Extreme poverty is the best breeding ground on earth for disease, political instability, and terrorism.
Jeffrey SachsRead
The time has come to end this charade. The debts are unaffordable. If they won't cancel the debts I would suggest obstruction; you do it yourselves. Africa should say: 'thank you very much but we need this money to meet the needs of children who are dying right now so we will put the debt servicing payments into urgent social investment in health, education, drinking water, control of AIDS and other needs.'
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes the urgent need for debt cancellation in Africa to reallocate funds for critical social investments.
Jeffrey Sachs argues that Africa faces a dire situation where debt payments hinder essential investments in health, education, and other critical areas. He suggests that instead of continuing to service unmanageable debts, African nations should prioritize the welfare of their children and invest in urgent social needs, ultimately igniting a call for action to reject unsustainable debt obligations.
Themes
DebtAfricaSocial InvestmentHealthEducationUrgent Needs
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech advocating for debt forgiveness, this quote can highlight the critical need for redirecting resources towards children's health.
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All quotes →All of the incessant debate about development assistance, and whether the rich are doing enough to help the poor, actually concerns less than 1% of rich world income. The effort required of the rich is indeed so slight that to do less is to announce brazenly to a large part of the world: 'You count for nothing.' We should not be surprised, then, if in later years the rich reap the whirlwind of that heartless response.
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The key to ending extreme poverty is to enable the poorest of the poor to get their foot on the ladder of development. The ladder of development hovers overhead, and the poorest of the poor are stuck beneath it. They lack the minimum amount of capital necessary to get a foothold, and therefore need a boost up to the first rung.
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Without restoring an ethos of social responsibility, there can be no meaningful and sustained economic recovery.
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Our challenge, our generation's unique challenge, is learning to live peacefully and sustainably in an extraordinarily crowded world. Our planet is crowded to an unprecendented degree. It is bursting at the seams. It's bursting at the seams in human terms, in economic terms, and in ecological terms
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