Damage of Donor Aid

Emmanuel Opati (The Monitor)—For decades, African diplomats to the western countries especially the United States focused inter-alia on increasing aid flow to Africa. However, current dynamics of the global war on terror have changed foreign policy objectives and consequently changed the wave of international development and humanitarian aid.

In 2006, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) reported that the contribution from the 22 member countries of the Development Assistance Committee (who are the world’s major donors) dropped by 5.1 per cent compared to 2005 contributions.

The United States has been criticised for cutting back on its promised obligations and responsibilities to the United Nations, despite affirmations by President Bush who has tripled humanitarian and development aid to Africa (and has promised to increase it to $9 billion by 2010), to build and strengthen the relationship between the United States and Africa.

With increasing tying of international development and humanitarian aid to strategic interests of donor countries, the bitter reality is that Africa is becoming less strategically important as reflected in the amount of dollars it attracts.

As a result UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon chaired an emergency meeting on September 14 to address concerns that Sub-Sahara African countries may not achieve any of the U.N’s Millennium Development Goals by 2015.

The meeting that brought together officials from African Union, African Development Bank, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, European Commission, Islamic Development Bank among other UN agencies, was aimed at mobilising resources to help African countries get back on track so they can achieve balanced development by 2015.

According to a report by Reuters, Africa was the focus of a G-8 summit in 2005 in Gleneagles, Scotland, where the world’s leading industrialised nations pledged to double development aid by 2010 and to free the poorest countries of their debts.

The report adds that “But not even Britain is on track with its aid. Italy had a 30 percent cut and the United States, still the largest contributor, reduced aid by 20 percent”.

As a response to continuous reduction of development aid to Africa, African governments have opted to adopt a slogan of “trade, not aid”. Will this new initiative work?

This is one of many global initiatives by different development agencies and organisations as well as pleas from Hollywood celebrities to increase aid to Africa. So why have all these efforts not changed the perceived donor fatigue in Africa?

The major factor that is being ignored all these efforts is the role of Africa’s image. Africa is a “product” that has been produced and pre-packaged by the mainstream western media to meet the presumed demand of juicy African stories for the Europeans and North Americans. The Africa that most Europeans and North Americans know is Africa made in the media.

Many western journalists take a melancholy view of Africa and its future. Many western journalists have an African story before they get on the ground. They go to Africa to look for photos and footages that match their pre-conceived story so they can fill in the gaps of a story. To them stories of prosperity, thriving businesses or pictures of affluent Africans and healthy people do not make a juicy African story.

Most of these media houses have doctors as medical analysts, IT professionals as IT analysts, but do not have African professors as African analysts? Most journalists that cover Africa are visitors to the continent and their coverage is very myopic and limited to their pre-conceived Africa.

Mainstream western media would rather have their senior correspondent stationed in Iraq compiling stories from a hotel room, than have one stationed in Nairobi. When it is Africa, they only pop-in-and-out of the continent.

As a result, the term Africa has become pejorative that North American and European investors have shied from investing on the continent despite the enormous resources and cheap labour.In addition to the media, some international non-profit organisations have exacerbated the damage done to Africa’s image.

In the United States, Jewish and Irish organisations raise the most money without flashing pictures of starving children or compromising dignity of the Jewish or Irish people, why is it that organisations that work in Africa (such as Save the Children, World Vision, among others) feel the need to dehumanise African children in the name of fundraising?

If a picture of a smiling healthy African child struggling to educate himself as well as take care of the siblings cannot attract funds, then you need to question the motive of those funds.

At the UN meeting of donor agencies chaired by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Reuters quoted the African Union Commissioner for Economic Affairs Maxwell Mkwezalamba who said that, “Africa has to take some initiatives of its own,” such as mobilising domestic resources and those from the diaspora.

Such initiatives need to first address the image problem that Africa faces otherwise there will be continued drop in development aid to Africa and increased talk about the need to increase development aid to Africa.

African governments need to realise that it will take more than a simple slogan (Trade, not Aid), and other favourable factors of production such as natural resources and cheap labour to attract any investors. It will be in Africa’s interest to support the African Union envoy in Washington DC as she embarks on the tough job of re-branding Africa.

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