In other words a useless waste of money of epic proportions.
This is why the dumping of countless billions of dollars into the bottomless pit of the Palestinian Arab ‘government’ will never produce anything but the funding of corruption and murder (of Jews). The only ones benefiting are the ones funnelling away the cash to personal off shore accounts.
Here the former diplomat speaks of Kenya, which in no way compares to the thugocracy of the P.A. and Hamas and yet, they too are not developing into modern democratic state either.
“In practice attempts to create western democratic practices to poor developing countries have brought the opposite results,” claims Kääriäinen.
Multi-party democracy is not, in Kääriäinen’s view, possible in his former posting of Kenya or in many other African countries. He says a lot of the pre-conditions necessary for elections—a functioning justice system, police, educated voters and a free media—simply don’t exist there.
“Kenya and the rest of Africa is not ready for any kind of multi-party parliamentary system,” said Kääriäinen. “Only a presidential system works there, and the hope that there will be some enlightened rulers.”
Ex-diplomat launches attack on development aid system
A former ambassador and diplomat has launched an attack on what he claims are ‘myths’ about development aid spending. Matti Kääriänen says there’s little oversight or evaluation of development aid projects, even when they last for decades.
Finnish development spending is often wasted, because the government does not sufficiently evaluate and oversee the projects it funds. That’s the charge made by a retired Finnish diplomat and ambassador to Kenya, who launched a new book titled ‘Kehitysavun kirous‘, or ‘The Curse of development aid‘ on Tuesday.
Speaking on Yle’s Radio Suomi, Matti Kääriäinen cited trawlers constructed in Savonlinna and sent to Tanzania as development aid. According to Kääriäinen, they now rest at the bottom of Dar es Salaam harbour.
He also mentioned vehicles rusting by Zambian roadsides and tractor and pharmaceutical plants that don’t function as planned.
“But more important than the examples is that the concept doesn’t work,” said Kääriäinen.
Challenging conditions
In a forty year career Kääriäinen has served at the UN in New York and as ambassador to Kenya. He now holds an honorific title of ‘ulkoasiainneuvos’, and has decided to lift the lid on some of the worst failures of Finnish development aid.
“When I was younger and was an official responsible for projects, we had a ‘failed project ranking’ in the pub,” said Kääriäinen. “It was a bit of a joke, who had the worst project, why it failed and how high it would go in the ranking.”
Kääriäinen admits that development projects face extremely challenging conditions, but argues that success is only possible if funders are honest with themselves.
“It needs honesty about where we’re going and how we got where we are,” said Kääriäinen, who claims that such an analytical approach is largely missing from the current management of development aid programmes.
“No real evaluation”
“We don’t really know the real effects of many of these 15-20 year projects,” said Kääräinen. “They are never evaluated afterwards. Personally I know that many of these projects didn’t really leave anything behind them.”
Kääriäinen points to an increase in poverty in sub-Saharan Africa, despite a focus from western government-managed aid programmes, as evidence for this failure.
“The main reason is that there’s no real commitment to eliminate or reduce extreme poverty,” said Kääriäinen.
The ex-ambassador reckons one of the biggest myths around development aid is the idea that it can help bring good governance, democracy and human rights to the recipient country.
Democracy-promotion efforts “doomed”
“In practice attempts to create western democratic practices to poor developing countries have brought the opposite results,” claims Kääriäinen.
Multi-party democracy is not, in Kääriäinen’s view, possible in his former posting of Kenya or in many other African countries. He says a lot of the pre-conditions necessary for elections—a functioning justice system, police, educated voters and a free media—simply don’t exist there.
“Kenya and the rest of Africa is not ready for any kind of multi-party parliamentary system,” said Kääriäinen. “Only a presidential system works there, and the hope that there will be some enlightened rulers.”
