Aid is a potent drug. It can help or hinder, depending on the circumstances. If you don’t have cancer, for example, a cancer drug will kill you. That’s why the maxim that is meant to guide medicine is to first do no harm. Don’t rush to “help” because your help (being faulty, partial, subjective) could very well be hurtful. First, just don’t actively hurt the patient. So what does that mean for aid in Africa? Debating the pros and cons of “help” is premature. First, let’s stop actively hurting the place: despoiling West Africa for oil; logging rainforests; exploitative mining; dumping toxic waste and cheap, unsellable goods and all the rest of it.