Jeffrey Sachs, one of the leading voices in the fight against global poverty, has once again answered all of the questions from the selection that I sent him. In addition, loyal readers, you’ll have several more chances to hear his views - quite literally - through the Reith Lectures offered online by the BBC’s Radio Four service. Tune in to these historic lectures, which start today at 10:00 am Paris time , for a more comprehensive take on the world’s pressing problems, and the solutions Professor Sachs sees from his perch at Columbia University .

Jeffrey Sachs

Q. What kind of actions could drug companies take in Africa in order to improve healthcare and extend the access to necessary treatments (AIDS, malaria…) throughout the continent? Is there a way to combine the companies’ research for profit and Africa’s need for immediate healthcare?

Jean Bachir Ghabache
France

A. In view of Africa’s high disease burden and extreme poverty, the large pharmaceutical companies should take four actions. First, they should set their prices at a steep discount, to cover their costs but not to earn a profit. Their profits can be made in richer markets elsewhere. Second, they should be ready to grant free licenses to quality generic producers to serve the African market. Third, they should work with foundations such as the Gates Foundation to undertake targeted research on neglected diseases of the poor. Fourth, they should launch special philanthropic programs to help African governments scale up their health services. The good news is that the major pharmaceutical companies, by and large, are following these sensible principles. Increasingly, they are becoming active leaders in African disease control.

Q. How can you guarantee “fair trade” with Africa? What can we do to push African independence ahead?

Toni Nathan
Japan

A. African farmers face many barriers to potential exports, such as cotton subsidies in the U.S. and Europe, which reduce world cotton prices. These barriers should be dropped. Yet the main obstacles to Africa’s exports are within Africa, not world markets. Africa lacks the adequate roads, reliable power, efficient ports and trained and healthy labor to compete effectively in most manufactured goods. The situation can be remedied if donor countries deliver the promised aid levels to enable Africa to build infrastructure, labor skills and public health. This is the true meaning of the slogan “aid for trade.” Key investments can boost Africa’s export capacity and its ability to earn its way in the world.

Q. Where do you stand on the issue of China becoming a major player in Africa in terms of trade, investment and diplomacy? Regarding all the implications – low use of local workers by Chinese companies, no share of technologies, new debts for African countries… – do you consider this a positive or rather risky movement for Africa’s development?

Jean Bachir Ghabache
France

A. China’s recent entry in Africa is on the whole highly positive for Africa. China is acting as a buyer of African commodities, boosting their prices and increasing African incomes. China is of course a supplier of low-cost goods and services. And China is becoming a significant donor. The West is complaining that China is not following “good behavior” as a donor, but the main complaints are because of jealously that China is encroaching on traditional U.S. and European geopolitical and economic turf. The fact is that the Europeans and Americans have been unreliable donors, promising one thing and doing another, or doing little of anything. China is much more pragmatic, helping African countries to build roads, power plants, and factories. Not all is ideal, of course, and never is. Commercial interests can make for unsavory friends, such as China’s apparent support for Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, but once again, the blemishes of siding with unsavory allies is certainly not unique to China.

Q. In the article “The $10 solution”, the mosquito net would have only treated a symptom. The underlying cause of the mosquito breeding grounds would also have to be treated. Is there an inexpensive method for treating the breeding grounds, as with the netting?

Michael Windfield
United States

A. In some circumstances, controlling breeding sites can make a big difference. This is especially true in places where malaria transmission is not very intense, such as in cities and highland areas, and in places where mosquitoes can be “cornered” such as on islands. In most of Africa, however, control of breeding sites will provide at best very limited protection, with the bigger gains coming from bed nets, indoor spraying, and timely access to anti-malaria medicines. The overall good news is that the total amount of severe illness and death can be brought down decisively, perhaps by 90 percent or more, by the tools that now exist. Of course a vaccine or genetically modified mosquitoes which don’t carry malaria could offer even greater breakthroughs in the long run.

