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Grand Donor Illusion and Larceny in Africa?
By Kaufmann | June 16, 2009 3 Comments »
Last week’s piece in the New York Times (NYT, and in IHT) on ill-fated Anti-Corruption commissions and campaigns in a number of prominent countries in Africa elicited comment, both in this blog space and elsewhere. I also got separate communications and feedback, including on the role of donors and aid, which was not the main part of the New York Times story.
In today’s NYT own editorial page, their Opinion piece makes the responsibility of donors rather clear.
Sharply titled Grand Larceny Africa, this NYT editorial may perhaps serve as yet another wake up call to the donor community and the ‘aid effectiveness’ industry. There is a need for revamp in the outmoded (and in many instances waning) approach to governance and anticorruption in general — Africa being no exception…
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Since I am quoted in the editorial, let me say that special care ought to be exercised in not generalizing about the whole continent. There are countries where progress has been taking place over the past decade, while others exhibit nowadays relatively high quality of governance and corruption control. In the case of Botswana, for instance, corruption control levels are similar to countries in Southern Europe.
Grand larceny among top officials is taking place in some countries in Africa, but in others the main governance challenges lie elsewhere, including democratic accountability and freedom of the press, for instance. And at times it is a governance deficit in all of these that creates a vicious circle of under-development.
It is the case, however, that there are high profile countries, such as Kenya and Nigeria, where major setbacks have taken place, while in a number of other countries corruption continues to be rife. The donor aid community has not been capable to formulate an appropriate response.
Indeed, where courageous Anti-Corruption fighters have started to make inroads, as in Kenya and Nigeria among others, the political backlash from the ruling elite has been swift and often ruthless. The technocratic and bureaucratic ‘capacity building’ donor aid model to supporting Anti-Corruption plans, campaigns and commissions needs a major reboot. The challenge in these countries is not due to a massive technical deficiency, but it is deeply political instead, and often from the top. These campaigns, plans and commissions tend to be captured or emasculated by the same elite interests that are part of the corruption problem in the first place.
Let me reiterate that the challenge of corruption is far from unique to some prominent African countries. At last the world has seen irrefutable evidence that such corruption exists in the US, Europe, Asia and other regions. This prevalence across continents is no excuse, of course, to continue downplaying the need for serious action on this front in Africa, particularly since the socio-economic price paid for this scourge is so dire.
In this context, I received here a substantive comment from Jim Wesberry, an Anti-Corruption expert who spend decades working for donors, who is of the view that last week’s NYT story on Africa corruption could have been written virtually as is for Latin America.
Either way, it may be high time to take a deep (and honest) breath and start afresh on donor aid strategies on Governance and Anti-Corruption. Not just for Africa. And donor organization ought not being terrified any longer from making a distinction between corrupt regimes, on the one hand, and those where the leadership is committed and making inroads, on the other. In each continent, they co-exist, often neighbouring each other. This is no excuse for donors to paper over sharp differences across countries, necessitating clearly differentiated strategies and much higher selectivity. Even if it is not very politically correct…
Topics: Aid Effectiveness, Corruption, Public Financial Management, Rule of Law, Voice and Human Rights, capture | | 3 Comments
June 27th, 2009 at 4:48 pm
The Donor Community has not been able to formulate an appropriate response because it has not begun to acknowledge its own complicity to corrupt regimes and processes. Until the Corrupter and the Corrupted and the entire community of corrupt peoples face up to their responsilities, nothing at all will change. Donor programmes often skew African agendas and attract people who follow the money. Many things must change in order to help the people who really need help with taxpayers money.
July 9th, 2009 at 11:56 am
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