One of the stipulations of most foreign aid to countries is that recipient countries must use up to 80% of the aid received on programs, products and services from the donor country. Thus, in many cases, foreign aid is not much more than a subsidy for large corporations based in the donor country.
According to the World Bank, in 2008 in Uganda only 18% of the contract value of World Bank-funded projects went to local firms. For contracts valued at over $1m, that share dropped to 11%. Firms from China and the UK won the bulk of large World Bank-funded contracts in Uganda, 32% and 19% respectively. (source: http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2011/sep/07/aid-benefits-donor-countries-companies) Donor countries thus have little incentive to lower or change the conditions of aid because those conditions might harm the political future of politicians who are using international aid to subsidize industry in their own backyards.
The larger point of this article comes on the heels of the policeman in Nigeria that was sacked for doing what every other policeman in the country has been doing for decades: extorting civilians for dash or other imagined penalties. This article attempts to put the policeman's crime in the context for people unfamiliar with Nigeria's climate of corruption, which is not unique by any means.
On Monday, August 12, 2013 8:49:17 AM UTC-4, Felix Kayman wrote:
-- According to the World Bank, in 2008 in Uganda only 18% of the contract value of World Bank-funded projects went to local firms. For contracts valued at over $1m, that share dropped to 11%. Firms from China and the UK won the bulk of large World Bank-funded contracts in Uganda, 32% and 19% respectively. (source: http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2011/sep/07/aid-benefits-donor-countries-companies) Donor countries thus have little incentive to lower or change the conditions of aid because those conditions might harm the political future of politicians who are using international aid to subsidize industry in their own backyards.
The larger point of this article comes on the heels of the policeman in Nigeria that was sacked for doing what every other policeman in the country has been doing for decades: extorting civilians for dash or other imagined penalties. This article attempts to put the policeman's crime in the context for people unfamiliar with Nigeria's climate of corruption, which is not unique by any means.
On Monday, August 12, 2013 8:49:17 AM UTC-4, Felix Kayman wrote:
That corruption at very high levels of government is endemic in Nigeria is not news. So why are foreign donor countries still extending aid to corruption prone countries like Nigeria? Certainly not because they wish to promote development in such countries. After all, it is a trite notion that no nation has ever left the space of underdevelopment by receiving aid. In fact, there is consistent evidence that foreign aid tends to further impoverish the developing countries that receive them because of the unpublicized conditions that are associated with such grants. Therefore, one reason that may accounts for the continued donation of aid to countries like Nigeria by developed countries like the UK could be that it is in the best interest of the donor country. So when this writer claims that it is better to burn the aid money rather than award it to Nigeria, he overlooks the fact that the aid grants is a strategy by which the UK government supports local manufacturers and organisations, because part of the associated clause of such grants is that Nigeria would continue to patronise UK manufacturers. It is not an accident that most foreign grants for education are directed towards funding Nigerians studying in UK universities, rather than to strengthening research capacity of the local universities. Then the donors will then turn around and report that donation is not reaching the 'ordinary Nigerians'.
On Saturday, August 10, 2013 11:19:30 PM UTC+1, Roy Doron wrote:It is estimated that since 1960, about $380 billion (£245 billion) of government money has been stolen — almost the total sum Nigeria has received in foreign aid.
And that even when successive governments attempt to recover the stolen money, much of this is looted again.
President Sani Abacha, a military dictator who ruled in the Nineties, had accrued a staggering $4billion (£2.58billion) fortune by the time he died
In essence, 80 per cent of the country's substantial oil revenues go to the government, which disburses cash to individual governors and hundreds of their cronies, so effectively these huge sums remain in the hands of a mere 1 per cent of the Nigerian population.
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Thanks,
Roy
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