Daniel Hannan, the Conservative MEP much-loved for his YouTubed confrontation with Gordon Brown, says foreign aid to Africa is actually hurting the continent. He just met with Thompson Ayodele, Research Fellow with the Independent Institute and Executive Director for the Initiative for Public Policy Analysis in Nigeria, and had a look at the numbers:

The statistics he produces are jaw-dropping. They suggest a direct correlation between the receipt of development assistance and low growth. This is true whether you compare neighbouring countries, or whether you look at different periods within the same country. Foreign aid, he suggests, isn't useless; it's actively harmful. It discourages enterprise, fosters dependency and bolsters corrupt regimes. A similar correlation exists between debt remission and insolvency: countries which have their bills periodically written off become re-indebted more quickly than countries which don't.

While correlation doesn't imply causation, there is more than an incidental connection here. If you make a person dependent on the government, he will grow more so over time. The same holds true for an entire population -- this has long been a plank in conservative/libertarian thought.

So what to do about it?

The trouble is that if conservatives announced that they were going to cut overseas aid budgets, not everyone would believe that they were doing so as a result of Thompson's cogent philosophy. They would be accused, rather, of doing it because they were selfish or because they didn't care about people whose skins were darker than theirs.

As a result, the easy answer -- throw more money at the problem! -- carries the day as Hannan's Conservative Party is shielding foreign aid from future cuts.

Read Hannan's entire piece here.