I loved this book. I look forward to reading more of your thoughts, Yaw. Your writing is incisive and objective. A rare find in the blinded tribalism that marks much thinking today.
Thank you very much for the excellent review and informative discussion - both in the article and your comments. I've learned a lot and am looking forward to picking up the book!
Sorry for the late reply! It might be quite basic since I'm not too much of an expert in this sort of material, but just the idea of aid being potentially a net negative was quite surprising to me. I guess what I learnt and thought myself was that aid could probably be done better in various ways, but never that a country might be better off without it? I guess there are still many parts of that argument that are hard to show and prove, as you've noted about the link to corruption etc! But I literally just didn't think about that idea of development aid to some countries being potentially entirely bad before.
It also made me think about the politics of it - I'm recently learning about Japanese ODA Policy and working on a paper about the benefits it has had/is expected to bring to Japanese Foreign policy etc. So even if aid is ineffective in procuring development or in the worst case, actually impedes it, maybe the political incentives for aid provision from both donor and recipient would make it continue regardless?
Apologies for the ramble!! I'm looking forward to your next book review and other pieces too!
Yea, Rwanda is fast growing relative to Africa but they are still a very poor country. When World Bank releases their data in July, I hope the average Rwandan income per person crosses $1K.
Do you think the reason Rwanda gets so much aid is related to US corporate interests in the region? I've heard Rwanda referred to as the "Israel of Africa" and that western money flows into the M23 terrorist gang so they can illegally extract mineral resources from the DRC next door.
I don't know much else, but I know the history of that region has been especially complex and turbulent for the past 30 years or so.
To answer the second question, most of Rwanda gets aid because the West feels guilty for not stopping the Rwanda genocide.
Here's the "complex history" of Rwanda-Congo.
There was the Kingdoms of Rwanda and Burundi and they were both cow economies. Wealth was based on how many cows you had. If you were high caste with many cows you were a Tutsi which meant "cow pastorialist". If you had no cows you were a Hutu, or a "farmer". Hutus were serfs of Tutsis for centuries. The majority of people were Hutu and a minority were Tutsi.
Sometimes the King of Rwanda would increase taxes on other Tutsis so some Tutsis would go west towards areas that's now in modern day East Congo. When Leopold of Belgium created his Fiefdom called the "Congo Free State" there were some Tutsis in Congo. They are called Banyamulenge or Banyarwanda but we will just say "Congolese Tutsis" for short.
Germany took Rwanda and Belgium. Then Germany lost WW1 and Belgium took over. During colonialism, some Tutsis in Burundi or Rwanda would move to East Congo to make more money mining, increasing the number of Tutsis in East Congo.
Germany, then Belgium turned the "Tutsi"/"Hutu" social castes into permanent races and allowed Tutsis to be more supremacist over Hutus and even made it worse.
Before independence, Hutu intellectuals wanted more rights and had a Hutu revolution of killing Tutsis. Now post-independence, Hutus were supremacist and oppressed Tutsis.
Hutus kept killing Tutsis and then there were Rwandan Tutsi refugees in Congo, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, and etc. Now we have two forms of Rwandan Tutsis -- Tutsis who have been in East Congo for 100 years since before independence (who are passport less because Mobutu of Congo didn't want to extend them citizenship) and Tutsis with Rwandan passports.
Paul Kagame of Rwanda assembled Tutsis from other African countries and Rwanda to overthrow the Hutu Supremacist Regime, during to the Rwanda Civil War (1990-1994). The Hutu regime asked for help from Congo and France for weapons to stop the Tutsis. After a plane killed the Hutu president, the Hutus in Rwanda slaughtered 800K to 1M Tutsis and moderate Hutus. After the genocide, Kagame and his forces took over the country.
2M Hutus fled to Congo and Mobutu gave them haven. The Hutus started slaugtering the Tutsis in Congo and had border clashes in Rwanda. Kagame asked Mobutu to help but Mobutu was bankrupt and didn't care. So Kagame along with Museveni of Uganda, Angola, and Burundi invaded Congo, replaced with with a puppet - Laurent Kabila, killed some Hutu genocidaires (the Rwandan Hutu regime who committed the genocide), and 800K Congolese died (Congo War 1).
