Globalization and trade, or at least international trade creates huge market differentials that obligate governments to invest in infrastructure with its resultant debt to global institutions instead of being enabled to address those issues the aid industry aim to satisfy.

I am often amused at almost pointless exercises at creating export markets as you allude to in the article.

“When I began training Senegalese women to grow organic hibiscus and promised to buy it from them, initially they laughed at me, because countless NGOs had helped them grow hibiscus in the past, only to have it rot after harvest because there were no buyers for their product.”

Of course they laugh. These people may be poor, they may be uneducated however they are farmers and farmers know that the first thing you need is a market.

Where aid needs to be directed is in circumventing the negative effect imports and exports create. For instance, I now work in Afghanistan and have done on and off for three and half years since 2002. The current exports total 340 million. The imports are around 4.8 billion matched only by the aid income that this country receives in aid. What is necessary to balance this equation is not an expansion of the export market but a contraction of the import market, developing industries and agriculture that offer import replacement that are not strengthening the economy of neighboring countries but of the economic situation of the country and region them self.