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The pitfalls of Africa's aid addiction



 
 
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Old November 24th, 2008, 11:03 AM posted to rec.travel.africa,rec.travel.europe
Dimond Geeza
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Default The pitfalls of Africa's aid addiction

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7740652.stm

The pitfalls of Africa's aid addiction
By Sorious Samura
BBC Panorama reporter

Sorious Samura holding Unicef medical supplies
Aid has failed to lift Africa out of poverty

Where I come from in West Africa, we have a saying: "A fool at 40 is a
fool forever", and most African countries have now been independent
for over 40 years.

Most are blessed with all the elements to help compete on a global
stage - abundant natural resources, a young population and the climate
and conditions to be a major agricultural force.

And yet today, my continent, which is home to 10% of the world's
population, represents just 1% of global trade. I have no doubt we
have to take responsibility for our failures. We can't afford to keep
playing the blame game.

But when 50 years of foreign aid has failed to lift Africa out of
poverty, could corruption be the reason?

Could that really be all there is to it?

Causes of corruption

The symptoms of corruption are easy to spot.

Teachers demand bribes from their students because they cannot get by
on their wages. Government officials, doctors and nurses steal drugs
meant for their patients to sell on the black market. African leaders
have property portfolios across the globe, while their citizens live
on $1 a day or less.

Sorious Samura at his old school
It is in the classroom that many get their first taste of corruption

But searching for the causes, I had to ask myself some difficult
questions.

People often say a nation gets the government it deserves. And we
Africans have certainly made some bad choices in terms of leaders, but
all too often Western aid has ended up bankrolling them.

Aid has offered legitimacy to corrupt and autocratic regimes, allowing
them to hang on to power even when they have lost popularity with
their own citizens.

While we were filming inside Uganda's largest hospital, Mulago
hospital, these thoughts came sharply into focus.

We saw dozens of mothers with their newborn babies lying on the blood-
splattered floor next to disposed needles.

Victims of road accidents were hauled into hospital by relatives
because there are few porters, few trolleys and even fewer ambulances.
Some patients were even left to bleed on the floor.

These are images I have seen repeated all over Africa and it left me
wondering, why we Africans cannot demand greater accountability from
our leaders.

Why do they keep getting away with this level of neglect? But I was
quickly reminded of the proverb taught as a nursery rhyme to African
children - he who pays the piper calls the tune.

Woman washing clothes in Freetown river
Despite huge aid efforts for the very poorest Africans little has
changed

Many sub-Saharan African countries have had high levels of aid
dependence - in excess of 10% of gross domestic product, or half of
government spending - for decades.

When half the government budget comes from aid, African leaders find
themselves less inclined to tax their citizens.

As a result, governments that are highly dependent on aid pay too much
attention to donors and too little to the actual needs of their own
citizens.

And unfortunately donors have their own objectives which are not
always the same as the citizens of African countries.

'Rewarding failure'

Building new schools and clinics in record numbers looks good on paper
and makes politicians look good in front of voters back home. But when
these clinics lack the most basic facilities and there are not enough
teachers in the classroom, it is the ordinary Africans who get a raw
deal.

Another criticism of aid increasingly voiced by Africans, but rarely
heard in the West is that it sponsors failure, but rarely rewards
success.

Children in Freetown, Sierra Leone
One fifth of children in Sierra Leone will not see their fifth
birthday

While I was filming in Uganda, local newspaper editor Andrew Mwenda
took me and my crew to his home village near the town of Port Loco in
the west of the country. There he introduced us to two men, one in his
sixties and one aged 26.

"This man represents the tragedy of aid," he said pointing to the
older of the two. "While this man represents the potential of aid," he
said indicating the younger man.

Mr Mwenda explained that the sexagenarian was the chairman of the
local parish council who had spent most of his life living off aid
money, supervising projects meant to benefit the community.

Today he is an alcoholic who still lives with his mother.

Dysfunctional lifestyle

The younger man started selling potatoes in the village square at the
age of 17.

Less than 10 years later he owns the largest and busiest store in the
village. He has not received one penny from aid, yet he has bought
himself land and has built a house.

"So you see," Mr Mwenda said. "If aid were to offer this young man
support in the form of low interest credit he could not only expand
his business offering employment opportunities and a valuable service
to his community, he could also eventually pay the money back."

Injured man lying on floor
In Mulago hospital injured people lay on the blood-spattered floor

But instead of funding innovation and creativity, aid has funded the
chairman's dysfunctional lifestyle.

Prolonged aid programmes also have wider implications for developing
economies. Thirty years of aid dollars flowing into the Ugandan
economy has left the country suffering from what economists refer to
as the "Dutch disease".

Large inflows of foreign currency push up the value of the Ugandan
shilling making its agricultural and manufactured goods less price
competitive.

This results in fewer exports and less home-grown, sustainable
earnings for the country.

Local entrepreneurs such as coffee growers and flower exporters should
be cashing in on rising food and commodity prices across the globe at
the moment, but they are finding themselves crowded out of their own
economy by foreign aid dollars.

Graduates lost

Small African producers also have to compete with heavily subsided
products from Europe and North America.

Mother and child on labour ward floor
And in the labour ward mothers and their newborns are often without a
bed

Uganda's cotton industry is capable of exporting almost half a million
bales per year, but so far in 2008 the country has only managed
160,000 bales.

High government subsidies for North American cotton farmers prevent
Ugandan producers from offering competitive prices in international
markets.

In their glossy pamphlets and on the pages of their high-spec
websites, donors tend to wax lyrical about the importance of trade to
Africa's future, yet very little progress has been made on opening up
international markets. African producers still represent just 1% of
global trade.

And at least 70,000 skilled graduates abandon the continent every
year, often trained by Western aid, but unable to stay in the market
because salaries are so low.

Until these gifted and enterprising people can be attracted to return,
most of the world's peacekeeping efforts, on the continent, and
certainly most of its aid, will have little effect.

Panorama: Addicted to Aid on BBC One at 2030 on Monday 24 November.
 




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