The way things are at present, foreign aid, whether from individuals or government, promotes a lack of accountability in a country's rulers.

If a government has a budget of ,say, £100 million and has to raise it by taxing the people, the citizens will want to know how the money has been spent.

But if a donor says we will give you half of that £100 million in aid, the government's accountability is reduced by half.

And further on:

Your heart is in the right place, Sir Bob, but you do not appreciate the unintended consequences of what you are doing.

It [foreign aid] can lead to more starvation, not loess. If you keep dipping into the maize mountains of America and Europe to provide food to Africa, when are the Agrican people going to develop thier own technology to incease production to feed themselves?

He cites Ethiopa as an example of how this has worked in practice:

The reason it cannot feed its people is beause it lacks the storage systems - weevils get into the dry storage - and the threshing process is not carried out properly.

But there is little incentive to do anything about this. Stockpiles are not needed because every time there is a crisis the West is asked to give more food.

If you want to solve poverty in Africa, then help create an etrepreneurial system that will generate wealth for the people.

Given the hostility to George W Bush that was apparently shown by some people at the Live8 concert, it is interesting that he says, referring to 'plundering' by African leaders,

Few politicians in the West have ever questioned this systematic theft of a continent's wealth by its own rulers, fearing charges of racism and perpetuating colonialism.

Those who do, such as Goerge Bush, have been accused of being hard-hearted. But attaching reasonable strings to aid shows a clear head and not a hard heart.

It is a curious game that the national newspapers have played with Live8. Several of the sunday papers carried commemorative issues about the concert. Yet inside some, such as the Mail on Sunday, the Sunday Telegraph and the Sunday Times, carried articles that were distinctly critical about what the concert was trying to do. So Live8 was celebrated and criticised simultaneously.

This is Realnewspaperpolitik. Editors want to attract and keep young music fans and sympathisers with the politics of Live8 while at the same time expressing their actual opinions.

I know of one national newspaper which did not say anything bad about Sir Bob and Live8 on its main editorial page. But, it allowed its columnists to criticise Live8 elsewhere in the paper.

One can call it Realnewspaperpolitik but in truth but, more bluntly, it is hypocrisy. If these papers really believe that Live8 is wrongheaded, they should not report it, but not celebrate it.

I wish I could make a link to the Mbeki article but I cannot find the article on the Mail on Sunday website.