Robert Masolo
23 April 2006
opinion
Kampala — IN December 2005, several donor countries, notably the UK, Sweden, Norway and The Netherlands, announced cuts in aid to Uganda amounting to millions of dollars. Since then, there has been much debate over the timing and motives of this decision by these governments, although they stated that it had been prompted by, among others, Uganda government's poor macro-economic management; political transition uncertainties; stifling growth of development in the country and the arrest in November 2005 of the FDC leader Col. (rtd.) Dr. Kizza Besigye.
The question is: can donor aid in itself produce real or Western democracy to countries such as Uganda? The conclusion is left to the reader. Aid has continued to follow the pattern it followed during the Cold War politics. Countries which are strategic to the Western world still receive more money than those which are not, irrespective of whether they are democratic or not. The United States has, for example, given Israel over $100b in military and economic aid since 1979.
Israel, the 16th wealthiest economy and sixth most powerful military power in the world, is the largest recipient of US foreign aid. With a population of 5.9 million, Israel receives more American aid than the nations of sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean combined.
Besides, money to Israel is transferred at the beginning of each fiscal year and is therefore permitted to accumulate interest in US banks throughout the year, unlike other countries which receive foreign aid in quarterly installments.
Unlike other countries, Israel is an exception to the rule that any US foreign military aid must be spent in the US. The billions in economic aid to Israel are never audited. Nor are American officials allowed to monitor how the funds are spent - unlike the conditions applied to all other aid recipients. For every $1 of American aid that goes to an African, one Israeli receives $250.65m.
In Africa, the largest recipients of US aid are neither the poorest nor the most democratic countries. Egypt, for example, receives over $2b annually. In 1992 it received $933m in economic assistance and $1,302m in military assistance. In 2001, the US made a $600m disbursement to Pakistan for economic support in the 9/11 aftermath.
The poorest countries are not the largest recipients of aid. Although African countries are the poorest, they receive the smallest portion of aid. Most of the aid goes to countries that are already developed. Two thirds of US assistance goes to Israel and Egypt and other middle-income countries in the Middle East. Only $3b a year goes to South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.
Countries which have succumbed to donor pressure to democratise have never been rewarded with more financial assistance. Kenya, for example, adopted multiparty politics in 1992. Since that time, there has been at least one regime change. The new government even recently lost a referendum over the draft constitution. In spite of what can be argued to be "these good indicators", the amounts of aid Kenya receives do not correspond with the levels of democratisation taking place.
Besides Kenya, Zambia, Malawi, Ghana and Senegal, some of the countries which have opened up political space and have had successful regime changes, are very, very far from being the largest recipients of aid in Africa. Ironically, countries that are developing fast are not democracies in the Western sense. China is the fastest growing economy in the world and it is far from being a democracy in the Western sense.
In Africa, when Ghana was pursuing a popular based form of democracy before adopting a multi-party system, it was often considered the success story in Africa's economic transformation. When it adopted a multiparty system of governance it was dropped from the list of success stories. Instead, Uganda, which was pursuing a partyless democracy based on local councils, was hailed as the new success story.
As Uganda adopts a multiparty system, we see a tendency by the donors to gradually delete her from the "success story family". One wonders why!
Interestingly enough, everyone, including the Western world and the opposition in Uganda, agrees that Uganda's growth rates were highest between 1986 and 1996. It is argued that after 1996, the growth rates slowed down. Nobody, however, associates Uganda's spectacular growth between 1986 and 1996 with the nature of political system in place.
In the early years of independence, donor countries used to give budgetary support to African countries. Because of the corruption that most African countries were facing, it was feared that their tax payers' money was not reaching the targeted recipients, that is, the poor. It was also feared that governments would divert the money to meet defense related expenditures. Consequently, the donors moved away from budgetary support to sectoral or project support. Money would be given directly to a specific project or sector.
The shift from budgetary to sectoral support, however, weakened the ability of donor countries to put pressure on third world countries to democratise in a number of ways. Since money was given to a project directly linked with the recipient, cutting it off raised serious issues of morality. It is therefore not surprising that Denmark and the United States find it difficult to cut aid irrespective of the nature of governance in place.
Multilateral institutions give more money assumed to be apolitical. While some countries cut their aid citing political reasons, multilateral institutions rarely do so. This explains why, whereas Netherlands, UK and Sweden may be cutting aid to Uganda, the ADB, the European Union and the World Bank are giving more aid. Since multilateral aid is far more than bilateral aid, the decision taken by countries such as UK to cut aid may not have a drastic impact on Uganda.
We are now told that the UK's Conservative Party is waging a campaign against Uganda with the aim of having more aid cuts for political reasons.
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