By Professor Abdisalam Yassin Mohamed

Foreign Aid and Aid Agencies

"Al Capone would have been envious at the way these people are cashing in," the former aid worker, Wolfgang Fengler," says, adding that anyone who believes that foreign aid is helping the poor in countries, such as Kenya and Tanzania is deluding himself. He wrote this in November 1999.

In their Study Aid as Obstacle, Moore Lappe, Collins and Kinley also stated, "Its (i.e. the World Bank's) loan decisions are manipulated to reward or punish regimes according to narrowly defined interests of the US and other economically dominant countries." They wrote this in 1980.

These two opinions about foreign aid that I quoted, with a 19-year difference in time span, express the predominant view that foreign aid does not help the poor nor does it add much to the development of poor countries. If we go back a little further in history, we will find articles and books written in the sixties (when foreign aid started in full force), which are highly critical of aid. This early literature on aid shows, just as its current successor does, that aid neither enhance development nor alleviates poverty.

Be that as it may, let us just ponder, can begging (whose euphemism is foreign aid) allay hunger let alone alleviate poverty? Isn't going around and seeking foreign aid, while you can actually improve your economic condition with your hands and resources, like someone who has become a professional beggar? And in the nature of things, when you take up something as a profession, it becomes part of your personality and it is extremely difficult to extricate yourself from it. Therefore, if a person takes up begging as a profession (as most poor countries do), he becomes simply a beggar and stays at the lowest step of the economic ladder. Moreover, he loses his human dignity and becomes ignoble rather noble. Our great religion, Islam, actually clarifies us this when it says, "the upper hand is better than the lower hand." There is also a Somali proverb which expresses the same virtue when it say, "A man only quenches his thirst when he uses hands." We will meet in another column, insha Allah.

Foreign Aid: The Cream for "Fat Cats"

As we said earlier, although foreign does not alleviate poverty, or add much to development, it may sometimes fulfill a dire need. It may result in providing a necessary school, hospital, or road. But for the most part, it goes straight into the pockets of the "fat cats" who continue growing fatter so long as the aid flows in. Just look around the people of Hargeysa ; most of those with potbellies and bulging wastes are either government officials or aid workers thorough whose hands aid passes, or rather does not pass as it goes into their bellies.

I would therefore argue that aid achieves the opposite result of what it is meant for, namely to contribute to development and eradicate poverty. In a course of 50 years during which foreign aid has been closely monitored by economists, development experts, and some aid workers, it has become clearly evident that it stifles economic development instead of promoting it. It strangles vibrant local economies and creates a debilitating sense of sense dependency among those who receive it.

A good example of this is the entire communities of self-sufficient food growers and livestock breeders in Africa who have abandoned their sustainable local economies and have become dependent on aid handouts in the form of corn, wheat, or flour. Their skills, energy, and human dignity are compromised and they have simply become poor souls who wait to be fed by the so-called charities and aid organization.

This plague is already eating up our nomadic communities, who not so long ago were self-sufficient livestock breeders. Indeed their sector was, and still is to a certain extent, the dynamo of our local economy. But it is under attack by the aid syndrome and by its reckless brokers. Let us wake up to the call before it is too late and stop this threatening tide that is sweeping off our people from their noble and prospective livelihoods. Let   us rekindle the self-reliant, sustainable   local economy with the efficient support of the new technology.

[aymohd2000@yahoo.com]

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