Aid for the rich

Catholic New Times, July 3, 2005 by Alex Chamwada

British Prime Minister Tony Blair embarked on a marathon mission in June to convince Western countries to increase aid to Africa. He also took his campaign to America.

But as Blair intensified his efforts, research in Britain revealed that well-heeled consultants and companies in the West are the biggest beneficiaries of the global aid system. According to the research, fewer than 40 pence in every pound goes to poverty eradication efforts in the developing world.

The Guardian of May 27, 2005, published the shocking findings of the research conducted by Action Aid. All indications are that the bulk of the money currently disbursed as aid is wasted, misdirected or recycled within rich countries. The report says that 61 per cent of aid flow is phantom rather than real, rising to almost 90 per cent in France and the United States.

The revelation comes barely a month before the U.K. takes over the chair of the G8, which Blair sees as an ideal opportunity to increase aid for Africa. When he launched the Commission for Africa, Blair said the continent was "a scar on the conscience of the world." However, critics say rather than being a scar, the continent is actually a guinea pig for the West.

Economic experts say it is the West that impoverished Africa through capitalism, colonialism and slavery and, in fact, continues to do so. It is in Africa that economic, social, political, scientific and military experiments are carried out. Further more, the West has been accused of contributing to brain drain in Africa, the worst hit sector being health. The British Medical Association has accused the UK of crippling sub-Saharan Africa's healthcare system by poaching staff.

This development has received generous coverage in the press, with doctors proposing that the U.K. employs more home-grown doctors and limits the time that overseas recruits can train and work in the country. In 2003, 5,880 U.K. work permits were approved for health and medical personnel from South Africa, 2,825 from Zimbabwe, 1,510 from Nigeria and 850 from Ghana.

Action Aid says that failure to target aid at the poorest countries; runaway spending on overpriced technical assistance from international consultants; and huge administration costs all deflate the value of the assistance. The report further indicates that compared with the UN tar get to spend 0.7 per cent of rich countries' GDP on aid, the West, including Britain, were spending far less. But the British Department for International Development (DfID) has rejected the findings saying Action Aid's figures do not stack up.

The UN has set millennium goals to eradicate global poverty by 2015. But critics say that with capitalism, Africa's march towards that goal will remain a pipe dream.

Take Kenya, for example. A recent survey published by The Sunday Standard showed that the bulk of the country's wealth is in foreign hands, and that, if Kenya were a cake to be shared out, its citizens would only lay claim to 31 per cent of the total cake. The rest would go to foreigners.

Alex Chamwada writes for The East African Standard