Kabila initially was chummy with Museveni and Kagame. Kabila even had Tutsis in his administration. But Congolese saw Kabila as illegitimate. To shore up legitmamacy he had to show he wasn't owned by Kagame, so he removed the Tutsis from his administration and started supporting the Hutu genociaires to kill more Congolese Tutsis and attack Rwanda and Uganda at the border. The Hutu genocidaires beacme known as FDLR (Democratic Forces for Liberation of Rwanda).
This gave Kagame and Museveni an excuse to invade again. Kabila this time had support from Angola and Zimbabwe. The war killed 6M Congolese. The Hutu genocidiaires in FDLR still aren't dead yet. The UN was pathetic when they "intervened". (2nd Congo War: 1998-2003)
Lauren Kabila died and his son took over - Joseph. Joseph tried to remove the Hutu genocidaires, FDLR, himself but his army sucks and he failed. Instead the FDLR allegedly started becoming incorporated in his army. In addition, Joseph initially tried incorproated the Tutsi Congolese in his army, but that was walked back. Also, these Congolese Tutsis still don't have passports.
So these Congolese Tutsis became the M23 and started killing and raping East Congo in 2012. They were stopped with UN support, but now they are back in since 2021. They are now raping the East Congo. There's also the ISIS affiliated ADL which was driven out of Uganda that rapes East Congo too.
The new President Felix of Congo claims that Uganda and Rwanda are funding ADL and M23 respectively to rape their country and loot their resources.
Both the countries deny they fund these organizations.
Based off speeches I have heard the issue can be resolved by the following:
1. Rwanda wants the FDLR (Hutu genocidaires) to be brought to Rwanda to face justice
2. Rwanda wants Congo to accept the fact that these Tutsis in M23 are Congolese (as in moved during pre-colonialism, colonialism times). They are not Rwanda's problem.
In Kagame's perspective, if Congo does these two things then M23 won't be a problem.
Congo just wants M23 gone and at this point some (but not ALL!) Congolese think that Tutsis are a 5th column who are pawns of Rwanda for an expansionist ideology. They look at the Congo Wars not as "Rwandan self defense" but as excuses for expansionism.
I am not taking a side but this is what my Congolese and Rwandan friends say.
I see why some people see Rwanda and Israel as similar. Both are disliked by neighbors. Tutsis and Jews have both been genocide and have been seen as a fifth column. Both Israel and Rwanda have been attacked as expansionist states. My only view point is that I want just resolutions to long lasting peace.
So by "corporate interests in the region", I assume you mean that Rwanda is right next to Eastern Congo, which is full of minerals.
In 2020, the last American firm sold its final stake in cobalt mines. There is no longer any (legal) American presence in cobalt extraction in Congo. The person who wrote, Cobalt Red, Siddharth Kara, spoke how American firms no longer extract the raw cobalt in Congo. It's just that further up in the supply chain, Apple/Google/Samsung will buy cobalt from Congo and those firms have no clue if the cobalt they buy is from Congolese artisanal miners or not.
The last American firm to own a cobalt/copper mine is Freeport-McMoRan. In 2017, Freeport sold its 80% stake in the Tenke cobalt/copper mine to China Molybdenum for $2.65B and sold its mining stake in Kisanfu, Congo for $550M to China Molybdenum.
Thanks for the very detailed response! You could put it in an article itself.
It's incredible but not too shocking how messy politics get after a horrible genocide. I figured there would be diverse opinions on the situation in both countries, but you never hear anyone really get into it. I've only really been exposed to the "M23 are Rwandan pawns" narrative.
I also had no idea that Tutsis and Hutus were originally social castes and weren't actually separate "races". Some of these finer points elude me as an American with no personal connection to the region.
As for artisanal mining, I wonder if anyone has any estimate of where it goes? I'd assume some of the products up the value chain in the companies you mentioned are in some part sourced from illegal artisanal mining. I've also heard that currently the split between industrial and artisanal labor is 50/50, but production is 80% industrial and 20% artisanal . In your view do you see the DRC moving towards industrial mining? I know it's not nearly as horrible and exploitative as artisanal mining is.
