You could not make this up. Just how stupid are the men and women who run the UK and Ireland? The Irish have just suspended its aid to Uganda after a £10 million package from the Irish, Norway, Sweden and Denmark meant to help the poor and needy somehow ended up in the personal bank account of Ugandan Prime Minister Patrick Amama Mbabazi.
No British cash was nicked by just as a precaution the £4 million in aid we already give to Mr Mbabazi’s office has been suspended. However other aid programmes (another £94 million) will continue. Where does one start?
Let us start in Ireland. In case whichever midget is running Eire today has not noticed your country is frigging bankrupt. So what on earth are you doing handing out aid to “poor nations.” Uganda is not bankrupt. So technically Uganda is in fact richer than you are. Ireland as a country has negative equity – the cash you send to Uganda is just adding to your already bankrupt state. If anything you should be asking its PM Mbabazi if he can send any aid back to Ireland. I kind of suspect that he could lay his hands on a few Swiss denominated shekels if he wanted to.
The apparent fraud was discovered when the Irish government was told by Ugandan auditors that the 12million euros had gone ‘missing’. The sum – of which Ireland’s contribution was 4million euros (£3.2million) – was supposed to have helped pay for a ‘peace recovery and development programme’ in northern Uganda after decades of conflict and devastation.
I read that a political storm is now raging in Dublin, with Irish foreign minister Eamon Gilmore branding the apparent theft ‘intolerable’. No Mr Gilmore you are wrong. What is intolerable is that you decide to spend £3.2 million of money that Irish taxpayers want to see bringing your own country back from bankruptcy on a country that is not bankrupt. What is also intolerable is that you are so bloody naive/stupid that you thought the money you did send would not be stolen. Gilmore you are a total fool.
Then to Britain. She is not bankrupt yet but has a gaping budget deficit and is heading that way. As such we cannot afford the £98 million we send to Uganda either. What on earth do we think the £4million sent to its PM’s office directly will achieve? Just how naive are those responsible for that call. Actually, I suspect we send more than £98 million to Uganda because we are a large net contributor to the EU and the Evil Empire is the world’s largest donor of foreign aid. But there is nothing we can do about that is there?
I would point out that in 2011 the UK handed over only £70 million to Uganda so while we are trying to rein in spending elsewhere, our gifts to Uganda are actually up by 40% year on year. As David Cameron today lectures the EU that a 6.8% budget increase is too much ( it is), I suggest that our hopeless PM looks closer to home for even greater examples of profligacy.
And then to the “surprise” of the politicians? Oh please. So you thought that political leaders in Africa were honest? I bet you probably still think that Jimmy Savile was a tireless worker for good causes and also believe in the tooth fairy and Santa as well. Had you read this blog 61 days ago I would have pointed out that:
“In 2011 Britain ponied up £70 million in international aid to Uganda. Via the Evil Empire we handed over another £57 million. In the same year Uganda’s charming President Yoweri Museveni bought himself a top-of-the-range Gulfstream G550 private plane for £30 million.”
You can read the whole piece HERE. Are you honestly telling me that no-one in the British or Irish Governments knew about that jet?
And then to the whole idea of Foreign aid. It is wrong. It does not work. It never has and it never will. It is simply a transfer of money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries. Although in this case Uganda is actually not bankrupt like Ireland so arguably it is in fact richer.
There are three classes of people in Africa. The super rich political class. They steal foreign aid and get richer. There is the Middle class. They do not receive foreign aid as they do not need it. However it is this class ( not the very poor) that will emigrate to the West. Academic studies consistently show that the poor cannot afford to leave. The Middle class leave because economic opportunity is denied them because their countries deny free enterprise and exist on patronage because the political class want most folks to stay poor as that allows them to steal vast sums of money sent by dumb white Western liberals still feeling guilty about Empire and all that nonsense. Those who argue that aid is needed to stop mass migration are wrong.
And then there are the poor. These folks see only a tiny proportion of the aid that is sent because most goes on administration by Guardian readers at NGOs or in Brussels/Whitehall or is stolen by Africa’s rich. That that does get through rarely creates opportunity or a chance to break the cycle of poverty, it merely creates dependency.
What Africa needs is political reform not Western cash. And you will not get political reform when corrupt leaders can send out the begging bowl and play a few old Bob Geldof videos to keep Western cash coming in which they can steal. Cut off the opportunity for theft and Africa will have to reform. Right now the African political classes want most of their folks to stay poor/will block reform because that will make them ever richer.
Your case study here is Mozambique. For years it was a Marxist hell hole with its leaders stealing any cash the West sent (some are more equal than others, comrade) leaving the population as a whole in poverty and starving. Mozambique had to import food. But 20 years of running an economy with low taxes and allowing free foreign investment and ownership of assets by companies and individuals has created jobs and a climate where local people see the merits of becoming entrepreneurs/small scale farmers themselves. Mozambique is now a net exporter of food. Its economy is growing and poverty is reducing.
The current system sees vested interests pitted against common sense and hard fact. The vested interests of the African political class and of an entire Western bureaucracy stuffed with white liberals with a guilt complex will insist that cutting off aid will cause starvation. The reality is that cutting of aid is the only way to eliminate starvation in Africa but also that the donors just cannot afford it any more.