Stop Aid to Africa

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Most of foreign aid to Africa is aimed at promoting democracy in governments. Numerous donor agencies spend huge budget annually to fund democracy related programs in Africa. These programs include; elections support, strengthening of parliament, judicial and political parties and fostering growth and power of civil society organization such as labor unions and women human rights groups (Stephen, 2004).

Technical assistance is also targeted in democracy promotion. Small fraction of all aid the United States and other donors often conditionally grants to Africa is intended for general budget support on performance in the area of civil liberties, conduct of elections, and respect of the rule of law (Thad, 2004).

Over the past years donor funding to Africa has been marred by irregularities. There are many shortcomings related to donor funding in Africa and it is necessary for donors to stop funding Africa. Many scholars have argued that foreign country should stop donor funding to Africa because it is not serving the intended purpose (Carol, 1999).

Donor funding has encouraged dependency by African countries. They have relied so much on donor funds and failed to come up with strategies for mobilizing revenues to sustain their budget. African countries have accumulated large debts because they have always depended on foreign country donor funding for many years showing little efforts to look for alternative ways to sustain their economy.

Aid to Africa has distorted African countries economy by encouraging unhealthy competition between key economy sectors in African market. Additionally, there has been unfair competition between those getting donor support (governments) and those who do not get donor support (private sector) affecting African countries economy negatively.

Africa donor funding has been a key factor in fuelling inflation in Africa countries. Inflation in return has led to increased cost of living causing most of African people to languish in poverty. Ironically, most of donor funded African countries experience poor economic growth (Joseph, 2009).

Aid to Africa has created moral hazard for authoritarian local politician who pursue goals at odds with the aims of foreign donors. Aid to Africa simply provides a source of income with which autocratic leaders may repress local population (Bruce & Alastair, 2007). The motive of donor countries has been in question.

Mostly it seems like promotion of democracy as priority but some aid is granted for unwarranted motives. Geopolitical factors have caused donors to overlook undemocratic practices and allocate aid to strategic autocratic allies. There has been linkage of foreign aid to African political institutions (Stephen, 2004).

During cold war foreign donor prioritized strategic consideration and spread of their political influence in sub-Saharan Africa. These geopolitical objectives diminished the credibility of donors’ threat to make the disbursement of further aid conditional on the adoption of domestic democratic reforms.

There is no positive significant relationship between official development assistance from western countries and the level of democracy in African countries. There is essence of difficult in using aid to promote democracy which lie so much in information asymmetry of donors’ commitment to reforms.

When two opposing and competing donors like Soviet Union and the United States fight for influence and clients, aid receiving countries enjoy greater leverage (Bruce & Alastair, 2007). Donors actually prefer to promote democracy among recipient countries to extent that they threaten to make aid conditional on the fulfillment of democratic reforms may not be credible because withholding aid from autocratic countries could mean losing client to the other cold war power (Bruce & Alastair, 2007).

Geostrategic cost of losing client may override any perceived benefits from successfully promoting democratic reforms among recipient countries. Recognizing the resulting incredibility of any threat to condition foreign countries may be unwilling to make change that donor demand.

There are donors who trade off the costs of lack of democratic reforms against the benefits of retaining strategic African clients, and nonetheless provide aid to autocratic leader (Joseph, 2009). One should thus not expect observed association between aid and democracy in this period. Diminished geostrategic importance of African clients in the post cold war period would imply that the loss of such client would impose a negligible geopolitical cost on powerful donors.

The dissolution of the Soviet Union may not have removed a geopolitical threat to the west but may have vindicated the liberal values of western donors, lending them a sense of the possibility of democratization all over the world. Thus the perceived benefit of promoting democracy in sub-Saharan Africa arose even as the cost of losing African clients declined dramatically (Bruce & Alastair, 2007).

African leaders lost significant leverage with which to resist aid conditionally because only one donor offered aid to them in the post cold war period. No longer able to take refuge in balance of power politics , recalcitrant African states could be more effectively pressed to undertake the democratizing reforms that western donor had emphasized during cold war (Thad, 2004).

Foreign aid has not served in democratization through the expected manner like technical assistance focusing on electoral process, strengthening of legislature and judiciaries as check of on executive power, and the promotion of civil society organization, including free press.

From previous studies no evidence that aid promote democracy because the most of donor programs do not work as intended. Successful programs are few and far between for their effect to be detectable in the aggregated data, or are compensated by other effect of aid that tends to undermine democratic development (Joseph, 2009).

Aid has negative effects on democratization and quality of governance. Literacy and increased income are key aspects of modernization often believed to increase the demand for democratic government. This has not been the case in Africa where literacy level is high and most of population lives below two U.S dollars per day (Sach, 2009). Much aid is intended to improve economic growth and improve literacy and access to education.

This vision has not been achieved over the year despite continuous donor funding to Africa. The fact that many aid recipients have become more democratic does not itself imply cause and effect. For instance programs in particular countries may convincingly demonstrate that types of aids can sometimes be beneficial but still aid has nothing about the overall effectiveness in promoting democracy. Also studies indicate that conditioning aid on reform in recipient nations is largely ineffective.

It undermines foreign democratic governments (Thad, 2004). Since aid goes to the government it tends to strengthen the role of the government sector in general economic activity relative to private sector. It potentially weakens government accountability by retarding development of health civil society underpinning democracy and the rule of law (Carol, 1999).

Foreign aid reduces governments’ dependence on its citizen for taxes revenue. With high levels of aid recipient government are accountable primarily to foreign donors rather than to taxpayer hence those with the loudest single voice on revenue and expenditures decision are international lending agencies.

High aid levels may also reinforce executive dominance in new democracies as donors often fund projects outside budget precluding any review by parliament (Joseph, 2009). Aid may also encourage coup attempts and political instability by making control of the government and aid receipts a more valuable prize reducing the prospects for democratic governance.

Aid is associated with greater corruption in ethnically heterogeneous countries but not in more homogenous countries (Sach, 2009). Studies on impact of human rights protection on aid allocation show that these aid cause human right violation. Aid is associated with decrease in institutional quality and democratization or has little effect on democratization or changes in political institution. It increase government spending and reduces government revenue.

Aid hurt democracy because large amount of aid can reduce the incentives for democratic accountability. When revenues do not depend on the taxes collected from citizen and business there is less incentives for accountability. At the same time corrupt government officials will try to perpetrate their rent seeking activities by reducing the like hood of losing power (Moyo, 2009).

In conclusion African donor funding should be stopped because it does not address the intended purpose. Ideally donor funds are aimed at promoting African democracy, fuelling economic growth and improving African living standards but most time these key agendas are hijacked by individuals’ ill motives. These donors funding have ironically anchored corruption, encouraged bureaucracy, and distorted African economies.

References

Bruce, B. M., & Alastair, S. (2007). Foreign Aid and policy concessions. The journal of conflict resolution, 51 (2), 251-284.

Carol, L. (1999). Aid to Africa: so much to do, so little is done. Chicago: University of Chicago press.

Joseph, W. (2009). How foreign Aid can foster democratization in authoritarian regimes, American journal of political science, 53 (3), 552-571.

Moyo, D. (2009). Aid ironies: a response to Jeffrey Sachs. The Huffington post (USA). Web.

Sach, J. (2009). Aid ironies. The Huffington post (USA). Web.

Stephen, K. (2004). Does foreign Aid promote democracy? International studies quarterly, 48 (1), 251-266.

Thad, D. (2004). Conditioning the effect of Aid: Cold war politics, donor credibility, and democracy in Africa. International organization, 58 (2), 409-423.

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Stop Aid to Africa

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