Aid and Africa: Money Down the Drain?

 

Kofi Annan presented the famous We the Peoples Document in 2000

The suffering and hardships of people in the developing nations are not news to any of us. In 2000 the United Nations assembled the largest gathering of world leaders in history. These leaders convincingly expressed a global determination to end some of the most challenging and vexing problems inherited from the twentieth century. They conveyed the hope that extreme poverty, disease, and environmental degradation could be alleviated with the wealth, the new technologies, and the global awareness  with which we had entered the twenty-first century. Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan presented the world with a remarkable document which reflected his strong conviction that the organization represents more than its 191-member governments; it represents the peoples of the world as individuals, who are endowed with rights and responsibilities that have a global reach. We the Peoples, as the document is called, laid out a discerning view of the challenges facing global society and became the basis for an important global statement, the Millennium Declaration. The Declaration surveys the issues of war and peace, health and disease, and wealth and poverty as well as commits the world to a set of undertakings and eight MDGs (Millennium Development Goals), to improve the human condition.

 

These goals (which are to be met by 2015) include:

1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
2. Achieve universal primary education
3. Promote gender equality and empower women
4. Reduce child mortality
5. Improve maternal health
6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
7. Ensure environmental sustainability
8. Develop a global partnership for development

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Africa needs around $30 billion per year in aid to eradicate extreme poverty and achieve the first MDG. This is a large amount of money, where will it go? Right down the drain if the past is any guide. Sadly the education level in Africa is so low that even programs that work elsewhere will fail miserably in Africa. It is a corrupt continent, riddled with authoritarianism. Not only lacking in moral values, Africa does not even have the free market economy to achieve success. As a matter of fact, Africa’s morals are so low that it is no surprise AIDS has run out of control. The worst of all? Supposing our aid saved the children of Africa, what then? There would be a population explosion and a lot more hungry adults. We would have solved nothing!

Are we sending money down the drain?

I certainly hope you are shaking your head vigorously at this point. The paragraph you just read (inspired by Jeffrey Sachs similar composition in “The End of Poverty“) echoes rich-world “wisdom” about the African continent, as well as other poor regions. These allegations are incorrect but have been repeated publicly, and whispered in private, for so long that they have become accepted as truths by much of the developed community. This has not only crippled the aid effort but affected the global community, pulling it further down in prejudice and misconception. It is therefore crucial we bring these arguments to the surface and confront them. This first post will concern the subject whether we are sending our money down the drain or not.

 

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Let me tell you about Paul O’Neill, former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, who expressed this all too common frustration when he commented on the aid for Africa: 

We’ve spent trillions of dollars on these problems and we have damn near nothing to show for it.

Paul O'Neill confronting Bono

This comes from a man who want to fix the system so that U.S. aid could be justified, in other words: he is no foe of foreign aid. But O’Neill could not have been more wrong to believe that vast flows of aid to Africa have disappeared. How can he be surprised that there is so little to show for the aid to Africa when there in fact has been so little aid to Africa?

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You might think the aid sent to the continent is huge, indeed this is the popular perception. The truth, however, is quite contrary, the amount of aid per African per year is really very small, barely $30 per sub-Saharan African in 2002 (According to recent calculations the amount of aid needed to eradicate extreme poverty in Africa is between $60-$75 per sub-Saharan African). And this is from the entire world! Hang on, it does not stop there. Of the $30 almost $5 went to consultants from the donor countries, more than $3 was for food aid as well as other emergency aid, another $4 went to servicing Africa’s debts, and $5 was for debt relief operations. The rest, a meager amount of $12, went to Africa. Gosh.. I am amazed we are not seeing many traces of that aid on the ground! 

To take this a further step, and since O’Neill is indeed American, we will take a closer look at the U.S. aid alone. In the same year (2002) the United States contributed with $3 per sub-Saharan African. Not including the parts for U.S. consultants, food and other emergency aid, administrative costs, and debt relief, the African was left with the huge donation of 6 cents! 

One can argue then that we are indeed sending money down the drain, keep in mind though that the fault is ours and ours alone. If we want to see the impact of aid, we had better offer enough to produce results!

 

–Kajsa, Admin Twende Twende
admin.twende.twende@gmail.com