Editor,

RE: The cost of aid dependence (The New Times, February 9)

My comment is intended to give an example of how policies and practices of aid donors are inimical.

A donor country that has excessive soya beans will flood the recipient country with massive amounts of this product, and sell it so cheaply to boost cooking oil production, which sounds very kind.

But truly, the seemingly benevolent gesture is intended to kill our local soya industry which, in its initial stages, cannot afford the economies of scale to compete with the ‘assailant’.

Unfortunately, some of our leaders here in Africa take bribes and cannot listen to the nationals who point out that the aid should be directed towards boosting our own production of soya beans.

This is one reason why some of the most endowed African countries are the most backward in terms of economic development.

Muhamud

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Look around Africa and see the multitude of small fragmented donor-funded activities grandly labelled ‘projects’ that, in reality, may be no more than employment vehicles for the donor country national called project ‘manager’, ‘coordinator’, ‘director’, ‘senior adviser’, etc.

Closely scrutinise the activities of these so-called ‘projects’ and you will often find that, although they provide employment to those donor country nationals in country and/or back home ‘backstopping’ (i.e. often doing no more than shuffling paper about that grandly named ‘project’) they add little in terms of practical value to the general welfare of the alleged beneficiaries.

And, yet every cent that is linked, whether from far or near, to that ‘project’ will be reflected on the ‘donor’ country’s official ‘development aid’ that has been provided to the ‘beneficiary country’.

Worse, the ‘recipient’ country will often allocate staff resources it can ill afford to ensure liaison on the ‘project’ with the ‘project’ staff, with very meagre returns for the invested resources.

Worse still, the fragmented nature of such activities, funding (with each donor insisting on its own differing rules of operation and reporting, procurement for equipment, recruitment, etc.) impose extra costs derived from lack of standardisation and the necessity of the ‘recipient’ government having to train and equip its staff to deal with the resultant thicket of rules and procedures.

The situation can also be aggravated by governments having to deploy their best staff to such ‘projects’ and then see them poached by the ‘project’ as it is in a better financial position to offer better terms to the government officials who desert public service for the project and are not prepared to return to the lower salary positions even when the ‘project’ has closed shop.

Projects love such local professionals as it is they in fact who usually do the real work while the foreign manager, coordinator, senior adviser, pulls in the multiples of salary and benefits as well as the credit if - against the norm - the project is in fact a success.

Mwene Kalinda