Donors Frustrate Continent

from All Africa

The Monitor (Kampala)

By Mbatau Wa Ngai
Kampala

ALTHOUGH it was heartening to hear Germany President Horst Kohler agree with his host Uganda President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, last week, that African countries are ensnared in a web of cyclical unrest due to rising discontent of mainly the youthful generation over mass unemployment and biting poverty, there is little to suggest that this will bring any tangible benefits any time soon.

True, as a former President of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Central Bank before then, President Kohler is well placed to understand the economic challenges Uganda is grappling with more than most.

The fact that Germany is by far the largest economy in Europe should have given his listeners greater hope than it did.

That it did not is partly due to the recognition that Germany punches below its weight in Europe. History also provides evidence that talk is cheap among leaders of industrialised countries who promise much and deliver little.

Consider; in September 2000 world leaders gathered at the United Nations headquarters in New York adopted eight development goals with specific targets to be achieved by the year 2015. Though these are minimum standards of human development, Africa is nowhere near half way to achieving them.

This is largely because despite so much talk, so many missions and so many commitments, there is little to show halfway point in the deadline for the 2015 Minimum Development Goals (MDGs).

The European Union promised its aid would reach 0.7 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 2015 and 0.51 by 2010. With less than two years to go only a super-optimist would believe that goal, modest as it is would be met. This expectation is even less likely today at a time of high economic volatility around the world.

The result of Europe and the rest of the industrialised world's failure to walk the talk is that most African countries are still grappling with the twin challenges of poverty and unemployment.

Sadly, the world has become accustomed to dozens, albeit hundreds and thousands, of deaths of desperate Africans while attempting to flee their wretchedness either by sailing in rickety boats to Europe or through tribal blood-letting violence as in Kenya.

No African country or any other where poverty and inequality co-exist side by side is immune to these bloody explosions. To be fair to Kohler's host, President Museveni, he understands the consequences of poverty and hopelessness all too well.

That explains why President Museveni took his guest to Northern Uganda to see the ravages of the 20-year-old civil war that has pitted his government against the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA).

This understanding that poverty is not only a lack of income but also an inability to meet basic social needs, the feeling of powerlessness to break out of the cycle of wretchedness and insecurity of persons and property has seen Uganda make major strides over the past 15 years.

In 1992, poverty in Uganda stood at 56 per cent. It declined to 44 per cent in 1997, 34 per cent in 199/2000, then rose to 38 per cent in 2002/2003 before falling again to 31 per cent in 2005/2006.