State sponsored charity is one way of putting it. But that is misleading. Charity is voluntary and not obligatory. Transfer payments funded by taxes are neither. Another, better, way of putting it is minimal economic justice, an acknowledgment that we're all in the same boat and share fates in such a way that the better off among us have no entitlement to flourish at the cost of utter destitution of our fellow citizens. The less well off have a right not to be rendered destitute that, as a matter of right, does not depend on mere good will by the better off.
[WS:] Call me an old apparatchik, but I think that the "classical" Soviet approach is far superior to the liberal one based on transfer payments. It relied heavily on massive investment in industrial infrastructure and massive investment in human capital. So far, so good, but here is the catch - it also kept the wages down, it forced masses of people into the industrial mode of production and modernity (mass relocation, often forced, mandatory employment, and the destruction of local cultures viewed as nonconductive to modern industrial life cf. the Gypsies), and most of the transfer payments were distributed collectively as subsidies on services like education or health care, subsidies on housing, and subsidies on basic consumer goods.
It worked and it worked well - as evidenced by the fact that x-USSR became a global superpower, and backward Eastern European countries achieved near parity with Western Europe in about a thirty year period. However, if these solutions were tried today, the populists and culturalists would cry bloody murder, blaming the poor, "negro removal" and dollops of similar crap slung by self-styled populists and radicals for the sin of forcing people from a fringe existence to the economic mainstream.
This is, btw, how I see much of the US left - its main concern is not to elevate the underclass to the level of the upper/middle class, but to bring down the level of the upper/middle class to that of the lower classes - especially in the realm of culture. Again, this is my perception, which, I am aware, is not very popular on this list. We have to agree to disagree on this issue.
Another point - the chief reason for African underdevelopment is a dismal lack of investment in infrastructure and human capital. While factors responsible for those shortages are complex, the chief among them is the kleptocracies that run post colonial states (with the possible exception of Julius Nyerere) and squandered whatever foreign they received during the cold war on consumption and payola to political supporters. Again, this is not a character flaw but the extension of tribal politics to the state level - a structural factor.
However, the net effect of that failure is that little infrastructure (industrial, transport) and human capital exists today in Africa, and that is the major impediment for future investments. Private investors are, after all, after profit and thus prefer countries with higher return potential and greater security. By contrast, China, the Asian Tigers, and even India that did massive state-led investments in infrastructure and human capital during the cold war are doing quite well in the global capitalism today.
To sum it up, the only effective solution to structural poverty, both in the US and in Africa - is massive state-led investments coupled with strong anti-corruption and aggressive cultural modernization policies - akin to those under state socialism in Eastern Europe and China. Everything else is a band aid, feel-good charity. Unfortunately, such a solution is rejected by both, neo-liberals and the populist/culturalist left.
Wojtek