THERE is a long and storied history behind the monetary aid that the US provides to sub-Saharan African countries. The US Agency for International Development (USAid) estimates almost $80bn is invested in the continent each year, while trade with the US has tripled over the past decade.
Yet despite this constant influx of money, chronic social, societal and structural problems persist. Amid the recent economic crisis and subsequent tightening of budgets, US citizens — and their congressmen, by proxy — have begun to question the effectiveness of US aid packages.
At a forum in 2011, then-US secretary of state Hillary Clinton said that “too often, donors’ decisions are driven more by our own political interests or our policy preferences or development orthodoxies than by our partners’ needs”.
This assessment of US aid policy proved to be prophetic. Ben Leo, senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, released a study last week on the correlation between US aid priorities in sub-Saharan Africa and the actual needs of people living in these countries.
According to Mr Leo, he first embarked on the project after serving as a policy adviser to the White House on issues related to national security. People would ask him what US aid should go towards, and his answer would always be: “Whatever would have the greatest impact on the largest number of lives.” People often reacted strangely to this response, he said, prompting him to wonder whether aid policy was based on actual, on-the-ground reporting or on a mix of “data, personal experience and caricatures”.
His findings paint a startling picture of a US aid policy focused on things many sub-Saharan Africans do not see as major issues. Though the idea that donor governments’ priorities should be in line with the needs of these countries is a “widely accepted principle”, Mr Leo says “existing methodologies and practices do not address the fundamental question of whether donor governments, including the US, are prioritising those issues or themes that matter most to the local population”.
Catherine An, media associate at the Center for Global Development, said: “In Africa, the US funds largely health and education programmes while Africans themselves consider jobs, the economy and infrastructure their top priorities.”
Using yearly surveys from Afrobarometer, Mr Leo shows there is a huge gulf between what the US sees as the major issues in Africa and what African countries believe are their biggest challenges.
His study raises questions about the role US aid should play in the development of growing economies. Many of the policy questions come down to “whether donors should disregard what people say is the most important and instead function as a social safety net or service provider of last resort”.
There is a range of reasons for this discrepancy. On the simplest level, the distance between US legislators and the places where aid goes makes it hard for them to truly understand what these countries need. Congressmen do not receive public opinion polls from African countries and therefore rely on domestic groups, which often have other agendas.
US policy makers are also very goal-orientated. They want to see the tangible results of their aid packages, especially in these fiscally conscious times. Problems such as jobs and security are often too nebulous, where as food programmes and vaccines are concrete symbols representative of their idea of “aid”.
Mr Leo said: “Issues such as private-sector development and employment opportunities have received less donor attention, partly due to their complexity, dependence upon benign or supportive domestic political economy conditions, and difficulty in establishing concrete linkages between assistance activities and policy and development outcomes.”
When looking at the studies of surveys over the past decade, Mr Leo found the most frequently cited problems were jobs and income, infrastructure and economic policy, and poverty. Yet only 16% of US assistance has been focused on the most prevalent issues facing Africans. More than half of US aid goes towards “health-related intervention”, even though it does not rank high on the list of issues that Africans see as the most relevant.
“Over the past decade, Kenya has received roughly $5bn in US development commitments — making the country the largest regional recipient of US development dollars by far,” Ms An said. “During this time, Kenyans have repeatedly cited the same three national problems as their priorities: jobs, infrastructure and macroeconomic policies. And during the past decade, only 6% of US development aid focused on these issues.”
When Mr Leo plotted the commonly cited needs from African surveys against US aid priorities, he found that “US alignment with core concerns has exceeded 50% in only two African countries (Burkina Faso and Botswana)” and on average, “less than one-third of US assistance has been aligned with people’s top three concerns in 11 African nations over time”.
US aid is not all going to waste, though. A number of programmes are working towards solving real-world problems that face ordinary citizens in African countries. Mr Leo cited the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) as one organisation that is letting countries themselves present proposals for projects and programmes they believe would be helpful.
Because a lack of infrastructure results in an average loss of 2% of gross domestic product for the sub-Saharan African region each year, almost all of these countries use the MCC aid for infrastructure-related projects: roads, power, bridges and so forth.
The Overseas Private Investment Corporation provides funding and political risk insurance to countries that promote US companies and interests abroad. In Togo, this programme helped build a power plant that eliminated blackouts, increasing electricity access to households and reduced energy costs for businesses.
“There has been a clear evolution in (Washington) DC over the past year, with an increase in appreciation of what’s happening on the continent,” Mr Leo said. “The Obama administration has planned on putting a greater emphasis on working with governments and business to get things done.”
As the African Growth and Opportunity Act trade legislation is set to expire next year, it will be crucial for the US to re-examine its policy initiatives. Next year, President Barack Obama is also hosting a first-of-its-kind summit with all African heads of state.
“I’m hopeful that this will be a bold step towards more sound policy decisions related to what sub-Saharan African countries truly need,” Mr Leo said.