Are aid monies to Africa misappropriated?
The majority of the world’s aid money goes to a place it isn’t helping, with zero net return and arguably negative return, in terms of human suffering. Why aren’t we 1) investing in African small businesses instead of throwing money and food at warlords, 2) investing in countries closer to home: Central and South America and 3) investing in India, the world’s largest democracy?
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To the continent that brought us the joys of the Sudan’s treatment of British schoolteachers, Mugabe and his racist land seizures and eviction of white farmers and Idi Amin, we hurl the largest portion of our international aid money at problems we can’t fix… and not only are we causing more human suffering, but we’re resented for it. Foreign aid money isn’t helping Africa.
“If we carry on like this,” says Lammart Zwaagstra, who comes from the Netherlands and works for the EU’s department for humanitarian aid, “then people will never stand on their own two feet.”
Crowding out the potential for African voice and ingenuity is the poster boy for Imperial supremacy in Africa, Bono. Africans are begging him to stop ‘helping’ them.
Notice that in 2006, we spent only 70% of the amount we sent to warlords in Africa on our neighbors in this hemisphere, where civilization is arguably better-organized to receive it. And notice how we treat our Indian allies, the largest and poorest democracy in the world:
USAID Recipients 2006
Africa – $1,230,039,000
Central and South America and the Caribbean – $852,342,000
India – $109,870,000 or only 9% of aid to Africa despite having a larger population
So, why Africa? Does the promise of Africa really outweigh that of India by over 1000%?
the answer is simple and tragic; the squandering of funds by the “first world” on africa is done so in a misguided attempt to assuage once appropriate but now inappropriate guilt over colonialism and slavery, not out of true concern for africa. true concern would be too demanding and difficult. things like efficacy and result would have to be considered. unpleasant bother, that.
Americans don’t care about the people in the rest of the world. They just want stability for business. If that means bribing a dictator with World Bank money, that’s what they’ll do. If you think they’ll ever do the right thing for people who aren’t citizens, you got another think coming. It’s all payola. You’re just being idealistic. Get real.
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