US President Donald Trump’s administration has thrown the aid industry into a panic with suspension a week ago of his country’s charity arm, USAID.
It has been reported since, that billions of dollars have
been put on ice, thousands around the world will be out of a job and millions
of beneficiaries are looking forward to a very uncertain future.
Created in 1961 by the John F. Kennedy administration, USAID
has been involved in supporting, among other things global health, food
security, democracy and governance initiatives.
The Trump administration accuse them of being fat and lazy
and even worse, of being corrupt and money launderers. Allegations have been
rehashed of how only a fraction of the aid actually reaches the intended beneficiaries,
with the bulk of it going to administration, procurements and high living.
For these and many more accusations, the aid industry has
come under heavy criticism for decades. These accusations are not new or unique
to USAID.
The industry’s record has been spotty at best and dismal at
worst.
"For instance since the 1960s Africa has been a recipient of
more aid than the Marshall plan, that reconstructed war torn Europe after the
second world war, but remains riven with poverty, disease and war...
Aid campaigners would blame that on poor governance on the
continent. On the flip side others would argue that bad governance on the
continent is a direct result of over reliance on aid. A situation that did not
arise by mistake.
The history of development shows that countries advance by mobilizing
their own resources – land, labour and capital, to improve the living standards
of their people. This has forced governments to move from autocratic monarchies
to more inclusive democracies, as the political elite had to negotiate with the
people to pay taxes to finance development.
The monarchs of Europe thought they would have their cake
and eat it, taxing their subjects to finance their lifestyle and questionable
wars, without being accountable to the people. They did this for a time –for centuries,
before the people rose up and said enough is enough. Many monarchs paid with
their heads for resisting the new power sharing arrangements with their
subjects.
The lesser developed countries of Africa were promised they
could short circuit this development process by first colonizing us and then in
post-colonial Africa, by providing us with aid.
In hindsight aid has not been about transforming society or
development, but about influence peddling. Aid has been the carrot that kept us
in line. And as long as we kept in line, it mattered little what our leaders
did with the money, hence the eruption of corruption in post-independence Africa
and the lack of economic transformation.
Aid has given African governments a free pass not to develop
relationships with their people (democracy), by abrogating funding responsibility
to the aid industry. That is why for instance we are tearing our hair out
because USAID was a central player in the health industry and their departure
is an existential threat for many.
It is easier to fly to Washington (per diems all around) and
negotiate for more money than it is to negotiate with your population to pay more
tax.
The truth is we have been lulled into a false sense of
security with all this aid sloshing around.
Shortly after the NRM came to power there was a school
feeding program instituted because, coming out of war, harvests were not the
best. By 1990 it was determined we did not need that food aid any more. I
remember the end to that food aid – mainly chicken curry and tinned fish,
almost caused strikes because the school kids had developed a taste for the
tinned food and could not imagine living without it.
Today its inconceivable Uganda would need food aid, but one
can see how dependency could have been easily created.
The suspension and possible closure of USAID should be cause
for soul searching.
"We need to ask ourselves how a foreign entity can be so
central to the health of our people? An entity, which on the face of it, may
have altruistic motives but is susceptible to the political vagaries of a
country for who our welfare is not top of their agenda?
The record will show that aid is insidious in its creation
of dependency. Because we have aid we cannot marshall home grown remedies to
our lack of revenues to finance our development. Why think hard when someone is
falling over themselves to throw money at you.
I am not hopeful, but this event should make us take a long
overdue look at how we can mobilise our own resources and how we prioritise the
expenditure of those resources.
But as I said I am not very hopeful, especially since USAID or
a variation of it, will return within the year.
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