The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. The List's Host is not responsible for them in any way. -------------------------------------
|
September 11 - 17, 2005 I pick it from where I stopped last week: the Global Fund "temporarily suspended" five of its grants to Uganda because a report by investigating auditors, the respected PriceWaterhouseCoopers alleged "serious mismanagement" of the money. The government “suspended" officials involved and appointed a commission of inquiry into the problem. Then civil society groups and the political opposition jumped into the fray calling for the resignation or censure of Health Minister Ji m Muhwezi. Such a flow of events may deceive an observer that here is a healthy process of holding government to account. Yet it is through such gimmicks that the international aid industry on the one hand, and state corruption and plunder in Uganda on the other, sustain and reproduce themselves. How? Political power in Uganda is organised around a patrimonial logic, a perverse form of corruption. The corrupt depredations of the system undermine its ability to economically sustain and reproduce itself, hence its dependence on foreign aid. Enter NGOs The international aid industry is worth about $60 billion annually, and therefore has a strong interest to perpetuate itself. But while its benefactors (western taxpayers) insist on probity, its beneficiaries (most poor countries) are corrupt to the bone. To keep its benefactors on board, the aid industry has in recent years sponsored the emergence of groups which create an appearance of civic effort to hold governments to account - a perverse form of "civil society" - commonly known as Non Government Organisations (NGOs). This foreign aid funded civil society in Uganda does not represent any specific social group anchored in our country's historical evolution - farmers, workers, traders, professionals etc. It is dominated by NGOs that are formed largely to provide employment and income to their owners. They have no original issues to articulate or constituencies to represent. They only jump unto those issues that the foreign aid industry has privileged with money in order to get access to it. The Global Fund epitomises this perversion as its millions of dollars in Uganda led to the creation of over 2,500 NGOs "to fight the HIV/Aids pandemic". How the cash is misused I have written before that out of the total project funds to the Health Ministry, 68 percent goes into technical assistance, project overheads and capacity building i.e. inflated salaries for "experts", buying luxurious Toyota Land Cruiser VX, opulently furnishing offices, buying tea and cakes, and holding seminars at Sheraton Hotel. Of the 32 percent, only 10 percent goes to buy "drugs and supplies." Imagine! Only three percent goes into "human resource" i.e. paying Ugandans employed in these projects, etc. Does Uganda need this kind of "help"? International donors disregard the peculiar circumstances of poor countries and impose financial reporting requirements on their money only fit to work in a developed country like Switzerland. This has made it difficult to disburse aid in Uganda's Health Ministry so that of the total budgeted aid, less than 40 percent is disbursed from the centre and only seven percent is released for activities. It is stupid to expect a small NGO in Kotido or Kisoro to provide receipts for using a boda boda or a special hire taxi from point A to point B. Uganda's public service and "civil society" institutions are crumbling under the weight of too many aid experts, advisers and aid consultants. The aid industry sustains the illusion that Ugandans cannot manage their own affairs. The architects of British colonial rule in Africa would laugh at the incompetence of today's international aid industry. The main thrust of British colonial policy in Africa, for example, was that colonies should pay for themselves. The British restricted the number of their own citizens working for the colonial administration because they were expensive to pay. Instead they relied on local people through a policy known as "indirect rule". By independence in October 1962, there were only 72 British colonial administrators running the whole of Uganda. Today, independent Uganda has over 2,800 aid experts and advisers working either directly in government departments or with "civil society", each one of them earning a salary that can pay for 10 better qualified Ugandans. Meantime, the best of Uganda's educated class are running out of the country to clean streets and toilets in Europe and North America. Let us juxtapose the aid industry with its cousin - the multi national corporation. Multi national corporations are in Uganda to make money. They know that hiring too many expatriate staff from Europe or theUSis expensive and harms their bottom line. Self-interest (as opposed to self righteousness of the aid industry) has forced them to train Africans to do the job. Thus Shell (U) has zero European and North American expatriate staff in this country, Barclays Bank zero, MTN zero, Standard Chartered Bank zero, Coca Cola zero, BAT two, Uganda Breweries zero etc. The only expatriates in the above corporations are from within Africa - four in Barclays from Kenya, Zimbabwe, Tanzania and Ghana, five in MTN - from South Africa three of whom leave at the end of this year, three in Standard Chartered etc. All these are huge corporations with a gross turnover of over $200 million each - profitably run by Africans. Every million dollars of foreign aid from Europe or North America comes with experts, consultants and advisers from the home country tied to its every arm and leg - to ensure "effective supervision" and "accountability." But how come BAT, Coca Cola and Barclays Bank succeed without these pretensions? Kenya recently refused aid from Denmark because Danida insisted on bringing in a host of "experts" but to whom the host country was not willing to give work permits. Why do these issues not find space on the agenda of our government, the political opposition and civil society? I will answer this next week. [EMAIL PROTECTED] |
_______________________________________________ Ugandanet mailing list [email protected] http://kym.net/mailman/listinfo/ugandanet % UGANDANET is generously hosted by INFOCOM http://www.infocom.co.ug/
