Africa and Western development policies helped wreck the continent. Nothing the economist says would be news to Pundita readers, but the astounding part is that the newspaper is Germany's Spiegel and that they actually published the interview:

The Kenyan economics expert James Shikwati, 35, says that aid to Africa does more harm than good. The avid proponent of globalization spoke with SPIEGEL about the disastrous effects of Western development policy in Africa . . . "If the industrial nations really want to help the Africans, they should finally terminate this awful aid. The countries that have collected the most development aid are also the ones that are in the worst shape. Despite the billions that have poured in to Africa, the continent remains poor. [...]

"Huge bureaucracies are financed (with the aid money), corruption and complacency are promoted, Africans are taught to be beggars and not to be independent.

"In addition, development aid weakens the local markets everywhere and dampens the spirit of entrepreneurship that we so desperately need.

"As absurd as it may sound: Development aid is one of the reasons for Africa's problems. If the West were to cancel these payments, normal Africans wouldn't even notice. Only the functionaries would be hard hit. Which is why they maintain that the world would stop turning without this development aid. " [...]

That's telling it like it is.
.