Swiss firms like Glencore and Trafigura are the shadiest commodity trading firms that take cobalt from artisanal miners. As for how much, who could say. Cobalt prices have been declining recently and there is increasingly new materials engineering breakthroughs and other combinations of materials making cobalt irrelevant or less valuable. More firms are substituting for nickel in Indonesia. (In terms of Legal cobalt exports, in 2022 the global export cobalt market was $10B. Nickel $19B, Oil is over a Trillion)
China helps Congo do some cobalt refining and industrial mining. Congo no longer sells raw cobalt ore (which is mixed with other metals), but sells the refined cobalt. The issue is industrial mining is capital intensive, not labor intensive so you don't need a lot of people. Congo has 100M+ people with a massive unemployment rate over 20%. Artisanal mining still exists even with industrial mining.
There's other low hanging fruits Congo can pursue - like agriculture. Congo has a lot of land but has some of the world's worst agricultural output and productivity.
I would probably disagree with both. The Asian tigers primarily, according to Joe Studwell, primarily depended on local savings to fund industrialisation. FDI was primarily used for technology transfer and integration into global supply chains.
Also a lot of the countries you mentioned that used the Eurobond just went to the IMF and other development institutions for a bailout anyway (aid by other means). Bangladesh (not exactly a model of good governance) has a tax to gdp of 7-9% while Kenya's is over 12-14%. But Kenya still needs foreign bailouts to fund infrastructure apparently.
That's why I talk about getting rid of the IMF and World Bank as well. At least we should ban Argentina, Egypt, Pakistan and other chronically irresponsible countries.
I should do "How Asia Works" or maybe I'll do "How Europe underdeveloped Africa" next. But yes, Asia increased local savings from agriculture. Both Moyo and Sachs encourage boosting agriculture in Africa as well. Except most countries' agricultural policy has terrible execution - Ethiopia and Ghana are among the few sub-saharan African countries that isn't South Africa, that has cereal yields approaching 3 tones per hectare (which is still mediocre, but the best in Black Africa).
Yes, Ivory Coast did return to the IMF, but Rwanda has not taken an IMF emergency loan (like a standby arrangement or extended fund facility) since 2002.
Idk if I would remove the World Bank or IMF. As I am sure you are aware, Egypt, Pakistan, and etc. barely listen to the IMF due to the concerns of the political economy.
I know what cereals are, but the yields for all of those are vastly different for each country: for example, in terms of wheat yields, South Africa does better than the USA https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/wheat-yields, to some extent because wheat is a marginal crop in the USA while it's somewhat more important in South Africa. For corn yields, it's completely different, with the USA having a yield of 10 t/hectare while SA comes in at 5 t/ha.
South Africa & Namibia are generally the exception in Africa because the white farmers with their advanced agriculture are still there. South Africa more so than Namibia.
Zimbabwe managed to rebound in wheat after decades of failure.
Of course you pockets of good farming at some African countries, but overall whether I am looking at wheat, rice, maize, barley, and millet, most African countries are pretty bad at growing their own food:
Yeah. They're a waste of time so the IMF should cut them off permanently. Unfortunately US has to support them for geopolitical reasons. Egypt for "stabilising" the Middle East. Pakistan because it got nuclear weapons. But we probably convince the world to cut off Argentina because their per capita income is around that of China and Malaysia.
I would bet that in 30 years Afghanistan will have a better credit rating than Pakistan because they had to get fiscal discipline because they could not rely on aid (unless China becomes their benefactor of course).
I loved this book. I look forward to reading more of your thoughts, Yaw. Your writing is incisive and objective. A rare find in the blinded tribalism that marks much thinking today.
Thank you very much for the excellent review and informative discussion - both in the article and your comments. I've learned a lot and am looking forward to picking up the book!
no problem! I'm curious, what was new knowledge for you? I plan on doing another book review soon!
Sorry for the late reply! It might be quite basic since I'm not too much of an expert in this sort of material, but just the idea of aid being potentially a net negative was quite surprising to me. I guess what I learnt and thought myself was that aid could probably be done better in various ways, but never that a country might be better off without it? I guess there are still many parts of that argument that are hard to show and prove, as you've noted about the link to corruption etc! But I literally just didn't think about that idea of development aid to some countries being potentially entirely bad before.
It also made me think about the politics of it - I'm recently learning about Japanese ODA Policy and working on a paper about the benefits it has had/is expected to bring to Japanese Foreign policy etc. So even if aid is ineffective in procuring development or in the worst case, actually impedes it, maybe the political incentives for aid provision from both donor and recipient would make it continue regardless?
