AID IS AT THE HEART OF CORRUPTION

Last week rights advocacy group Human Rights Watch (HRW) issued a report which was the usual – that government doesn’t seem to have the will to stamp out corruption, and some unusual things that Uganda has been positioned as a key ally in the region and donors are hesitant to clamp down on the government on its luckluster stand on graft for fear of antagonising Kampala.

"Government protested of course, spread out its array of anti-corruption agencies, enumerated the corrupt officials standing trial and even urged the witnesses to sacrifice their lives in the fight against the scourge...

But what was a departure from other publicised pronouncements on corruption in this country, was the criticism of the donor community, who are caught up in a dilemma not of their making, they can’t really throw the sink at the government for fear of losing favour with a strategic partner.

You almost felt sorry for them.

HRW had it right that the donor community are part of the problem and not the solution to corruption, HRW however skirted the truth that Uganda’s “new” positioning is causing them to bite their nails in agitation.

Evidence abounds that aid industry is not all it seems to be or wants us to believe it is.

On a global level the aid industry is not motivated by alleviating the suffering of poor, helpless Africans but rather it is wielded as an instrument of influence, domestically in the donor countries and abroad among the recipient nations.

If this were not so, many more countries, even the whole African continent through which billions of dollars have been pumped in the last half century, would have had their economies transformed. In fact in the history of world economics no country has been transformed by the kind of aid Africa has been force fed.

The Marshall plan, which was used to lift Europe out of the ruins of the Second World War, lasted four years and about $15b – about $150b today, was disbursed. In contrast Africa has received about $500b since 1960 and in further contrast to Europe aid has only served to make us more dependent on aid, lowered living standards on the continent generally and enriched a local elite while impoverishing the majority...

The difference between the Marshall plan and the aid that has been funneled to Africa is that the Marshall plan largely consisted of loans to businessmen who then repaid them to their local governments which used this to finance the infrastructure to improve the business environment a virtuous cycle. 

Aid to Africa on the other hand has flown to governments and NGOs with next to no involvement of the local business community. By ignoring the business community they ensured that the creators of sustainable wealth – the private sector, were hobbled, guaranteeing a perpetual dependence of their respective governments.

This thesis is neither original nor a recent revelation.

In fact studies have shown that for every $10 dollars of aid as little $4 or even less reaches the recipient nation. And even this pittance is mostly consumed by local elites with their never ending workshops, fuel guzzling four wheel drive vehicles and upscale lifestyles, what little reaches the intended beneficiaries is denominated in pit latrines, boreholes and pigs...

To what lengths would the “real” beneficiaries of this cozy living go to protect the status quo? Hence the slaps on our governments wrists when several billions go missing, maybe a few months of suspension before the aid roars back more determined than ever – to make up for lost time?

The point is that it is not entirely down to President Yoweri Museveni’s political adroitness, that donors are finding themselves in this “uncomfortable” position, this scam was already running at full steam even before Museveni was in  high school.

But just as an example of how dependant we remain on donor aid, never mind that we are now financing a larger proportion of our budget, is the notion held not only by us but by sections of the donor community – read HRW, that the donors are the ones who can help solve this problem.

"Corruption will stop when our governments find it in their self-interest to stop it – or at least give it an acceptable face like they do in more developed economies. And the only way that is going to happen is when the population makes the link between poor service delivery and graft and hold the governments to account. This and not bleeding hearts who parachute into the country to read us the riot act, is where our salvation lies...

This is not an indictment on the do-gooders who work for the aid agencies, who have a genuine desire to help, it’s just that they are enrolled in a system that is at odds with their altruism.

The aid industry is inherently corrupt – if you define corruption as using public resources for personal gain, and lends itself to such moral quandaries as HRW describes. Otherwise it will be business as usual on the continent as we continue to pointedly avoid the truth and assign blame to red herrings that take us nowhere.

OUR POOR HEALTH SERVICES WILL RETURN TO BITE US

“First they came for the communists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.
Then they came for the socialists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for me,
and there was no one left to speak for me.”

-          Martin Niemöller

The poem above was written as a criticism of the elite during the rise of Nazism in Germany.

Looking at Uganda you can substitute this same sloth to any number of issues that our elite are ignoring, seemingly oblivious of the possibility that the ills studiously ignore will come back to bite them one day.

Last week a pregnant mother and her unborn child died in Mukono from unforgivable negligence. She is not alone just that her story caught the eye of the press.

According to the latest World Bank numbers 310 in every 100,000 mothers die during child birth or about 4300 annually. While we seem to be ahead of the region in this statistic – Kenya 488 and Rwanda 340.

The problem with statistics is that it reduces invaluable human lives to relatively meaningless number. The truth is regardless of the gains we have made in our health sector, this is still about 300 taxi-loads of women too many. It’s actually worse than other incidents we refer to as massacres.

