📚 This is an archive of Aid Thoughts, a development economics blog that was active from 2009 to 2017. Posts and comments are preserved in their original form.

We must be doing something right

I've been making my way through Chinua Achebe's The Education of a British-Protected Child, and stumbled upon this gem:

In 1976, U.S. relations with Nigeria reached an all-time low in the face of a particularly clumsy American handling of the Angolan-Cuba-South African issue. Henry Kissinger, whose indifference to Africa bordered on cynicism, decided at last to meet Joseph Garba, the Nigerian foreign minister, at the United Nations. In a gambit of condescending pleasantness, Kissinger asked Garba what he thought America was doing wrong in Africa. To which Garba replied stonily: "Everything!" Kissinger's next comment was both precious and, I regret to admit, true. He said: "Statistically that is impossible. Even if it is unintentional, we must be doing something right."