Aid The Trade

- Richard- Mark Mbaram

AFRICA AND aid are two words that seem to go side by side. According to worldatlas.com, of the top 20 countries receiving foreign aid around the globe in 2016, 10 were African. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) 2014 report shows that Africa received US $36 billion in foreign aid in 2013, the largest to any continent in the world.

It would be expected that with the billions being invested in the continent, hunger, malnutrition and many other sundry under-development issues will be greatly reduced. Sadly, the continent continues to rely on first- and second-world countries to save her from herself. Debt levels across the continent are on a steady rise culminating in the need for an introspective look for true development, particularly as the US is now cutting down on aid to Africa.

STARK REALITIES

A majority of scholars are of the opinion that development aid is troublesome and indeed, this cannot be completely faulted. Of a truth, development aid has fostered in Africa and its leaders a spirit of dependency. Rather than using these donations as aid for development, many African countries have converted it to an enabler of complacency—a situation where they know that aid will come, and therefore they do not have to work at engineering economic prosperity of their own.

In July 2016, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) granted a loan of $304.7 million to Madagascar. Also, in December 2016, the country secured $6.4 billion commitments at the Paris Conference to finance its national development plan. Yet, Madagascar remains one of the poorest countries in the world, with chronic levels of malnutrition and low levels of education.