Like the president likes to say, let us stop comparing ourselves with midgets, the equivalent number for Mauritius is 60 deaths for every 100,000 deliveries or Egypt whose number is 66 or Tunisia’s 56.
And that is only a tip of the ice berg. Our health statistics are not anything to write home by whatever parameter you look at.

The news really is that the health sector which has been the biggest budget allocation since independence is so run down and incapable of rising to its obligations. But what is even more scandalous is that this sector is administered by the country’s brightest minds.

They will tell you that budgets are not adequate. That even the billions that the ministry receives are a drop in the ocean in respect of the health needs of the country. That there are shortages in infrastructure, man power and any other resources that would require to make the sector live up to expectations.

This is all true but these are just symptoms of a wider problem.

At the heart of these inadequacies is a strange sense of invulnerability, even immortality among our planners and executors of our policies. They seem to believe that they and their loved ones can circumvent the public health system and get private health care here or abroad and so they turn a blind eye to the collapse of our health system or even worse work actively to undermine it.

They forget that the private health care providers, being  businesses, will only do a little above the public health care system, just enough to show a profit. This means they are not very much better than what the downtrodden of our land are suffering in our public health centers and referral hospitals.

Attempts at fixing the sector have been piecemeal at best and haphazard at worst, and it is not for lack of knowing what to do.  

Let us be serious and fix this health system once and for all – we will not be inventing the wheel it has been done elsewhere, if only because we do not know when we will need to patronise our village health center with a life threatening, but very treatable condition.

CORUPTION IS VERY DECEPTIVE

You might have heard the story. This guy owns a fumigation service. One day some gentlemen call him and say he comes highly recommended and that they have a job for him. They describe the nature of the job and they agreed on a price. The next day they pick him up but insist on blind folding him all the way to site. When they eventually take off the blind fold our fumigator finds himself in a garage stacked up to the ceiling with bank notes.

And this was in Kampala.

Last week a website Silicon Africa run a story “The New Rich in Africa” the article made the revelation that there are at least 100,000 dollar millionaires on the continent and that 20,000 are created every three years. Thankfully most of these are hardworking entrepreneurs and less and less public officials.

But it also described a new class in Africa who have enriched themselves off stolen public funds. The article went on to say that the African public official is not more corrupt than his counterparts in Asia or South America. However unlike his counterparts who invest in industry and building businesses the African fat cat consumes his money and squirrels the rest away in Swiss bank accounts.

Corruption is bad whichever way you look at it and even if the corrupt invest their ill-gotten wealth in the productive sectors of the economy there is still a negative consequence of this course of action.

Say for instance the thief got his money and built himself a chicken feeds factory. To begin with he has no cost of money and has a choice either to sell at the market price and make a huge profit or undercut existing players. Either way he distorts the market putting genuine entrepreneurs out of business and when the corrupt official’s access to free money is cut off – as often is the case, he will be unable to operate without the state “subsidy” and he will go the way of his competitors. This will disruptive to the chicken industry and cost a lot of jobs in the process.

Our guys of course gorge themselves on land and real estate, making Kampala’s real estate among the most dear in the region and placing it out of the reach of the average Ugandan.

The return of the Bad Black makes you think about illicitly gained wealth.

Her flight and eventual recapture has some interesting lessons for those who clamour for wealth by any means necessary.

First, that there is no money that cannot be finished. Secondly that fleeing the country to live abroad, where there are relatively higher costs of living means the money will get finished quicker and thirdly, if you do not have a genuine way of making money here you will be exposed faster abroad.

It is basic economics; money is a store of value but has no real value of its own. 

To keep the money coming you have to keep creating value.  If you are employee your income increases according to the increasing value you can show your boss you are creating for him – you might be able to hoodwink for a while but somehow they eventually catch on. You increase the value by adding to the stock of knowledge you have and can deploy for the benefit of your employer.

If you are a business man the value create is often in the needs you are meeting. To earn more you have to serve more people or show how much more valuable your service or product is to your existing client so you can charge him more or all of the above. The moment your market determines you are not adding value to their lives is the day you are out of business.

There is no value addition with stealing money from the public, which is why you never hear of a corrupt official who stole a few millions resigned and went off to start a business. It’s always that they get caught. Luckily for them in this country we don’t seem to able to convict these white collar criminals even if we found them hands dripping red. So they run off grumbling for public effect how they have been treated badly and that they are taking their skills elsewhere, to start business. Spoilt on the easy pickings of their public office they quickly find out they have no clue how to create value for which they will be paid.

Beyond the moral issue of taking that that does not belong to you, its next to impossible for corrupt individuals to do any value to our society – they even take more space than is necessary.

Okay maybe they put the odd kid through school, they provide some wages for the porters at their construction sites, buy a few beers at the bar but that’s about it.

It’s embarrassing but when they fall from grace the corrupt come up against the harsh reality that making money is hard enough but making that money work for you is even harder. You almost want to feel pity on them!