The new Trump administration in the United States has vowed to seriously cut down on its US$2 billion a year foreign aid to Africa which, in about 45 years of independence, has received a total of US$1.2 trillion in hard cash and other assistance from the world’s leading democratic economies.
On hearing the news of the re-elected U.S. president’s foreign aid intentions, my mind was immediately taken back to the pre-African Independence 1950/60s when all the African politicians seeking freedom by force from the bonds of colonialism strenuously vowed that they would never ever accept a single cent from their former rulers once they were so-called “free.”
So why is it that the African leaders of today are so desperate to receive foreign funds when the very basis of controlling their own affairs was based on a hate for anyone who was non-African or unlike them as a member of an enemy tribe or group?
After working for over two decades as a foreign correspondent and journalist throughout Africa, my contention now is that the average African politician’s original taste for Marxism and financial corruption has caused the African continent as a whole to fail the test for self-sufficiency and good financial government. This was certainly the case in my former days there and is obviously still so now.
Without continued foreign aid, most of the individual African States would be devastatingly bankrupted if it was not for the $1.2 trillion of hard-earned Western taxpayers’ funds currently being pumped into their treasuries and some private bank accounts and pockets.
In spite of the fact that sub-Saharan Africa has received multibillions of the dollars spent as foreign aid by Western governments, the region still remains the most poverty-stricken area in the world. Bankers who have investigated the problem of wasted aid funds within Africa have found rampant and widespread political corruption as a main cause of this serious present-day financial situation.
According to the bankers, literally none of the independent African countries as now constituted have seen the rapid economic growth experienced in recent decades by the former developing countries of the Near East and Asia, including Indonesia, Bangladesh, Vietnam and South Korea.
It would appear to this observer that hardly any of the current African leaders have any scruples about accepting foreign aid from those overseas countries against whom their idolised former freedom fighters fought to the death.
The same goes for them seeking and accepting vast loans to the tune of billions of additional dollars from international sources and then, later, claiming they cannot afford to meet the repayments by the legally agreed dates.
According to the World Bank, 75 per cent of its financed agricultural projects undertaken in Africa have failed hopelessly. An independent analysis by another group of European banks recently concluded that at least 85 per cent of the US1.2 trillion paid out in aid to African countries was more or less a lost cause.
One example of this failure was a small US$4 million aid package to Senegal, aimed at increasing cattle production in the Bakel region. When bank officials checked on the results of this particular scheme, they were aghast to find that the US$4 million had only produced 882 additional head, working out at a cost of US$4,535 for each beast!
Many far bigger failures have, however, been noted by the World Bank and other aid financiers. Over US$4.2 billion of aid for construction of a 1,070km oil pipeline from Chad to Cameroon was largely diverted to the purchase of military equipment while US$3.5 billion was lost to a failed water project in the Lesotho Highlands in Southern Africa. A further US$500 million was needlessly spent on a ‘Roll Back Malaria’ campaign throughout Africa without in any way controlling the ravages of this disease.
Yet another typical example of modern African financial incompetence involved the US$22 million invested in the Lake Turkhana fish processing plant in Kenya. This particular project failed to produce a single product of significance for an often-hungry population before the plant was allowed to collapse in ruins.
I also clearly remember the days shortly after a West African country achieved full independence. Literally within months of dropping its colonial mantle, one of the country’s learner politicians was able to buy a solid gold bed worth a king’s ransom for his wife with money creamed off from early foreign aid projects.
With the Trump administration now threatening to cut some of the U.S. Government’s annual aid to Africa, one wonders whether any slack will be followed up in future by more funds from Communist sources.
As it is, Russia and China now have a strong hold on South Africa through that country’s new membership of the recently formed Brazilian, Russian, Indian and Chinese compact known as BRICS.
Should Donald Trump get his way in cutting aid to Africa, there is a strong likelihood that Australia and the other world suppliers of foreign aid to Africa may be called on to make up the difference.
As it is, Australia is due to supply US$87 million in cash and kind to Africa this year out of a total foreign aid budget of 4.961 billion Australian dollars. Of this total, 44 per cent is destined to go to our Pacific neighbours within the next 12 months.
There is little doubt that the taxpayers of the Western World would be horrified if they knew just how much of their individual country’s annual budget ended up in buying sophisticated arms and other weapons of war for use by an African leader bent on maintaining his political power.
In my own experience of Africa, I have seen aid monies earmarked for urgent medical and other civil purposes being syphoned off by certain African government administrations to buy the latest military equipment to fight revolts or even to start them. As I once wrote, there are generally more guns in most African territories than there are aspirins, the most basic of all essential medications.
Since the end of WWll, Western foreign aid has always carried with it the concept of Western democratic freedom. In spite of the billions of dollars expended during more than three-quarters of a century since then — and all the rhetoric about the value of the Charter of Westminster — the average African is sadly no nearer our cherished freedoms than he or she has ever been.
Instead, high levels of unemployment, homelessness, hunger, personal security and fear of hostility continually plague most African people’s daily lives.
In contrast to this, too many of them are still aware that their politicians are using all means at their disposal — including foreign aid and blatant corruption — to ensure that the historic law of the jungle is overtaken by the law of the loaded gun.