OPINION:The West has unwittingly acted as the spear carrier for corruption in Africa, standing idly by as it was driven into the continent's heart, writes John O'Shea
THE AFRICAN Union estimates corruption costs the continent $150 billion a year, a figure which far outstrips global development spending. The World Bank freely admits that over a quarter of its entire lending portfolio, has been tainted by graft.
The alarming emergence of China as a "white knight" in the continent demands an urgent review of aid policies. Beijing's game plan to become the dominant donor in Africa throws down the gauntlet to the international community.
For centuries the colonists fed on Africa's resources; now no sooner have they withdrawn when a new and even more voracious predator has swooped to prey on her children. Politically, donors appear to have a simple choice; they can continue giving money to discredited and criminal leaders, which effectively makes them part of the problem, or they can embrace the solution. Morally, there is no choice, it is time for Ireland to step up and play the role it is uniquely qualified to play, and embrace the third way. The wisdom of handing over billions to the most untrustworthy and dishonest leaders on the face of the earth, was always flawed. Yet, every year our Government pours hundreds of millions into a leaky bucket. The scandal is that the more that is poured through, the bigger that hole becomes.
The third way would see Ireland adopt a single country and implement aid plans itself; controlling the purse strings and fostering an entrepreneurial approach. This country would set a world standard as befits a nation that has an unrivalled reputation in the aid community. The scatter gun, or one size fits all approach is outdated, inefficient and criminally wasteful.
It is fitting to remember that this reputation was painstakingly built by NGOs in the field, and by generations of selfless work by missionaries. It is this noble tradition that gives our Government enormous potential to be heard around the globe. This country has the chance to become an instrument of significant change in the Third World. Were we to set an example and lead the way, others would surely follow and in this way an effective bulwark could be built to stem the rapacious march of China through Africa.
One of this newspaper's columnists John Waters, recently argued that: "Africa is rendered developmentally incontinent by corruption." This is precisely why Goal has been advocating the third way, which amounts to a hands on entrepreneurial approach, taking the graft out of the equation and removing corrupt governments.
Our Government would concentrate efforts on a specific country, harnessing the best models of free enterprise and controlling spending, directly creating a new model for the world. Individual aid agencies would always have a role to play at a micro-level.
Ultimately, the aim is to achieve self-sufficiency but once this was done, and the full resources of a major donor country called into play, there would be a turbo-charge effect.
The aid agencies would act as a motor, but the driving engine of a combined entrepreneurial approach with the fuel injection of serious investment from government, would achieve a multiplier effect and the full impact of the third way would be seen. A response to China's destructive ambitions is long overdue. With its insatiable appetite to feed its rampant economy it is gorging on the scarce resources of Africa, yet Beijing's use of the cheque book to leech its way into becoming its biggest stakeholder, continues unchecked.
The planet's second-largest energy user has extended billions in loans using African oil as security. These exploitative IOUs will inevitably be called in, ending any hope of improvement in the lives of the destitute.
Critically, in its shameful rush to plunder Africa's larder and bankroll corrupt governments, China is enabling brutal regimes to ignore western calls for reform.
To date the West has relied on two feeble words as fig leaves to hide its shame on dealing with corruption. They are "accountability" and "conditionality". They imply that there is a cordon sanitaire around government-to-government aid, as it is known. Of course, the idea that leaders who are prepared to butcher their own people and ignore international borders to plunder at will but will then refrain from dipping their greasy fingers into the pockets of the poor because of some protocol, is laughable.
Nonetheless, accountability and conditionality enabled governments, including our own, to argue that there are checks and balances in place to prevent aid from falling into the wrong hands. Then along comes China and tears away even this flimsy defence. For Beijing is quite happy to hand out billions without any preconditions.
It is the equivalent of a building society offering a down-and-out sleeping rough on a cold winter's night, a full mortgage without any security or credit checks. The debt collectors will soon be on hand to repossess the new home, land, and all prospects of enrichment for the borrower and all of his future generations, at the first opportunity.
Thus, because of China's largesse more and more countries are now offering direct budgetary support, which is effectively a blank cheque. But this makes it much easier for unscrupulous dictators to side-step any strictures imposed by donors on loans knowing that there is a willing Shylock in the wings, flaunting unimaginable riches. China's malign influence is best seen in Darfur, where some 200,000 people have died in the conflict. China has maintained a stony silence as villages are burned and women are raped. It is in a unique position to exert influence on the Sudanese government to end the fighting, as Sudan is a key oil supplier to Beijing.
Yet its silence in the face of this litany of atrocities is guaranteed. The prize of Sudanese oil is far more compelling than any petty concerns about injustice, torture, ethnic cleansing and the whole gamut of war crimes.
Experience has shown that direct government-to-government aid is as rain falling on a sea of human suffering. The impression made is temporary and it quickly disappears. Take a country like Nigeria. Corruption according to the Economist magazine, has been estimated to total €400 billion. This amounts to 66 per cent of all the aid given to Africa since the 1960s. Yet poverty remains the defining feature of the continent.
Can we really turn a blind eye when an injustice on such a scale is being visited on the most impoverished and destitute people in the world? It has been pointed out that the top eight recipients of bilateral aid score between 2.4 and 2.9 out of 10 on the corruption watchdog Transparency International's global corruption index. In 2006, our own Department of Foreign Affairs acknowledged this when they said that dealing with these governments was "not ideal". Yet the cheques continue to be sent.
It is worth repeating that we must empower and foster an entrepreneurial approach by focusing our aid on one or two countries. We have to bypass toxic regimes and implement development programmes directly, using our own project managers. What is critical is that control of the cheque book must be kept in the back pocket. The international community has to accept that aid in its current form has not worked. We must stop throwing good money after bad and embrace a different method.
In 1992, deeply shocked by the hell I had witnessed in Somalia, I met a UN doctor on a flight out of Baidoa, the cockpit of the famine. When I told him where I was from, this man replied: "Hah, the caring nation." Now more than ever we need to show that we still care.