Q. Intuitively it would seem that the industrialized world would want to create widespread demand for its products, which should be synonymous with raising living standards. However, it appears that the interests of a few giant companies systematically trump the interests of economic development, leading to highly selective development and thin consumer markets. How can you persuade the industrialized world to build markets instead of just taking resources?

John Hofer
United States

A. Your intuition is on target. Large companies do, by and large, act to create expanding markets for their products. The limitations, generally, are not the lack of interest of companies, but the lack of purchasing power and infrastructure in the poorest countries. It doesn’t “pay” for companies to chase down consumers who have little if any purchasing power above subsistence. We need, therefore, to improve the incomes and purchasing power of the poor by raising their productivity to sell to the market, and that in turn will spur greater interest in those markets by consumer goods companies, such as low-cost computer manufacturers and others.

Q. What role do you see for social entrepreneurs and businesses subscribing to corporate social responsibility in helping to overcome poverty in Africa? How should governments in developed and developing countries work together with these agents?

Jürgen Nagler
Germany

A. Social entrepreneurs are crucial in demonstrating how new technologies or management strategies can be applied in low-income settings to raise the wellbeing and productivity of the poor. For example, social entrepreneurs such as Rotary International have led the way on polio reduction. Social entrepreneurs have championed the use of improved farm practices and high-yield seed varieties. Social entrepreneurs have spread the use of small-scale irrigation systems. Social entrepreneurs have pioneered the use of micro-finance. The key for governments and other large donors is to watch the successes of social entrepreneurs and stand ready to help take those successes to scale. Usually, the novel approach requires some subsidy for the poorest of the poor, so that the good idea can spread simply on its own. It needs some kind of official or donor backing.

Q. According to the essay “The long war against corruption,” which comes from Foreign Affairs May/June 2006, to promote fair aid, we need to improve the people’s legal and ethical mindset, which means people have to follow the rule of law. Only strengthening regulation or law does not help prevent corruption. What do you think about that the idea that the corporations which give aid to Africa should have to go through an ombudsman system’s examinations or that the governments should protect whistleblowers?

Toni Nathan
Japan

A. I think that a great deal of corruption can be controlled by being thoughtful about management and information systems. For example, contracts between extraction industries (such as oil and diamond companies) and governments should be made public as a matter of course. Similarly, aid agreements should be as practical as possible, focusing on the provision of measurable items (such as the number of anti-malaria bed nets, medicines or vaccinations), rather than transfers of cash. Corruption is best controlled through monitoring, audits and accountability. Human nature will look for shortcuts; administrative control systems should aim to control those shortcuts.

Q. Aid is about dependence, and it somehow seems to have the effect of suppressing development. Most of the countries which have made rapid economic progress in the post-World War II era have done so without aid. What are the lessons they offer that should be part of the road map for moving countries out of poverty? Making aid more effective may be less preferable than getting countries to progress effectively without aid.

Dennis Jones
Barbados

A. Aid works if it is not a handout of cash or consumption goods (such as food aid) but an investment in the productivity of the poor (such as roads, power, fertilizers, high-yield seeds for high-productivity agriculture and medicines for disease control). When aid is used for investment, as it was to help India achieve its Green Revolution, the result is not dependency but the escape from dependency. The high-benefit investment opportunities in most of the poorest countries include: education, health, infrastructure and agriculture.

Q. I have been following your contributions to the public debate about whether global public resources can be optimized in effectiveness through the provision of global public goods. For instance, I realize that you believe diverting part of the international defense budget to international disease control and to education will boost growth in the Third World, and thereby, ultimately, the global economy as a whole. This is very inspirational. But does it not smack too much of top-down integrationism? Are you really advocating a global subsidy scheme?

Bright B Simons
United Kingdom

A. I am advocating a way for the rich countries to support a modest, but crucial, level of investments in the poor countries, to enable those poor countries to be stable, healthy and sufficiently productive to achieve economic growth. My estimate is that less than 1 percent of the income of the rich countries would be sufficient to enable the poorest countries of the world to get on to the ladder of economic development. The aid would be targeted at high-return, high-yield investments, mainly in infrastructure, education, health and agriculture. The rich countries will also have to help the poor countries adapt to, and mitigate, the serious climate changes caused mainly by heavy rich-country use of fossil fuels. These costs will also likely be a fraction of one percent of income of the rich countries. Thus, these transfers can remain modest, but they are extremely important for an interconnected world facing great risks on a crowded planet.