Apologies for the ramble!! I'm looking forward to your next book review and other pieces too!
I can't believe Rwanda's gdp is 20% aid. Like wtf? At that point you're just a charity with a country attached to it.
Yea, Rwanda is fast growing relative to Africa but they are still a very poor country. When World Bank releases their data in July, I hope the average Rwandan income per person crosses $1K.
Do you think the reason Rwanda gets so much aid is related to US corporate interests in the region? I've heard Rwanda referred to as the "Israel of Africa" and that western money flows into the M23 terrorist gang so they can illegally extract mineral resources from the DRC next door.
I don't know much else, but I know the history of that region has been especially complex and turbulent for the past 30 years or so.
To answer the second question, most of Rwanda gets aid because the West feels guilty for not stopping the Rwanda genocide.
Here's the "complex history" of Rwanda-Congo.
There was the Kingdoms of Rwanda and Burundi and they were both cow economies. Wealth was based on how many cows you had. If you were high caste with many cows you were a Tutsi which meant "cow pastorialist". If you had no cows you were a Hutu, or a "farmer". Hutus were serfs of Tutsis for centuries. The majority of people were Hutu and a minority were Tutsi.
Sometimes the King of Rwanda would increase taxes on other Tutsis so some Tutsis would go west towards areas that's now in modern day East Congo. When Leopold of Belgium created his Fiefdom called the "Congo Free State" there were some Tutsis in Congo. They are called Banyamulenge or Banyarwanda but we will just say "Congolese Tutsis" for short.
Germany took Rwanda and Belgium. Then Germany lost WW1 and Belgium took over. During colonialism, some Tutsis in Burundi or Rwanda would move to East Congo to make more money mining, increasing the number of Tutsis in East Congo.
Germany, then Belgium turned the "Tutsi"/"Hutu" social castes into permanent races and allowed Tutsis to be more supremacist over Hutus and even made it worse.
Before independence, Hutu intellectuals wanted more rights and had a Hutu revolution of killing Tutsis. Now post-independence, Hutus were supremacist and oppressed Tutsis.
Hutus kept killing Tutsis and then there were Rwandan Tutsi refugees in Congo, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, and etc. Now we have two forms of Rwandan Tutsis -- Tutsis who have been in East Congo for 100 years since before independence (who are passport less because Mobutu of Congo didn't want to extend them citizenship) and Tutsis with Rwandan passports.
Paul Kagame of Rwanda assembled Tutsis from other African countries and Rwanda to overthrow the Hutu Supremacist Regime, during to the Rwanda Civil War (1990-1994). The Hutu regime asked for help from Congo and France for weapons to stop the Tutsis. After a plane killed the Hutu president, the Hutus in Rwanda slaughtered 800K to 1M Tutsis and moderate Hutus. After the genocide, Kagame and his forces took over the country.
2M Hutus fled to Congo and Mobutu gave them haven. The Hutus started slaugtering the Tutsis in Congo and had border clashes in Rwanda. Kagame asked Mobutu to help but Mobutu was bankrupt and didn't care. So Kagame along with Museveni of Uganda, Angola, and Burundi invaded Congo, replaced with with a puppet - Laurent Kabila, killed some Hutu genocidaires (the Rwandan Hutu regime who committed the genocide), and 800K Congolese died (Congo War 1).
Kabila initially was chummy with Museveni and Kagame. Kabila even had Tutsis in his administration. But Congolese saw Kabila as illegitimate. To shore up legitmamacy he had to show he wasn't owned by Kagame, so he removed the Tutsis from his administration and started supporting the Hutu genociaires to kill more Congolese Tutsis and attack Rwanda and Uganda at the border. The Hutu genocidaires beacme known as FDLR (Democratic Forces for Liberation of Rwanda).
This gave Kagame and Museveni an excuse to invade again. Kabila this time had support from Angola and Zimbabwe. The war killed 6M Congolese. The Hutu genocidiaires in FDLR still aren't dead yet. The UN was pathetic when they "intervened". (2nd Congo War: 1998-2003)
Lauren Kabila died and his son took over - Joseph. Joseph tried to remove the Hutu genocidaires, FDLR, himself but his army sucks and he failed. Instead the FDLR allegedly started becoming incorporated in his army. In addition, Joseph initially tried incorproated the Tutsi Congolese in his army, but that was walked back. Also, these Congolese Tutsis still don't have passports.
