Seems like a good heuristic could be: "don't do for Africans what Africans can do for themselves; instead do the things they can't do for themselves". Though in reality it gets messy: what if they can do X, but can't do enough X? By providing additional X you compete with those who already provided X.
Even better, every provided help should employ local people where possible. For example, you bring the food help to one place, and then pay local people to distribute it to other places. But pay them a market rate only. (You are already increasing local wages by increasing local demand for labor.)
Similarly you could improve healthcare by providing free education to local doctors, and then let them sell their services to their customers. (The more doctors you teach, the greater competition will be between them, and their services will be cheaper.) The same for teachers.
All these suggestions seem to me fully compatible with the "traditional capitalist values". And if this happens to be sponsored by voluntary donors, even Ayn Rand wouldn't object. -- So if someone objects against this, citing "libertarian" arguments, either they are mistaken, or that is not their true rejection.
Today's post, Traditional Capitalist Values was originally published on 17 October 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
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