TCSDaily.com is making a very convincing case that the solution to poverty in Africa has nothing to do with the amount of foreign aid that gets to it, but rather the culture of corruption which has crippled the ability of the economies in Africa to operate:

If Obasanjo is right, African leaders embezzle three times more revenue than Africa was promised in foreign "aid" at the Gleneagles summit. The size of corruption in Africa makes a mockery of the arguments for foreign aid that have been advanced by Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University in his 2005 book "The End of Poverty." In Sachs's view, poverty in Africa prevents accumulation of domestic savings. Low savings result in low domestic investment and low investment impedes economic growth. Foreign aid, therefore, is needed to fill that apparent gap between insufficient savings and the requisite investment in the economy.

In fact, Africa is quite rich. As the economist Walter Williams of George Mason University wrote, "In terms of natural resources, Africa is the world's richest continent. It has 50 percent of the world's gold, most of the world's diamonds and chromium, 90 percent of the cobalt, 40 percent of the world's potential hydroelectric power, 65 percent of the manganese, millions of acres of untilled farmland as well as other natural resources." What Africa needs is not "aid," but less corruption.

I don't believe in taxpayer subsidized, but if we are going to do this, then there is a very simple way to deal with this. Any country that is going to receive foreign aid that is sponsored by the richer countries has to agree to one very simple condition. If your leaders attempt to embezzle the aid money, and don't use it precisely as we allocated it, then the rich countries reserve the right to assassinate everyone in the country's government who was responsible for the corruption and to bar their families from fleeing to first world countries for life.

All it would take would be for these countries to not be able to account for a few billion dollars of aid money, the US Marine Corps and special forces to land in the capitol and publicly execute everyone in their government who embezzled the aid money to make the would-be criminals think twice about abusing foreign aid. Brutal, perhaps, but eloquent in the language of these brutal despots. It would send them a clear message that if they think they're going to oppress their people on our dime, they will pay in blood.