So these Congolese Tutsis became the M23 and started killing and raping East Congo in 2012. They were stopped with UN support, but now they are back in since 2021. They are now raping the East Congo. There's also the ISIS affiliated ADL which was driven out of Uganda that rapes East Congo too.
The new President Felix of Congo claims that Uganda and Rwanda are funding ADL and M23 respectively to rape their country and loot their resources.
Both the countries deny they fund these organizations.
UN experts say Rwanda funds M23. But Rwanda denies this.
https://www.france24.com/en/africa/20220804-un-experts-say-rwanda-provided-military-support-to-m23-rebels-in-eastern-congo
Based off speeches I have heard the issue can be resolved by the following:
1. Rwanda wants the FDLR (Hutu genocidaires) to be brought to Rwanda to face justice
2. Rwanda wants Congo to accept the fact that these Tutsis in M23 are Congolese (as in moved during pre-colonialism, colonialism times). They are not Rwanda's problem.
In Kagame's perspective, if Congo does these two things then M23 won't be a problem.
Congo just wants M23 gone and at this point some (but not ALL!) Congolese think that Tutsis are a 5th column who are pawns of Rwanda for an expansionist ideology. They look at the Congo Wars not as "Rwandan self defense" but as excuses for expansionism.
I am not taking a side but this is what my Congolese and Rwandan friends say.
I see why some people see Rwanda and Israel as similar. Both are disliked by neighbors. Tutsis and Jews have both been genocide and have been seen as a fifth column. Both Israel and Rwanda have been attacked as expansionist states. My only view point is that I want just resolutions to long lasting peace.
Good question!
So by "corporate interests in the region", I assume you mean that Rwanda is right next to Eastern Congo, which is full of minerals.
In 2020, the last American firm sold its final stake in cobalt mines. There is no longer any (legal) American presence in cobalt extraction in Congo. The person who wrote, Cobalt Red, Siddharth Kara, spoke how American firms no longer extract the raw cobalt in Congo. It's just that further up in the supply chain, Apple/Google/Samsung will buy cobalt from Congo and those firms have no clue if the cobalt they buy is from Congolese artisanal miners or not.
The last American firm to own a cobalt/copper mine is Freeport-McMoRan. In 2017, Freeport sold its 80% stake in the Tenke cobalt/copper mine to China Molybdenum for $2.65B and sold its mining stake in Kisanfu, Congo for $550M to China Molybdenum.
Sources:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-freeport-mcmoran-cmoc-idUSKBN1952V5/
https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN28N0D8/
Now those mines are mainly owned by China Moly with the state owned Congolese firm - Gecamines having a minority stake.
There is a chance that some clandestine American firm is operating in illegal cobalt/copper mines, but I have no proof of that.
What I do have proof of is other foreign firms that legally operate in Congo:
There are Chinese firms (China Moly), Swiss firms (the shady firm Glencore), Emirati firms (Shalina Resources), Luxembourg Eurasion Resources Group.
https://www.mining-technology.com/data-insights/ten-largest-cobalts-mines/?cf-view
Thanks for the very detailed response! You could put it in an article itself.
It's incredible but not too shocking how messy politics get after a horrible genocide. I figured there would be diverse opinions on the situation in both countries, but you never hear anyone really get into it. I've only really been exposed to the "M23 are Rwandan pawns" narrative.
I also had no idea that Tutsis and Hutus were originally social castes and weren't actually separate "races". Some of these finer points elude me as an American with no personal connection to the region.
As for artisanal mining, I wonder if anyone has any estimate of where it goes? I'd assume some of the products up the value chain in the companies you mentioned are in some part sourced from illegal artisanal mining. I've also heard that currently the split between industrial and artisanal labor is 50/50, but production is 80% industrial and 20% artisanal . In your view do you see the DRC moving towards industrial mining? I know it's not nearly as horrible and exploitative as artisanal mining is.
