[afro-nets] Foreign aid not reaching HIV/AIDS programmes (2)

[Peter Burgess <Profitinafrica@aol.com>]

Foreign aid not reaching HIV/AIDS programmes (2)
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Dear Colleagues

I am grateful to Leela for posting the article from the Lancet
about the World Bank and the IMF constraining resources used for
health and education and other social needs, even in the face of
crisis.

The issue deserves a lot more attention, but it is unlikely to
happen because most funding sources will not touch this as it
will almost certainly impact their ability to get funding for
themselves. I am grateful for the fact that I am no longer de-
pending on the official relief and development assistance (ORDA)
community as a source of funding, and am therefore much more
able to offer objective analysis without looking over my shoul-
der at lost future income flows.

It has been obvious for years that "south" governments have in-
sufficient resources to handle the social service dimensions of
modern government without rethinking how government should be
funded. This is a "public finance" issue of huge magnitude.
Sadly the economists involved with the World Bank and the IMF,
and the ORDA community as a whole, have not been up to the task
of addressing this obvious problem and making it a serious pol-
icy issue. It is obvious that there is not enough government
funding to pay for public health and public education, and there
is not enough private economic value adding to make modern
health and education and other economic goods, like infrastruc-
ture affordable. It is a catastrophy of failed development. This
should be obvious. But WHY and HOW?

I have recently read Professor Jeffrey Sachs book on "The End of
Poverty, Economic Possibilities for Our Time" and was really
quite disappointed. Though Sachs describes very well the failure
of development, his solution does not go much beyond more money
for a failed process. I have also read the recent John Perkins
book "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" and am outraged. John
Perkins writes that the policies of the World Bank and the IMF
that most of the professional populace in the "south" has ob-
jected to for years has been orchestrated by what he describes
as a "corporatocracy" that has only one interest set: corporate
profit extracted from lending to the "south", and the financial
failure of the "south" from this lending so that there would be
essentially permanent "dependancy". Basically, good people eve-
rywhere totally conned by a community of reprehensible corpo-
rate, political and ORDA leadership. The problem with Perkins
book, and why I am outraged, is that the results described fit
the facts just too well. I know my consulting opportunities with
the World Bank and the UN ended as soon as I was seen as being
independent and objective (and an accountant) and unwilling to
compromise my analysis. Early on, I got into trouble because I
wanted to redesign projects so that the numbers worked, instead
of the (to me) unacceptable practice of making the numbers fit
the decision criteria.

It seems to me that independent professionals (especially those
in the "south") need to take over the policy analysis space so
that well intentioned "south" government has an alternative to
the World Bank and IMF funded analysis that is clearly self-
serving. To some extent this is what the Transparency and Ac-
countability Network (Tr-Ac-Net) can start to do. At the level
of professional competence we have no problem. There will need
to do something done about funding, but that will hopefully not
be an impossible hurdle. Instead of continuing down the same old
track, new approaches are needed that do not require the World
Bank / IMF stamp of approval.

The Lancet article highlights the need to get the World Bank /
IMF out of the loop and replace their policies and their funding
with something that really works. Professionals in every country
in financial trouble should think very hard about how the prob-
lem of public finance and equitable socio-economic progress can
be addressed in a responsible and practical way. This work
should be subject to a whole lot of critical analysis and opti-
mized as rapidly as possible so that it is credible, and can be
a basis for working outside the World Bank / IMF / ORDA cartel.
The underlying analytical process should result in win-win pro-
gress with value adding equitably shared among stakeholders in-
stead of the prevailing value destruction in the "south" to
build wealth in the "north".

I have done national level development planning in a number of
places over the years, and helped to optimize the use of re-
sources to get the most development benefit. In every case, the
implementation was constrained by what donors would finance, and
almost always it was the least required activities that got
funded. In every case local knowledge was completely adequate to
do excellent planning. I think the challenge we have now is to
get this local knowledge on the record and into the reference
space and media so that the well wishing public in the "north"
can compare independently produced development plans with the
work that is done for the UN, World Bank, USAID and others in
the ORDA cartel.

The failure of development is a catastrophy, and needs to be ad-
dressed vigorously. Tr-Ac-Net knows some of the people who are
already doing this sort of work on a local basis... there are
many many others we don't know. I would love to know who is
around and able to and interested in getting this work done.

Sincerely,

Peter Burgess
Tr-Ac-Net in New York
Tel: +1-212-772-6918
mailto:peterbnyc@gmail.com
The Transparency and Accountability Network
With Kris Dev in Chennai India
and others in South Asia, Africa and Latin America
http://tr-ac-net.blogspot.com