Aid to Sub-Saharan Africa shrinks

Aid to Sub-Saharan Africa has shrunk as donors use stricter criteria to decide which countries qualify for assistance. The World Bank's African Development Indicators 2002 report reveals that official development aid to countries in the region had fallen to US $12,3 billion at the end of 1999 from US $17,2 billion in 1990. "While aid flows have declined most sharply to African countries at war, assistance to governments recognised as having sound policies also has dwindled. Mozambique, one of Africa's poorest countries, yet also regarded as a strong policy performer, saw aid fall to US $804 million from US $1,04 billion over the same period," the bank said. Donors who had pledged to boost aid and to provide it more selectively at the Financing for Development conference in Monterrey last month, "must act quickly to reverse the trend of shrinking aid flows to well-performing African governments", the bank urged. Callisto Madavo, World Bank Vice President of the Africa region, said: "Many African governments are already putting in place policies that will boost growth, strengthen governance, and more effectively deliver social services. They are keeping their side of the global bargain. They now need rich countries to deliver speedily on theirs." Analyst Ross Herbert, of the South African Institute of International Relations, told IRIN the decline in aid to Sub-Saharan Africa stemmed in part from donor fatigue. There was a "deep frustration with the inability to create aid programmes that are not afflicted with corruption, mismanagement or that simply disappear once the donor leaves". Herbert said: "A lot more thought is going into what makes aid effective and who should get it. Much tougher standards are being applied. The ultimate frustration for donors is there is limited amounts to which they can fix things if governments themselves are not willing to execute programmes effectively. Surveys indicate corruption adds between 20 percent and 30 percent to the cost of construction in Africa." While the US had promised at the Monterrey conference to increase its aid flow by 50 percent "no-one, apart from the Nordic countries, is meeting the UN goal of .7 percent of GDP [gross domestic product] for aid ... the EU [European Union] is up to about .33 percent". This was because there was politically no constituency for aid, especially if it was perceived to be contributing to grossly corrupt and violent governments. "The Nordic countries continue to give large amounts, but are shifting away from countries they thought were not behaving properly. There's been a big pull-out [of aid] from Zimbabwe, Kenya and Malawi and that money is getting transferred to other countries," Herbert said. The World Bank also warned that HIV/AIDS, "anaemic" aid and investment flows, and weak commodity prices threatened to undo the hard-fought gains of recent years. The bank said: "Preliminary data shows growth in Africa's gross domestic product climbed to 3,2 percent in 2000 from 2,9 percent the year before, supported by a continuing expansion in real exports. But the average annual growth rate since 1990 has been 2,6 percent and social indicators reflect the hardships of a population growing faster than social services and economies can cope. "To halve poverty by 2015, Sub-Saharan Africa economies will need to grow at seven percent a year on average ... fuelled by much higher domestic savings, and external flows of grants, loans and investment."