Rich Countries Don't Owe Us Jack!

It amounts to mental aberration to think that, to this day, industrial or rich countries owe us anything. What is the point of departure for such thoughts? There is no basis at all! It is merely out of laziness on the part of Africa to continue looking to donors and their Aid as a panacea to Africa's backwardness and paralyzing poverty levels. Most, if not all, of Africa's economic ills can be attributed to mismanagement of national wealth and financial resources and also, to a large extent, incompetence on the part of policy-makers and implementers of policy. One can also safely allude to the absence of strong institutional capacities to implement government policies and programmes as having contributed to lack of effective monitoring of the implementation of government programmes.

African governments have received massive injection of funds from the international community for developmental purposes without any corresponding results to show for. How such funds have been utilized is now public knowledge. The vultures in governments and civil services have swamped on the funds. In cognizance of this fact, who then is to blame for Africa's lack of development and backwardness? In the past we have made reference to donor fatigue that it must no longer be looked at a remote possibility. Donor fatigue is real especially in instances where donors can clearly see that African governments and their servants are having a free-for-all feast on the donated funds and also reckless expenditures on ill-conceived projects. A paragon of donor fatigue is based on the recent reports that the Swedes and Canadians are considering to withdraw their Aid to some African countries and to channel it to other countries where they believe there is a reasonable fiduciary oversight on their Aid and how such Aid is utilized.

All considered, African governments and Africans must begin to look inward with a sense of urgency and appreciate the fact that the development of the continent does not depend on foreign prescriptions and Aid. A plausible argument against Aid is that the last 40 to 50 years of Aid to African countries have not produced any tangible results in terms of the reduction and alleviation of spiralling levels of poverty and overall infrastructural development.

While having their own economic problems, donors have continued to exhibit their goodwill and commitment to the improvement of standards of living in poor and impoverished countries in Africa and other parts of the world. In our view, Donors are providing Aid to African not because they have any feelings of compunction that they owe Africa "jack", it is on account of a bit of humanity and their hidden desire to perpetuate their economic stranglehold on Africa and Africans who are not willing and keen to chart their own course of development.