Swiss firms like Glencore and Trafigura are the shadiest commodity trading firms that take cobalt from artisanal miners. As for how much, who could say. Cobalt prices have been declining recently and there is increasingly new materials engineering breakthroughs and other combinations of materials making cobalt irrelevant or less valuable. More firms are substituting for nickel in Indonesia. (In terms of Legal cobalt exports, in 2022 the global export cobalt market was $10B. Nickel $19B, Oil is over a Trillion)
https://oec.world/en/profile/hs/raw-nickel
In April 2022, people used to pay $78K per ton. Now its $22K per ton. Basically lost nearly ~80% of value.
https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/cobalt
China helps Congo do some cobalt refining and industrial mining. Congo no longer sells raw cobalt ore (which is mixed with other metals), but sells the refined cobalt. The issue is industrial mining is capital intensive, not labor intensive so you don't need a lot of people. Congo has 100M+ people with a massive unemployment rate over 20%. Artisanal mining still exists even with industrial mining.
There's other low hanging fruits Congo can pursue - like agriculture. Congo has a lot of land but has some of the world's worst agricultural output and productivity.
I would probably disagree with both. The Asian tigers primarily, according to Joe Studwell, primarily depended on local savings to fund industrialisation. FDI was primarily used for technology transfer and integration into global supply chains.
Also a lot of the countries you mentioned that used the Eurobond just went to the IMF and other development institutions for a bailout anyway (aid by other means). Bangladesh (not exactly a model of good governance) has a tax to gdp of 7-9% while Kenya's is over 12-14%. But Kenya still needs foreign bailouts to fund infrastructure apparently.
That's why I talk about getting rid of the IMF and World Bank as well. At least we should ban Argentina, Egypt, Pakistan and other chronically irresponsible countries.
I should do "How Asia Works" or maybe I'll do "How Europe underdeveloped Africa" next. But yes, Asia increased local savings from agriculture. Both Moyo and Sachs encourage boosting agriculture in Africa as well. Except most countries' agricultural policy has terrible execution - Ethiopia and Ghana are among the few sub-saharan African countries that isn't South Africa, that has cereal yields approaching 3 tones per hectare (which is still mediocre, but the best in Black Africa).
Yes, Ivory Coast did return to the IMF, but Rwanda has not taken an IMF emergency loan (like a standby arrangement or extended fund facility) since 2002.
Idk if I would remove the World Bank or IMF. As I am sure you are aware, Egypt, Pakistan, and etc. barely listen to the IMF due to the concerns of the political economy.
what is "cereal"? Do you mean maize, wheat, or rice?
cereals (not the breakfast food) are grains cultivated for eating.
Examples include: wheat, rice, maize, barley, oats, rye, millet,
sorghum, buckwheat, and mixed grains.
I know what cereals are, but the yields for all of those are vastly different for each country: for example, in terms of wheat yields, South Africa does better than the USA https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/wheat-yields, to some extent because wheat is a marginal crop in the USA while it's somewhat more important in South Africa. For corn yields, it's completely different, with the USA having a yield of 10 t/hectare while SA comes in at 5 t/ha.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/maize-yields
You can't really generalize across cereals like that since they're each quite different.
South Africa & Namibia are generally the exception in Africa because the white farmers with their advanced agriculture are still there. South Africa more so than Namibia.
Zimbabwe managed to rebound in wheat after decades of failure.
Of course you pockets of good farming at some African countries, but overall whether I am looking at wheat, rice, maize, barley, and millet, most African countries are pretty bad at growing their own food:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/wheat-yields?tab=chart&country=Low+Income+Food+Deficit+Countries+%28FAO%29~OWID_AFR~Net+Food+Importing+Developing+Countries+%28FAO%29
In wheat, Africa is slightly below the Low Income Food Deficit Country average.
Same in rice:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/rice-yields?tab=chart&country=OWID_AFR~Low+Income+Food+Deficit+Countries+%28FAO%29~Net+Food+Importing+Developing+Countries+%28FAO%29
In corn, its above the "low food deficit" but below "net food importing developing countries average:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/maize-yields?tab=chart&country=OWID_AFR~Low+Income+Food+Deficit+Countries+%28FAO%29~Net+Food+Importing+Developing+Countries+%28FAO%29
Yeah. They're a waste of time so the IMF should cut them off permanently. Unfortunately US has to support them for geopolitical reasons. Egypt for "stabilising" the Middle East. Pakistan because it got nuclear weapons. But we probably convince the world to cut off Argentina because their per capita income is around that of China and Malaysia.
I would bet that in 30 years Afghanistan will have a better credit rating than Pakistan because they had to get fiscal discipline because they could not rely on aid (unless China becomes their benefactor of course).