Mad as a box of frogs.....

In yet another ‘foreign aid’ scandal, we hear that the President of Malawi has chucked out the British High Commissioner for criticising the President’s corrupt use of aid money. So Dave has chucked out the Malawi High Commissioner and aid is being ‘reviewed’ i.e. frozen. The President had thought fit, in one of the world’s poorest countries, to buy a £9 million executive jet, top-of-the-range Mercs for his satraps, and a mega wedding party when he got spliced again, to one of his ministers.

Which brings us to the matter of direct budget support.

This was first mooted by DFID some years ago and they tried to persuade the other international development agencies (as we must now call the donors). The philosophy is that we must get away from the paternalistic approach redolent of colonialism, and instead of telling beneficiaries what we are providing aid for, we let them choose the destination for aid funds.

There is some merit in this; the history of foreign aid is littered with the wreckage of failed or unnecessary donor projects, like the fish freezing plant built on an African lake which would have used up all the water in the lake and so became the world’s most expensive drying shed. Senior donor officials seriously suggested to me that we use aid funds to install computers in every school. The fact that most of them lacked roofs, windows, water, and sanitation suggested other priorities. The lack of any power supply would also have been something of a handicap.

And I was called a reactionary when I proposed that schools should get rid of their water-borne lavatories and revert to the well-tried and almost maintenance free ventilated improved pit-latrine (the famous VIP toilet). My rationale was (a) that the kids came from bush homes and didn’t know how to use a WC; (b) the WCs were quickly stripped for useable materials; (d) they were frequently wrecked; (e) the maintenance cost was huge; and (f) the water bills exceeded the teachers’ salaries budget.

Needless to say the shiny-bums at head office had their way.

DBS might work if there are two essential conditions – that the beneficiary must choose from a specific menu which does not include executive jets or Mercs or vintage wine,  and that the donor has a full-time auditor in the beneficiaries’ HQ who must also approve each expenditure proposal. I suggested as much to the Minister, having just worked on a DBS-style project in which DFID showed no interest in how the money was spent and in fact has subbed-out financial oversight to  another donor altogether despite having a large office in the country.

And yet we now have some prat proposing that the donors should simply hand out money to individuals ‘to increase their purchasing power’. Mad as a box of frogs!