The poor are just like everyone else

Sir,

Christian Aid and others (Letters, February 20) repeat the simple fallacy that inequality causes poverty and lack of development and that redistribution of wealth causes growth. Poor people are not laboratory rats; they are just like everyone else, and what they need is the freedom and security to plant, to work, to accumulate and to exchange.

Dependency on aid has undermined people and economies while subsidising tyranny, corruption and state economic mis-management: after $450bn of aid over the last 30 years, the average African's gross domestic product and life-expectancy are lower now than at independence. Are Africans just stupid or is something holding us back and grinding us down?

Poor people, like everyone, need property rights, the rule of law and free markets, not subsidies, officials, corruption and five-year plans.

Franklin Cudjoe
Director, Imani: The Centre for Humane Education
Achimota-Accra, Ghana