Can foreign aid be the solution to Africa's problems?

Jul 01, 2015

I have written this article as a reflection on what the Ministry of Health Permanent Secretary, Dr. Asuman Lukwago, revealed in the New Vision of Thursday, June 24, 2015 that the Global Fund and the Government of Uganda were to sign on that day an agreement for another round of funding on top of

By Dr. Emmanuel Mutyaba 

I have written this article as a reflection on what the Ministry of Health Permanent Secretary, Dr. Asuman  Lukwago, revealed in the New Vision of Thursday, June 24, 2015 that the Global Fund and the Government of Uganda were to sign on that day an agreement for another   round of funding on top of the already given $574m.

That this new funding will help in the treatment of HIV, TB and Malaria. This reminded me of what an Italian old lady said to me four years ago while I was in Rome.

She said that, ever since she began understanding at around five years old up to now, a lot of money is being collected from Western countries to help Africa to develop.

But up to now nothing is effected. She went on and said that surprisingly we Africans still believe in Western Aid as the solution to our problems. She told me that in 1985 UN held a special session on Africa to boast aid to Africa. The same thing was done in 1996 where a launch of $25b for developing Africa.

Dollar 500b dollars were pumped into Africa between 1960 and 1997 as aid. In July 2005, Tony Blair made aid for Africa a centerpiece of British presidency of the G8 meeting in Gleneagles in Scotland. President George Bush too tripled aid for Africa to $43b in 2001. Even Japan favoured a $200m  to improve Africa’s investment climate.

The UN called on Western countries to increase aid to Africa to 0.7% by 2015. Despite all these aid, we do not see Africa becoming self-reliant.

Indeed what this leaves us a lot to reflect on. Think of the fact that up to today 50% of the budgets of many African nations is based on foreign aid; what a pity.

Aid makes us become more dependent, despite all our natural resources we are made to believe that we are the most needy in this world. It is because of our wealth that the West subordinates us so that they robe it all and aid is the most potential tool for doing that.

Let us flash back in 1964 where a senator of USA McCoven replied to his citizens who were complaining as to why a lot of money leaves their nations as aid to Africa as if there are no need persons in US.

MacCoven  comforted them by informing them that the nations we aid today, tomorrow will be our consumers.

This is very much seen even today, for instance when money comes as aid to buy drugs for treating HIV or TB or any other decease, it just passes through the hands of the recipient country and returns to the donor nation since it is the producer of that drugs.

Yet it leaves the recipient nation with a lot of interest to pay. To pay that interest that country has to cut the government’s funds from hospitals, schools, lays off civil workers, salary reductions, increases taxes etc. See how aid that we hope in to solve our problems simply multiplies them.

Let us still flashing back in 1957, where Hubert Humphrey advised USA that in order to extend her influence and control in foreign nations, food aid is the key tool to be utilised.

He explained that when one depends on you for food, you can influence him politically, religiously, socially and above all economically. Read about this in Hancock, Lords of Poverty, in The Atlantic monthly press, New York, 1989, pp. 70-73.

Africans we should wake up and stop believing in free things. The so called foreign aid is not help but destruction of the recipient for the benefit of the donor. If truly UN gives out aid without hidden agendas, for example giving food aid to Somalia, why doesn’t it buy maize and beans from fertile African nations which will be cheaper in production and transport than the chemically grown maize and means from less fertile soils of the US?

The West uses the term aid as a misnomer, it hides a lot of hypocrisy no matter whether it comes in form of loan or in form of grant the intension is the same. They do not use the tern aid to meaning what we African intend it to understand it (the ordinary meaning).  Aid for example in form of loan is intended to make Africa be forever indebted by the West hence submit to whatever command that come from the Western countries since the indebted is at the mercy of the one to whom he owed a debt.

Western nations give us loans that they know we shall never manage to pay. Dambisa Moyo in his article Dead Aid  in Wall Street journal of March 21, 2009, said that “even after  the very aggressive debt-relief campaign in the 1990s, African countries still pay close to $20b in debt repayments per annum, a  stark reminder that aid is not free.…….a call to council debts means little when the cancelation  is met with the fresh infusion of aid and the vicious circle starts up once again.

The suggested solution is IFM to provide more money to the indebted nation to pay off the previous debts” This lament of  Moyo  is re-emphasised today  by Erika Lal  in his article A Hurting Hand: Why  Foreign Aid  does not work, in the Oxford Handbook of Africa and economics, policies and practices. Oxford university press 2015 edited by Celestin magna and John Yifu Lin.

Erika argues that “foreign aid loans with high interest rates cause insurmountable debts that cannot be paid back…they are readjusted into new loans creating more debts to pay off the original ones which makes indebted nations be dependents on aim as they attempt to make their debt payments.”

With those two scholars’ views we see clearly that aid is an economic joke intended to create dependence trap to African nations so that their wealth is drained to the West, impoverishing Africa so that she can be more submissive to the Western dominion.

The West being good economists, know very well that a nation’s development cannot base on aid but they keep suggesting to African nations to acquire more aid for development (hence a misnomer of development aid). They convinced us that we cannot do without their aid.

This is what we philosophers call an argument of  proof by assertion . This is where a false proposition is repeatedly restated over and again in an argument until its assertion   becomes apparently (appears as if) true.   So we Africans have been told over and again that we cannot survive without foreign aid and now that appears true to us.

