Until they abandon their tribal and clan-based (and in many cases, Islamic) societies and become real nation states, there’s no hope for them…
Proof that foreign aid DOESN’T work: Scathing report reveals £11million scheme backed by Bono failed to reduce poverty or hunger
- Department for International Development report concludes projects failed
- £11 million – £2,906 per household – was spent on 35 poor villages in Ghana
- ‘Rock star economist’ Professor Jeffrey Sachs and U2’s Bono back back project
- Report found scheme backed by billionaires failed to cut hunger in Kpasenkpe
As I drove through villages in northern Ghana, bumping along pitted dirt roads and passing mud-splattered men pushing bicycles, the grinding poverty was painfully obvious.
Exhausted farmers, some wearing faded football shirts, sprawled in the shade beside mud-built houses.
Women chopped leaves for dinner, surrounded by children in tatty clothes. Goats and guinea fowl scavenged among rubbish.
In one village after another, people told of their daily fight for survival. Farmers said they couldn’t afford fertiliser. Mothers couldn’t afford medicines for their children. Pupils couldn’t afford pencils.
[…]
The evaluation – commissioned by DFID to test the theories and agreed with Professor Sachs – found little difference between villages drenched in British aid and others in the region that were not helped.
Although attendance improved at new clinics and schools, incomes rose (‘probably temporarily’) and there was a fall in the impaired growth of children, ‘what has been achieved could have been attained at substantially lower cost’.
The report also discloses the dismal, yet all too typical, fact that nearly a third of funds went on management and overheads, while admitting there was ‘large-scale’ fraud involving a key local partner.
