by Professor Alemayehu G. Mariam
The rise of the “baksheesh state” in Ethiopia
My
long time readers by now know that I mint my own words and phrases
whenever I find it necessary to convey my ideas and arguments with
greater clarity, precision and creativity. In this commentary I
introduce the concept of the “baksheesh state” (beggar state) to examine
the political economy of the ruling Tigrean Peoples Liberation Front
(TPLF) regime in Ethiopia.
In
various parts of the Middle East and South Asia, there is a tradition
of “baksheesh” which has various manifestations. One may practice
“baksheesh” by “alms giving” or charity to the poor as part of one’s
religious duty. “Tipping for services rendered” is another
manifestation of that custom as is making payment to those in authority
“for granting special favors.” “Baksheesh” also refers to a culture of
political corruption and moral bankruptcy where government officials
demand “gifts” and “presents” at the highest levels to aggrandize
enormous wealth while officials at the lowest levels supplement their
meagre incomes with it.
I introduce the concept of the “baksheesh state” to analyze regimes and states that sustain themselves primarily through international alms (aid + loans) and engage in aid/loan racketeering (use of legitimate organizations for illegal purposes) through a variety of corrupt practices. Just as I have previously argued that the highest stage of African dictatorship is “thugtatorship”,
I argue here that the “baksheesh state” (beggar state) is a predictable
mutation of the garden variety African “kleptocracy” where political
power is a means for public officials and elite members of the ruling
class to accumulate personal wealth by effectively privatizing and
siphoning the public treasury and resources at the expense of the
broader population.
My
notion of the African baksheesh state hearkens back to the admonitions
of the well-known Nigerian nationalist, author and statesman Chief
Obafemi Awolowo who urged constant vigilance against the rise and
entrenchment of “beggar states” in post-independence Africa. In 1967, at
the 4th Summit meeting of the Organization of African Unity, Chief Awo
sternly warned:
Today,
Africa is a Continent of COMPETING BEGGAR NATIONS. We vie with one
another for favours from our former colonial masters; and we
deliberately fall over one another to invite neocolonialists to come to
our different territories to preside over our economic fortunes…
…
We may continue and indeed we will be right to continue to use the
power and influence which sovereignty confers, as well as the tactics
and manoeuvres which international diplomacy legitimatises, to extract
more and more alms from our benefactors. But the inherent evil
remains—and it remains with us and with no one else: unless a beggar
shakes off and irrevocably turns his back on, his begging habit, he will
forever remain a beggar. For, the more he begs the more he develops the
beggar characteristics of lack of initiative, courage, drive and
self-reliance.
Democracy
has been pithily defined as a “government of the people, by the people
and for the people.” In contrast, a “baksheeshocracy” is a government of
aid donors and loaners, for aid donors and loaners and by aid donors
and loaners. Alternatively, the baksheesh state could be understood as a
government of panhandlers, for panhandlers and by panhandlers.
There
is little question or debate that under the TPLF baksheesh state in
Ethiopia has handily won the race to the bottom to become the #1 African
beggar state. Indeed, the TPLF regime is the prototype and archetype of the baksheesh state in Africa today. It is well-established that Ethiopia has been and remains Africa’s largest recipient of foreign aid. According to the Development Assistance Group ETHIOPIA,
Official Development Assistance given to Ethiopia for 2008 was $3.819
billion, $3,525 billion in 2010 and $3,563 billion in 2011. In 2011, “Britain chose Ethiopia to be its biggest recipient of development aid during the next four years.” The U.S. increased its aid to the TPLF regime from nearly $1.8 billion in 2005 to nearly $3.5 billion in 2008.
International
aid donors and loaners subsidize and transfer massive amounts of funds
in various forms (humanitarian, development, military, bilateral and
multilateral aid, NGO aid, etc.) to baksheesh states such as Ethiopia to
advance their own strategic and geopolitical agendas. They use their
“aid” to manipulate and control the small clique of malignant
kleptocrats who cling to power by force to enrich themselves by skimming
off a substantial portion of the international aid and loans they
receive in the name of their people. One of the notorious ways in which
donors and loaners manipulate baksheesh states is by vastly increasing
the amount of aid they give to states who enlist in their proxy service.
For instance, after the late Meles Zenawi invaded Somalia in 2006, the U.S. increased its aid to his regime from nearly $1.8 billion in 2005 to nearly $3.5 billion in 2008.
The
TPLF baksheesh state is hopelessly addicted to aid as a dope fiend is
addicted to hallucinogenic drugs. That regime follows the dictum, “Ask
not how YOU can handle your country to make it self-sufficient, ask how
you can panhandle for your country so that it can never become
self-sufficient.” The leaders of the ruling TPLF regard aid as “free
money” that flows like the River Nile without end and without
conditions. They are completely oblivious of Chief Awo’s admonition that beggars that beg remain beggars forever.
For the TPLF leaders, international aid and loans are manna from the
Western gods that will rain upon them just as predictably as the passing
of the seasons. There may be less “aid-rain” one year and more another;
but the Western gods never, never fail to send the “aid-rains” to the
TPLF baksheesh state. Although it is proverbially said that “God helps
those who help themselves”, the Western aid gods help only those at the
top of the TPLF aid-food-chain who help themselves to the unending
bounty of the free aid money they provide them annually.
