Nowhere is Africa’s unwillingness to confront its problems more apparent than untangling itself from overdependence on foreign aid. It seems that African regimes are happy to trade off sovereignty with “peremende.” The appetite for foreign aid in Africa knows no bounds and is unlikely to recede, regardless of what finaĺy happens to USAID. This article zeroes in on how the shuttering of USAID has superficially hobbled Africa’s ability to shore up healthcare services for her people.
In a matter of minutes since Africa knew USAID was placed under “receivership”, the audible cries of mercies were conspicuous and passim. Africans wept for the goodies they would miss but didn’t mention even for one second this was a good omen. Very few indeed considered the end of USAID in Africa was “a blessing in disguise.” Almost everybody reiterated what cost Africa was gonna incur. In Tanzania, one commentator on TBC brazenly passed the cost of healthcare, in particular, TB, HIV & AIDS and Malaria, upon the hapless patients. He said now was a time for the sick to stand up and be counted. He did not use those exact words, but contextualisation of what he had said amounted to just that.
True, USAID has been a versatile partner but also a jig in African development. USAID shouldered tasks and activities that African governments should have carried out on their own. African governments that own a fleet of over 1,000 topnotch SUVs and 3 to 4 state-of-the-art presidential planes, pay their national leaders more than the US president should be viewed as rich nations. That is where the problem begins and ends. How do we define a poor country? Shouldn’t we look at how governments pay salaries, appurtenances and pension schemes?
The development criteria of per capita income have led Western aid agencies such as USAID to justify pouring billions of dollars where it is least needed. African governments love to be regarded as poor while living the lifestyles of kings and queens. To start, we need to discard development indices that are distracted by population size, estimated GDP, and other assessments to decide whether country A or B deserves foreign aid.
A different criterion that considers take-home packages of aid recipient countries’ leaders gauged with what donor countries pay their own leaders in similar capacities will help flush out aid recipient imposters such as Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and the like. It makes no sense if, let’s say, a Tanzanian president earns more than the US president, yet the former is a recipient of development aid from the latter! Flipping the development aid criteria will force developing world leaders to think twice about increasing their emoluments without endangering their cash cows. The cost of hiking poor countries’ take-home packages of their leaders could apply development aid as a ballast against such an avalanche of pay hikes.
When a new development aid assessment of actual needs is in place, we should expect cunning African leaders to hide their true annual earnings, including pension schemes in order to qualify for freebies. However, most of these emoluments are statutorily earmarked and will be almost impossible to hide under the carpet. Questions like how much this MP is earning, including pensions compared to development aid donor countries in similar capacities, should not be considered condescending issues. These legitimate questions call for accountability of public money in the recipient countries. Without them, development aid cushions the recipient countries from public accountability by papering over areas that the recipient governments have mowed.
USAID and like-minded development aid agencies may have their own issues, but they are also victims of counterproductive criteria deployed to dish out development aid. Grossing out the population size with their leaders trawls confusion. Whenever development aid recipient pamper their leadership with insane salaries and perks, most likely the aid is embezzled, misappropriated or stolen. Such leaders lack selflessness, vision and self-discipline to do the right thing.
I say so because where a recipient nation does not have a frugal and abstemious culture, an elaborate thieving culture develops and is sustained. If a recipient nation does not nurture a culture of sacrifices but caters for a well-self-sustaining system of self-nourishment, national necessities are dumped into development aid agencies.
Frankly, no African nation deserves foreign aid because we are capable of paying huge salaries and terminal benefits to our leaders, which are unthinkable to donor nations. We should always remember that development aid is taxed income of the people in donor countries. Therefore, accountability is urgently needed to ensure the money is taken to countries that really need it but not to most African countries whose leaders behave like oligarchs and Oil sheikhs.
African countries are financially capable of funding healthcare without foreign aid intervention. Then, we ought to ask ourselves why donor nations keep bankrolling sectors that local governments are more than capable of handling. African governments that receive foreign aid tend to negate the incentive to develop internal mechanisms to extricate themselves from the shackles of foreign aid. As a result, Africa is ensnared in this dependency mentality while her capabilities are misdirected into unprofitable causes.
Development aid, if any, should target productivity, which African politicians love lending lip services to, but nothing tangible manifests beyond rhetoric. Helping African peasants improve their acreage productivity will directly change their fortunes rather than assailing diseases and ignorance, which play into the hands of bureaucrats and politicians. Diseases and ignorance should be regarded as the sole responsibilities of aid recipient governments, with individual family poverty taken by development aid.
Technologies and machines are available to free the poor from the coiling chords of poverty while focusing on diseases and ignorance leaves individual families perpetually ensnared in poverty and hopelessness. Of more significance, both healthcare and education tend to benefit most employees rather than the targeted individuals, while economically empowering peasants directly benefits the poor.
The way development aid is structured is as if there are wilful intents to ensure the measures in place will scratch the surface of the challenges while leaving the offals undisturbed. It is as if the aim is to put and keep the recipient countries in a conveyor belt, justifying that development agencies should stay in those countries indefinitely since the problems they are trying to solve are intractable and endemic. Some may argue development aid has saved the lives of those gutted by malaria, TB, HIV and Aids. It is true, but why recipient countries that pay their national leaders to the roof didn’t do them? Any argument in favour of keeping the development aid status quo intact as it is right now must also attempt to explain why recipient countries are missing in action. Why can’t recipient countries lead the pack to contain those illnesses and education needs?
The more I cogitate on the freeze of USAID, the more I see hopes of meaningful reforms. Still, I also see the dangers of paralysing the shortfalls as an opportunity to punish the players while keeping the situation the same. It seems that donor countries, too, have powerful incentives to treat the symptoms of African poverty while leaving the causes intact and pretending to do something. In reality, the aim is not to do anything meaningful, with the aim of keeping African governments on the leash indefinitely.
If so, it is up to Africans to ask ourselves whether we deserve to be treated like dogs with a colourful neck collar and a leash.
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