Sachs and the facts
From Tim Congdon
Sir: I’m not sure what to make of Jeffrey Sachs’s attempted rebuttal of my claim that his book is full of mistakes in history and geography (Letters, 14 May).
He says that I was wrong to say that malaria was ‘coming under control in the final decades of colonial rule’ in sub-Saharan Africa, but in the next sentence concedes that the mortality rate dipped in the relevant period. In fact, British colonial administrations in Asia as well as Africa had a good record in controlling malaria. Sachs protests that he did not put the start of British rule in India as 1600, as I said in my review. I would refer your readers to p.176 of The End of Poverty and leave them to make up their own minds.
In my review I commented that Sachs’s remarks on the lack of navigable rivers in Africa were ‘astonishing’. I stick to that comment. Not only is the Congo a superb inland waterway (with only a relatively short distance between Kinshasa, where the inland waterway now ends, and the sea) but Africa has the Niger, the Gambia, the Senegal, the Zambezi, the Limpopo and others, all with long navigable stretches. Australia has nothing like Africa’s endowment in this respect, but it is many times richer.
I repeat my point. Sorry, Professor Sachs, the problem with sub-Saharan Africa is governance, not geography. There is nothing wrong with distinguished economists writing popular books, particularly when — as in The End of Poverty — they have a strong case to make. But distinguished economists, like the rest of us, should not be sloppy with facts and they should accept well-founded corrections with good grace.
Tim Congdon
Huntley, Gloucestershire
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