That is why we feel insecure without it, we keep asking for more.   Please fellow Africans know that that is a systematic lie.

Let us not forget  the warning   that Thomas Sankara gave us  in 1987   that “those who pretend  to aid us to be self sufficient,  are the very ones who had colonised us, aid is a new kind of imperialism aiming at subjugating Africa’s  growth, making us financial slaves of the West yet financial slavery if true slavery”. With those words of Sankara, I urge you fellow Africans to stop believing in free things. Only we Africans still believe in free things. Free things do not exist anywhere in this World.  It is this dependency that has caused us to be despised by all in this world, whoever has travelled into Western nations has experienced that.                    

What perturbs most is that the money given out as aid which impoverishes us and make us to be ridiculous in the world, is mainly enjoyed by the citizens of the donor countries the highly paid consultants.

It was written in the Paris news paper, le monde, of 26th March 1990  that every franc France gives as aid to Africa, returns to France if not smuggled into Switzerland banks or of Japan.

So when the donor countries release the money they already know that it will not meet the pretended aim but will return to them as I have said already that they lend us money for instance, to buy commodities of which they are the sellers so money passes through our hands and returns to them.

That which is smuggled into Switzerland and Japan  banks, they intend that which is embezzled by African corrupt official who save it in Switzerland or Japan.  Patricia Adams wrote an article The Best of Corruption , in Canada’s Financial Post on May 16, 1999 saying that, according to the World Bank, European countries know that 30% of their loans end up in pockets of corrupt officials. Now my question is that if they know this, why do they continue to give it without follow up? They continue giving because they know it is a game in which they benefit greatly.

They indeed want that money to be swindled than being invested because that is when the game will reword better. If that money is invested, it will generate money which will pay off the interests yet they want the recipient to fail to pay the interest to be forever indebted.

This will go on until Africans we come to our senses and resist it. It is a business, call it poverty business. They have to maintain us in poverty so that they keep giving us aid.

They are not interested in leading Africa out of poverty because it is only in Africa’s poor situation that they can play their games of aid.

They  persuade us to take on development plans drown from thousand miles away from  Africa in the corridors IMF and World Banks (created after the second world war as the major tools for draining African resources to re-construct Europe ) without our consultation.

And the NGOs? These too, much as they come under the disguise of solving Africa’s poverty, like multinational corporations are too part of the poverty business. More than half of the donated money ends up in the pockets of the officials of those organisations who are sent as volunteers from the donor countries.

Thinks of the huge monthly allowances, allowances got from seminars, expensive medications, feedings, housing etc. Will people in such comfort because of the existence of poverty in Africa ever seriously eradicate it?

Certainly if poverty if the business from which you earn, more poverty means more business for you! This explains why if any effort to stop aid was to emerge, it would find the strongest resistance not from local people but from the NGO officials and from donor nations.

The NGO half-baked ideas they give to Africans are more harmful than good. Think about the example given by Erika Lal in his work A Hurting Hand, of Sharon Stone who gathered around one million dollars from World Economic Forum in 2005 for mosquito nets to be distributed in Tanzania as a solution to malaria problem.

The idea may seemed good but it ended  up being disastrous. It destroyed local business for mosquito nets, caused unemployment for the workers in local business for mosquito nets, yet the Sharon nets did not even serve well its purpose since 40% ended up being misappropriated.

If the intension was to develop Tanzania to be self reliant, why was the one million dollars not used in helping to improve local production of mosquito nets.

Africa has abundant resources, she does not need foreign aid but free trade on the world market. With that we can solve all our problems.

The hypocrisy of the West is manifested in the fact that, they know very well that if  Africa enters  in a free trade on the World market particularly selling her nice biologically grown food crops, she will grow very rich hence gain much  power.

So to prevent that, the EU and the US decided to block agricultural import from Africa through severe tariffs (Al Jazeera 2010). They decided to subsidise their local famers to the tune of 68billion dollars each year.

This outcompeted African agricultural products on the World market despite of our well known good soils that produce healthier foods.  It is indeed ridiculous to see that we Africans still hope in such people to aid us to development yet they are the ones that suffocate our potentials to develop.

EU and US was spending around $3,145b on their local cotton growers yet it would spend less than that on importing it from West Africa which has the best conducive climate for growing cotton. The subsidies in EU and US cause price dampening in cotton price in Africa. That is just an example among many others.

To show the hypocrisy of the West with regards to Africa’s wellbeing. On May 30, 2013, Michael Nkonu  as a  director of Fair Trade Africa lamented that global trade system works against the interest of the World’s poorest farmers.

So the West wants us to be in a situation where we forever ask for foreign aid never to be self reliant. Worse still is that the money given to us as aid is our own money returned to us with ties and strings attached  and heavy interests.

For example, Africa francophone countries, have a colonial pact with their ex-colonial masters to put 65% of their foreign currency reserves into the French treasury and also obliged to reserve in French treasury 20% for financial liabilities.

If any of these countries wants to have more than 15% of this money, it has to ask for it in form of loans.

Even non francophone African nations, have their terms of the kind with their ex-colonial masters. Think of the common wealth of the Anglophones. Please Africans let us wake up and resist such unjust games played by the West at our expense.

We should stop believing in aid but in free trade on the world market.

The writer is a lecturer at Uganda Martyrs University

 

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