Foreign Aid Hokey Pokey in Kenya
Katherine Mangu-Ward | January 17, 2008, 3:26pm
I recently returned from a trip to East Africa. I spent most of my time in Kenya in areas unaffected by the post-election violence, and saw no demonstrations or looting. Even if I had been in the thick of things, I'm not sure I would have had much to say besides the commentary most outsiders have offered: Man, this totally sucks.
(For great, well-informed, in-country, ant's-eye-view commentary, check out Alex Halperin's blog)
What I did see on my trip was a little political graffiti--and a lot of evidence of the impact of foreign aid on the region. The single decent road I drove on in Tanzania, for example, was a gift from Japan. Everything else was broken gravel at best.
As Kenya, previously held up as a model of stability and relative prosperity in Africa, falls apart, the U.S. and other nations that contribute aid dollars are threatening a tug on the purse strings if the government fails to act. The Kenyan government isn't taking it well:
Kenya’s government also brushed aside threats by its major international donors, including the United States, to review foreign aid.
“Our budget is not dependent on foreign funding,” said Alfred Mutua, a government spokesman. “The government cannot be blackmailed. “You are here as our development partners, you are not here to blackmail and threaten us,” he said referring to foreign donors. “We have said our government will continue as always. They should not try to threaten us.”
Fourteen of Kenya’s leading donors, including the United States, issued a statement this week warning the Kenyan government that they were reviewing foreign aid in light of the crisis. The United States gives the country more than $600 million in aid each year.
There's a certain amount of foreign aid hokey pokey going on in the region: You take the foreign aid out/ you put the emergency aid in/ you take the aid workers out/ and you shake it all about.
Of course, it matters who is administering the money. We're taking money from the hands of the government, which is part of the problem, and putting it into the hands of independent aid efforts. But still, this kind of aid dollars switcheroo doesn't seem to be making much of an impact.
This seems to be a classic case of "do-somethings." But is there a better option than my response (reminder: "Man, this sucks") or just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic?
dellis | January 23, 2008, 5:39pm | #
I'm happy you enjoyed Africa. I have found that my academic life taught me next to nothing about Africa, even though I had seminars on pretty much every other part of the world. I'm just finishing Martin Meredith's fantastic The Fate of Africa, and I'm proud to say that I finally understand contemporary Africa.
Basically, every nation (except Botswana) has suffered from at least one - and oftentimes several - of the following maladies since independence: genocide, 1 man cult of personality rule, secret police / terror state, insane socialist experiments, famine, apartheid, ridiculous palaces/cannibalism/over the top absurdity straight out of Greek mythology, extraordinary and unparalled corruption by the ruling cadre, preposterous global/regional ambitions by the dictator at the expense of the nation, insane crop purchasing bureaucracy that screws the farmers and enriches the elite, vicious civil wars that killed hundreds of thousands, etc.
Why has virtually every African nation suffered these terrible plights? Afterall, we all know that for a developing nation to get rich, all they need to do is focus on exporting about 5 products, invite in the foreign multinationals to train them to run textile factories, and have relative security.
I think there's a few factors at work. First off, Africa was ill-prepared to exist independently in 1960. They probably shouldn't have, but the anti-imperialist viewpoint of the 2 superpowers at the time supported an elite set of revolutionaries - about 1/2 of whom trained in Moscow - to foment revolution. Britain and France in 1960 were not Britain and France in 1880 - they were basically charities at this point, yet Africa turned down their help. Most of these first generation revolutionaries soon died in coups of some sort, and normally the scheming chief of staff took over. Most of these leaders had pathetic educations, and none had any clue how to run a country. Second, the colonial imprint did not help matters, and really particularly hurt in the former Belgian colonies like Congo and Rwanda. Third, Africa was essentially a set of tribes in 1960. There was no national ethos at all anywhere, which resulted in genocides and civil wars. Fourth, the ideologies hurt. Socialism was disastrous, and the economic development theories that prevailed at the time (Arthus Lewis' "big push") were abject failures. Fifth, the people of Africa were by and large utterly uneducated. In most of these nations, only a handful had post-secondary education. Running a country is hard, and it's a lot harder when you have no education. Sixth, the Cold War clearly distorted African growth. The US had its dictators like Mobutu who were not helpful towards African development, and the USSR had Tanzania, Angola, etc. Moreover, Castro kept sending troops to Congo, Libya, Angola, and this just made matters worse.
What do we do now? We let Bill Gates inoculate for diseases, we try and provide clean drinking water, and we provide help for countries that are competently run like Botswana. Other than that, we mind our own business and try not to make matters worse.