Q. I recognize that the U.S. has more than quadrupled its defense budget (probably even in inflation adjusted terms) since President Carter left office. But I believe that if America had spent half of its defense budget on aid to the Third World, rather than on defense, there probably would have been little improvement in the quality of the poor people’s lives, and probably even far greater threats to America’s security. Please share your reactions.

Gary Henscheid
Japan

A. The US military has been sent to accomplish things that only peaceful economic development, diplomacy and politics can accomplish. We’ve wasted hundreds of billions of dollars, and squandered hundreds of thousands of lives – ours and others’ – through a bad strategy. For a tiny fraction of the cost of military spending, we would ensure much more security for the U.S. through smart aid programs. One day’s Pentagon spending, for example, around $1.6 billion, would finance 300 million long-lasting anti-malaria bed nets, enough to protect every sleeping site in Africa for five years. We should jump at the chance to trade that day of Pentagon spending for the purchase of bed nets, for the sake of Africa’s well being and for U.S. long-term security. Similarly, the crises in Sudan and Somalia can only be solved by development strategies, not by military approaches.

Q. Is it just the lack of financial resources or lack of management skills and value systems that is affecting most of the poor countries? I personally think it is the latter which is responsible for most of the problems in poor countries, and, since it will take lot of time for these talents to kick in, how best should your initiatives ameliorating the lives of the poor take this into account?

Murugapiran Natanasigamani
United States

A. For the poorest of the poor, the main problem is the lack of basic tools to achieve a viable standard of living. The poor tend to be without roads, safe water, sanitation, electric power, anti-malaria bed nets and medicines and even basic high-yield seeds and fertilizer which are vital for agricultural productivity. My recommendation is that we support four main types of investment to help the poor to raise their productivity: agriculture, infrastructure (roads, power, water and sanitation, connectivity), health and education (including job skills). These investments will raise the productivity of the poor to a point at which they can begin to save and invest for their own future.

Q. What can we learn from building impoverished economies in the developing world that we can apply to building the economies of impoverished First Nations (indigenous people) in Canada and North America? Alternatively, what can we learn from First Nations that can be applied to other models?

Michael Izen
Canada

A. There is much to learn in both directions. The First Nations have been marginalized in the societies of the Americas for centuries, with lands taken, traditions rejected by the dominant society, and cultures under constant threat. It is time, I believe, for more holistic community-based strategies for development of First Nations along the lines that I describe in my book, The End of Poverty . I also believe that all of the Americas will be immeasurably enriched if we work together to find common purpose among the vast and complex mix of cultures, ethnicities, and arrival dates in the Americas.

Q. What is your opinion about efforts like Negroponte’s “green laptop”?

Peter Vratsistas
Greece

A. The $100 laptop, while not yet available, is already changing the thinking in the computer industry, by spurring major producers to emulate the Negroponte initiative. We will soon see very low cost computers, perhaps in the $100 to $500 range, making enormous inroads in low-income countries. And this massive uptake of computer technology, in schools, clinics, community centers, micro-finance units and other small-scale enterprises in poor economies, will have a major positive transformative effect on economic development, together with cellular phone coverage and internet connectivity.

Q. What is your view of World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz’s methods and results so far in dealing with corrupt governments’ abuses of power and charity?

Gary Henscheid
Japan

A. The anti-corruption campaign of the World Bank has been a huge distraction from the real work of the bank. Yes, of course, we need to fight corruption, but through smart management systems, and skillful design of programs, not as a stand-alone “campaign.” Unfortunately, the World Bank has not been leading in crucial areas where it can do a lot of good – disease control, agricultural upgrading, infrastructure investments and improved education. The bank has become too much of a talking (and arguing) shop, and too little of a practical doer.