Foreign Aid enables bureaucrats to procure gold-plated Mercedes limousines

"Oxfam and Christian Aid can be powerful social advocates often to chaotic levels as witnessed in Seattle and Cancun– but in many cases, their economics are just plain wrong. In reaction to our extreme poverty, these bodies and their local counterparts conclude that Ghana’s farmers are suffering at the hands of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization.

One of their solutions to our problems is eliminating farm subsidies in western countries, which would indeed be a good thing. But it saddens me these bodies including ISODEC, MAPRONET, SEND and the Third World Network has no principles. They ignore history, peddling the misguided belief that poverty, famine, global warming and corruption can be solved with more foreign aid and other policies that have already failed Africa.

Most people would agree though that dealing with the World Bank and IMF is like playing with loaded dice. They do advocate free trade measures – but also push foreign aid and flawed development strategies onto us. Even the average Ghanaian knows that these ‘reform’ programs have achieved nothing other than to enable our bureaucrats to procure gold-plated Mercedes for themselves and their cronies."

Read more on this and other developmental issues at the excellent » IMANI Center for Policy & Education Homepage.