AID DEBATE
Proponents of aid to Africa will have
difficulties convincing the world that Africa really need empathy and financial
bailout from rich countries. It has emerged that Africa is indeed the continent
that is sustaining and aiding the world with its vast resources and potentials.
A report by Health Poverty Action released recently shows that Africa is
receiving US$134 billion in aid every year and it pays out US$192 billions in
return to the wealthy nations. This means every year, Africa donates US$58billions
to the West. This is a compelling case which illustrates clearly that donor aid
is not meant to develop Africa, but to create favorable environment for mockery
and subsequent exploitation.
The situation is made worse by African
leaders who are positioned as appendages of these Western government’s
mechanisms of securing their national interests. The aid arrangement ensures
that African interest is subordinate to the realization of ending poverty and
the likes of Prof Jeffrey Sachs should not mislead the world that they have
magic formula for ending poverty anywhere using foreign aid.
Even then, the prevailing
aid debate is devoid of a critical assessment of the dynamics of supremacy of foreign
control using aid in the realization of foreign interests.
It’s a wonder that Uganda with the
highest concentration of NGO per capita in Africa would be presented as a
success story by the World Bank and donor community. If the Ugandan economy is
indeed growing at 5% per annum, how come Ugandans are not realizing the benefits
in critical social services like health care?
Foreign aid is a ploy of hoodwinking the
populace so as to soften the ground for resource exploitation. Take for
instance that all contracts Uganda signs with direct foreign investors are so
shrouded in secrecy and yet Donors are not conditioning aid to foster transparency
in natural resource exploitation.
And, this is surprising given the fact that
the British government critically condemned the Chinese- DRC US$6 billion resource
– for – infrastructure swap, arguing that it was a bad deal, shrouded in
secrecy and in bad faith - claiming that the people of Congo were at the short
end of the stick.
To a discerning audience it is clear
that the Congolese – Chinese resource deal which truly was similar to the
Ugandan - Tullow Heritage oil deal in their lack of transparency was criticized
by the British Government because the exploiting parties were not Western based
companies.
The report by Health Poverty Action, “Honest Accounts? The true story of Africa’s
billion dollar loss - 2014” is a must read.
According to Health Poverty Action, there is unconscionable capital
drain to the West from Africa in excess of US $58 billion per year which could
service Africa’s foreign debts and bilateral loans sufficiently. After all, the US aid amounts to only 6 cents
per African per year according to Jeffrey Sachs (2005, p.310).
It is surprising
that the so-called economists who claim to be so concerned about Africa are not
arguing strongly for plugging these drains.
We may appear too hard on proponents of
aid to Africa. But coming from countries benefiting from the capital drain
from Africa, they may be fighting not only for their own preservation but for
the economic interest of their countries. It is in the realization of Western
economic interests that aid is used as bait for compliance of Africans to
surrender its resources.
Certainly, if aid was to develop welfare services for
poor communities it is difficult to argue for withdrawing it for political
convenience. Why would the aid be withdrawn only when anti-homosexuality bill
was passed in Uganda but not the draconian Public Order Management Bill which
stifles democratic governance?
A simple conclusion is that the
discourse of aid is both racialized and politicized. It is in the political
realm that we find strong representation of western scholars blaming all the
ills that are associated with Western puppets in Africa on Africans. For
instance, President Museveni, with all the numerous reports of gross human rights
abuses by reputable agencies such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International,
the International Red Cross etc, is rewarded with praises and more military aid.
Foreign aid, good as it sounds, has the
soft under belly of foreign control and western interests which its proponents tactfully
conceal. If the West really itches to give aid to Africa, let them start off by
total debt relief for Africa which remains a thorn in the developmental flesh.
END
No comments:
Post a Comment