Cameron's Great Aid Scandal!

At last the media has started to skewer Cameron’s ludicrous and irredeemably wasteful foreign aid programme.

 

Currently in the cross-hairs is Ruanda.

 

This little country in  back-of-beyond Africa, a former Belgian colony, had one of the worst genocides in history. More people were butchered than were killed by both atomic bombs.

 

It is currently getting £250,000,000 from the British taxpayer. The ruling dictator has been pictured many times with Cameron, Andrew Mitchell and other big-shots, basking in the publicity and legitimacy given to him by all these photo-ops.

 

And here is how it works.

 

Most of the money is not for specific projects. It is allocated as ‘DBS’. Direct budget support means that we say ‘Here’s the money. Spend it how you choose!’ The outcomes are hardly surprising. DFID will say that there are spending parameters, so that money can only be spent in DFID-priority areas.

Is that right? On my last major DFID assignment, I was responsible for spending a great deal of their money, and I was never asked once what I was doing with it.

 

I did once suggest to Andrew Mitchell that there should be a DFID auditor in every DFID Regional Office. I guess they will get around to it.

 

Even if the money is spent properly, a major effect is to release funds for rather more sinister purposes.

 

Nigel Lawson said on C4 Despatches that DFID just shovels the money out and lets Ruanda just spend. And they use it to fund rebel massacres in the Congo. The aid money is almost exactly equivalent to the Ruandan military budget.

 

The President of Ruanda poses as a true democrat because they have ‘free and fair’ elections. A slight snag here is that opposition candidates tend to get murdered or exiled before the elections.

 

One opposition leader was found decapitated. The Ruandans even had the effrontery to send a hit-squad to London to take out a British opposition activist, who is now under police protection.

 

Is this the exception that proves the rule?

 

Not at all. Two examples.

 

The late unlamented President of Malawi spent a huge tranche of his aid money on an executive jet and a fleet of Mercedes for his cronies. And when I was working on an aid programme in another African country, I stumbled upon the fact that aid money allocated to buy 600 ambulances had actually been spent on 300 SUVs.

 

This racket has been going on for years, and there is a very large body of literature exposing the dreadful waste and corruption that accompany aid programmes.

 

Cameron’s fixation with foreign aid is incomprehensible. Its budget has increased by 37% at a time of huge cuts in public services at home. DFID is swamped in money to the extent that it is parking large amounts in the World Bank for lack of capacity to spend it on aid programmes.

 

Footnote: DFID refused to be interviewed for the Despatches programme. No surprise there, then!