Friday, February 08, 2008

Dubious Aid Handed to Country

from All Africa

Inter Press Service (Johannesburg)

By David Cronin
Brussels

Just one day after Kenya's bitterly disputed presidential election took place in December, Nairobi received an aid payment worth nearly 41 million euros (60.5 million dollars) from the European Union.

In their defence, EU officials have said the money was dispatched before they saw any evidence that the poll had been rigged in favour of incumbent president Mwai Kibaki.

Now that the Union's own electoral monitors have confirmed that major questions surround the conduct of the election, should the Brussels institutions suspend direct aid to the Kenyan authorities?

Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) think they should.

This week, several of them expressed frustration with the stance taken by EU's Council of Ministers, which bands together the Union's 27 member governments.

In a statement, the governments warned that a "failure to find a sustainable and consensual political solution" would have implications for aid donors' relations with Kenya. But it ruled out taking any concrete action for the time being, given that Kofi Annan, former secretary-general of the United Nations, is seeking to broker an agreement between Kibaki and his rival Rila Odinga to end the current impasse.

Glenys Kinnock, a Welsh Labour MEP, believes that this is too timid a response to the violence that has erupted in recent weeks, killing over 800 people and driving 300,000 from their homes.

"(British newspaper) The Daily Telegraph had a photograph of a woman lying in a very small hut with blood everywhere," she told IPS. "It was unbearable to look at. With this tragic situation, you can't sit in a Council meeting at the same time and say 'we'll give them the benefit of the doubt'."

Kinnock said that she was not calling for no aid to Kenya but that it should not be paid into its national coffers.

Between 2002 and 2008, the EU gave 290 million euros (425 million dollars) to Kenya. This is set to increase to 383 million euros between now and 2013. Roughly one-third of that sum is to be funnelled directly to the Nairobi administration.

The decision to allocate such a high proportion to the national authorities came despite a high-profile corruption scandal.

After Kibaki was originally elected on an anti-graft ticket in 2002, he appointed John Githongo as the country's official watchdog against corruption. Yet after Githongo unearthed information linking some of the highest-ranking politicians in the land to fraud, he fled Kenya, fearing for his life.

In January 2006, he published a dossier alleging that four top government officials were involved in large-scale corruption. These included the country's finance minister and vice-president at the time.

Kinnock added that it is questionable whether direct aid has brought tangible benefits to Kenya's poor. "Kenya has seen a 6 percent rise in GDP (gross domestic product), yet it has more people living below the poverty line," she said. "The trickle-down effect is not happening in Kenya."

Despite being viewed as the most advanced economy in East Africa, UN data indicates that 7.5 million of the country's 31 million inhabitants live in extreme poverty. Average life expectancy has fallen from 59 years in 1989 to just 46 years, with an estimated 700 people perishing to AIDS every day.

Louis Michel, European commissioner for development and humanitarian aid, has made no secret of his desire to see greater use of direct budgetary assistance. Earlier this month, he announced that he wishes to see half of all aid administered by the European Commission paid out in this way by the time his stint in the EU executive concludes next year.

Anti-poverty activists recognise that there can be advantages to direct aid, instead of spending it on a wide variety of different projects. Recurring costs such as the salaries of teachers, doctors and nurses can be met more easily, for example, if there is a guaranteed flow of funds to central authorities.

In practice, though, they complain that no assurances have been given that direct aid will be used to meet the most critical needs of the poor.

Florent Sebban from Eurostep, a coalition of anti-poverty groups, said that the Commission tends to set the indicators according to which aid will be assessed, without any meaningful consultation with people living in Africa. Despite being in regular consultation with representatives of African parliaments, Sebban said he had never met one who had been consulted about how budget aid should be used.

"There is absolutely no transparency and absolutely no democracy in terms of defining these indicators," he said.

Slovenia, the new holder of the EU's rotating presidency, opposes freezing direct aid.

Andrej Ster, Slovenia's minister for development aid, said that doing so could hurt people living in poverty. "Actions that trigger off any negative consequences would hardly be justifiable," he said.

But Portuguese MEP Ana Gomes drew a parallel between the Union's position in this case and what she described as the "weak and miserable EU reaction" to the political crackdown that followed a 2005 election in neighbouring Ethiopia.

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