Africa Doesn't Want or Need UK Aid

Last fiscal year, British public debt reached levels never seen before — prompting the release of an emergency budget last week aimed at remedying the fiscal imbalances. Assured cuts to funding had many worrying that programs for the poor and marginalized around the world would suffer during already rough economic times. To their relief, despite severe downsizing in virtually every other government department, the UK’s international development and health programs were spared (unfortunately, human rights monitoring didn’t fair so well).

But in an open letter to the UK Telegraph last Sunday, a group of prominent Africans is saying, thanks, but no thanks. The six professionals and scholars from Uganda, Ghana, South Africa, and Nigeria, don’t want Britain’s development money. “As Africans, we urge the generous-spirited British to reconsider an aid programme they can ill afford, and which we do not want or need.”

The authors call British development aid a “half-century-long experiment” and urge the British government to promptly halt such foolish spending. Like many other critics of western development projects, these African spokespeople say that past British intervention has only propped up corrupt governments and slowed economic growth in Africa.

Instead of aid, they propose lifting the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) that prevents African agricultural products from gaining a foothold in European markets. The CAP is a region-wide trade policy that aims to stabilize prices and protect European agricultural products from outside competition. It is this “egregious policy,” the letter says, that has kept Africans from lifting themselves out of poverty. Each member country contributes a significant amount of money to this aim, with the CAP making up 40-50% of the European Union’s annual spending. The key, therefore, to both the British debt problems and their "moral imperative" to help out poor people lies in getting rid of the protectionist policy.

Even though I agree with the underlying arguments that: a) Western development aid has often been misdirected and has allowed bad governance to persist in Africa; and b) the CAP is exclusive and unfair, I have a few problems with the conclusions these African “spokesmen” draw.

First of all, I don’t think this small group of individuals can really call themselves representative of the African public. For one, they represent some of the most well-off countries in sub-Saharan Africa – and not coincidentally, some of the countries most able to take advantage of increased agricultural exports to Europe. They also (given their stated professions) come from the upper classes of African society and hold a distinctly free-market ideology.  They’re also all men. Before Britain takes seriously the claim that Africans don’t want or need development aid, perhaps a wider cross-section of Africa should have their chance to put in their vote.

Secondly, I’m not so sure the abolition of the Common Agricultural Policy would guarantee the rise of Africa. Poverty in Africa has a very long history with diverse causes – none of which can just be erased with the dismantling of the CAP. Even if (in the distant, not-so-probable future) we witness the demise of the CAP, it will not insure that Africa gets access to European markets. African farmers will face competition with the United States, Canada, Brazil, and many other countries that are better equipped to scale-up exports to the EU. Development through industrial agriculture exports isn’t necessarily what Africa needs, anyways. It would probably increase the problem of land-grabbing and consolidation in the hands of large (and often foreign) corporations – once again depriving the millions of poor Africans a chance at the profits.

The authors of the letter sure did a good job at grabbing our attention, but their argument does little to enhance our understanding of the causes of poverty and its relationship to development aid in Africa. Hopefully Telegraph readers will take it with a grain of salt.

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