Interview with head of Dutch International Cooperation, Ron Keller

A delegation of senior development officials from seven European Union countries visited Zambia this week on a four-day mission to examine how aid effectiveness could be enhanced. The delegates came from Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom. IRIN interviewed Ron Keller, director-general of international cooperation in the Royal Netherlands' Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and spokesperson of the group dubbed the 'like-minded donor partners'. QUESTION: What is the group of seven bi-lateral donors and what are you doing in Zambia? ANSWER: Every half-year we meet as a group at director-general level to come up with a common philosophy on how to channel aid. The philosophy is to entrust more responsibility to the recipient countries and try to move away from the individual interests of our countries. The idea is to unite aid as much as possible. Q: Zambia's economic reform programme has, among other things, involved the removal of subsidies in various sectors such as health, education and agriculture. According to many studies the impact has been detrimental to people's lives and standards of living. Do you agree? A: In my view, rapid reforms do not work. In my country [Netherlands], we have moved slowly and we are still playing a role in sectors such as agriculture. Reforms have to be implemented gradually. Reforms without any form of control result in fluctuations such as the ones existing in Zambia. Developing countries lack the capacity to rapidly liberalise and you cannot just leave everything in a developing country to market forces. In fact, it's not good for any society, whether here or in the West, to rapidly reform. However, it's nice to see that Zambia has put in place the PRSP [the IMF-supported Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper] to guide it out of this. We shall not ask them to come up with anything new because we want to follow their policy, they must be in the driver's seat. Q: Unemployment levels are high in Zambia, partly due to the reform programme. In fact trade union studies show that only about 11 percent of Zambia's 4.5 million labour force is in formal employment. What is your comment on this? A: I think Zambia should immediately create productive employment. Zambia needs to produce more in order to generate resources to re-invest in the economy. Liberalisation, in my view, was an attempt towards that direction. But it does not help to privatise agriculture when there's little or no infrastructure to move agricultural products from the point of production to the point of consumption. Market forces cannot, and will not, work in the agriculture sector. We [the Dutch government] for instance still have a strong role in the agriculture sector. From the talks we have had with the minister of agriculture and the minister of tourism, it appears the interest is there to develop these sectors, but the policy is lacking. For instance, you will not achieve any growth in the tourism industry by merely privatising the hotels and lodges. You need proper roads and airstrips for tourists to access these lodges. The World Bank in my view has a role to play in this. They must heavily invest in infrastructure development. I think they [the World Bank] have focused too much on market forces in such matters. Q: Do you think there's still hope for ordinary Zambians, given the high mortality rates as a result of the removal of subsidies on health care? A: I believe with a lot of hard work and the right policies, there's hope. It took between 20 and 30 years for the Asian countries such as Malaysia and Taiwan to get where they are today. From net importers, these countries are now net exporters of various products. Zambia needs sustained efforts and it needs to focus on a single policy instead of changing policies because a Western donor says so. Donors should stay [hands] off a little bit, and merely support the policies Zambia thinks will work for it. Q: At the heart of Zambia's long-term economic problems is the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Do you think Zambia has done enough? A: At the start I think Zambia under-estimated the AIDS problem. They left it until it was too late, and did too little, hence the magnitude [of the problem]. I am concerned that it has taken a toll in the education sector where it has [struck] teachers, because as you know, education contributes greatly to economic development ... [Many] teachers are either sick or dead so they cannot teach children. I think the government should step up its education campaign on AIDS issues. In my country, children in schools are being taught about the disease and the danger of not having protected sex ... It's an enormous task the Zambian government has at hand. Q: Zambia's President Levy Mwanawasa has embarked on a fight against corruption, what are your views on this? A: It's a very positive development. It is also a visible fight because you can see trials going on. Lip service cannot do in fighting corruption, and Zambia needs to fight corruption from the bottom to the top. I am a little worried about tender procedures. I think they must be made as transparent as possible and they must be followed, because if they are not followed, that is also corruption. Bad managers [of state enterprise] must be laid off and not kept just because they are friends, doing so would be corruption also. Our parliaments are very alert and want to know how their taxpayer's money is used. But so far, our parliament is happy with Zambia and its corruption fight.