Liberty For All

by Habtamu Dugo

Americans and the rest of the west must start to be outraged by the mismanagement of their donated tax money in Africa.

Long after the African public woke up to the reality that western aids never work to uplift the continent from deep corruption and tyranny, this idea has recently started to resonate with some aid organizations and aid workers.

Billions of aid dollars collected from western tax-payers are directly channeled to tyrannical and corrupt leaders in Africa. Literally, African leaders are rewarded bonuses for their deeds of underdevelopment and poor governance, just like the CEOs of the AIG got bonuses after the company failed. The western public needs to respond with the same outrage to funds that have been rewarded to Ethiopian and Sudanese leaders. These funds have been hijacked by the rulers and hardly reached the needy. As a result, the conditions of millions of hungry people in the region became worse than ever.

I read a comprehensive Wall Street Journal article on how the aid to Africa has failed the continent. Instead of uplifting the continent, it has been used to uplift ‘the leaders and their people’. The article draws a clear connection between aid and rampant corruption in the Horn of Africa region. This Wall Street Journal article is well supported with a range of evidence and statistic. It maybe worth reading if you are interested. Such an analysis is relevant and timely because it marks the belated awakening of the west to the fact.

To add my own perspective, aid to Africa has literally been aid to ‘the leaders and the leaders’ people’. The ruler’s ‘people’ may include their extended families, tribes, clans, army, police and also their political party membership card-bearers. These groups connected to the rulers are also active state apparatuses that work relentlessly against public good. So, any amount of aid, big or small, is channeled to these ´leaders and their people´ through western NGOs, aid organizations, the IMF, USAID and the EU. The devastating effect of aid-related corruption is nowhere else more true and obvious than in the Horn of Africa’s country of Ethiopia.

Instead of questioning African leaders for the mega misappropriation of American and western tax-payers’ money, regional and country directors of aid organizations seem to work hand-in-glove with the regimes. At times, one can rightly suspect that aid organizations’ regional and country directors have their own share in the corruption deals. Perhaps, that is why they often lack the stamina to track and question where every dollar, euro or pound is spent on the continent.

The generous and beloved citizens and tax-payers of the west need to be outraged by these scandals and create a situation, where the public can pressurize their governments to regulate aid to Africa more tightly. Continuing to aid Africa in the current manner will be a big disrespect and dishonor to the generosity of the western tax-payers and contributors as well as the African poor.

This article originally appeared in the American Chronicle on March 22, 2009.

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