The
effect of unconditional and unending aid on the TPLF baksheesh state
over the past two decades has been devastating. The TPLF bakshseesh
state has been assured in words and actions that it does not have to
maintain good governance or even pretend to go through the motions of
good governance as a condition for aid and loans. The TPLF leaders know
aid money will flow into their pockets regardless of what they do or do
not. It is an indisputable fact that after the TPLF regime jailed
nearly all of the opposition leaders and journalists, human rights
advocates and civil society leaders following the 2005 election, the U.S. rewarded it by increasing its aid from nearly $1.8 billion in 2005 to nearly $3.5 billion in 2008.
It
is also an indisputable fact that the TPLF baksheesh state in Ethiopia
receives free aid money from the Western donors and loaners with no
strings attached; and in rare cases where conditions are set, they are
never enforced. As a result, the TPLF masterminds and ringleaders often
use international aid and loans to cling to power by using aid and loan
money to maintain their large patronage system. By cleverly
transmuting aid and loan money in their budget, they provide tens of
thousands of jobs to their political supporters and increase the size of
their security, police and military services. In August 2011, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and the BBC reported the
“Ethiopian government is using millions of pounds of international aid
to punish their political opponents.” The Bureau presented compelling
evidence of how “aid is being used as a weapon of oppression propping up
the government of Meles Zenawi.” The gargantuan political machine they
created to buy and steal votes delivered a stunning 99.6 percent victory
in the 2010 “election”.
The
TPLF baksheesh state is dis-incentivized by the international donors
and loaners from striving to become self-sufficient. In March 2011, I
wrote a commentary entitled, “The Moral Hazard of U.S. Policy in Africa”
arguing that a regime that is heavily dependent on the safety net of
foreign aid, massive infusion of multilateral loans and a perpetual
supply of humanitarian assistance will behave differently if it were left to its own devices to deal with the consequences of
a mismanaged economy, debilitating corruption and proliferating
poverty. For over two decades, the TPLF baksheesh regime has gone out
into the international community with bowls begging for food to feed
millions of Ethiopians without being held accountable by the donors and
loaners. As a result, the regime has been completely indifferent to the
plight of the people. In a candid moment during the 2008 famine in
Southern Ethiopia, the late Meles Zenawi tried to absolve himself of
responsibility while revealing his depraved indifference for the
welfare of the starving people of Southern Ethiopia. Defending himself
against accusations of indifference and ineptitude, Meles said, “That
was a failure on our part. We were late in recognising we had an
emergency on our hands. We did not know that a crisis was brewing in
these specific areas until emaciated children began to appear.” Given
the inescapable fact that food crises (emergencies) are so pervasive,
recurrent and cyclical in Ethiopia, it is mind-boggling to hear a
“leader” of a country be so uninformed and clueless to a point where he
had to wait for evidence of skeletal children before he is convinced
that there is a famine “emergency”.
The unfortunate fact is that even in 2014, the response of the TPLF baksheesh regime would be no different. “We were late in recognising we had an emergency on our hands...” Why
is it that the regime has been unable to deal decisively with the
question of famine, hunger and malnutrition year after year, decade
after decade? The answer lies in the fact that the leaders of the TPLF
baksheesh state are “Western aid/loan welfare kings and queens” who find
it far more profitable to sit on their behinds and engorge themselves
with millions of dollars skimmed from international aid and loans than
putting their shoulders to the wheel of economic development and their
noses to the grindstone of good governance. They are completely
indifferent to alternatives to aid and loans as the long-term solution
to poverty. Thus, international aid aids not only in the entrenchment of
bad governance in Ethiopia but also poverty itself.
It
has been rumored for some time that the World Bank, the International
Monetary Fund and some of the Western donors have been softly urging the
TPLF baksheesh regime to untether itself from the tits of the foreign
aid/loan cash cow. Last week, the regime announced with some fanfare
that it will be seeking access the international bond markets. It is
somewhat encouraging to hear that the TPLF regime expects to get off its
duff after sucking on the foreign aid lollipop for nearly a quarter of a
century and seek alternatives to panhandling. The TPLF “Finance Ministry” announced , “We are aiming for late December to early January at the latest as the time for our debut into the international capital markets. Bonds are very much part of the plan to improve infrastructure.”
It
is amazing that the TPLF regime finally, after 23 years, had its
epiphany and discovered capital markets. It is curious that the TPLF
regime was completely unaware of such a financing mechanism when it
launched its illegal “bond” sales to Diaspora Ethiopians in the United
States for nickels and dimes to build the fairy-taled 5,250-megawatt
Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile River. Could the
Diaspora bond “sales” possibly be itsy-bitsy baksheesh in their pockets? Just
so they know that we know they have not pulled the wool over our eyes,
we note that as the TPLF regime is stage-managing its current public
relations campaign for outreach to international capital markets, it
had allowed massive capital flight and illicit financial flows from
Ethiopia for nearly a decade. In 2011, Global Financial Integrity reported that
“Ethiopia lost $11.7 billion to outflows of ill-gotten gains between
2000 and 2009.” Imagine what $12 billion dollars could have done to
propel Ethiopia’s economic development!!!
The
TPLF baksheesh state in Ethiopia is so dependent on donors and loaners
that its budget (anticipated revenues and expenditures for a given year)
depends overwhelmingly on budget support from the loaners and
donors. The US, UK, and the World Bank (not including other European or
industrialized countries) have provided 50 to 60 percent of the national budget of
the TPLF baksheesh state for years, according to the Organization for
Economic Co-Operation and Development. In her book, “Dead Aid”, Dambissa
Moyo argues that the primary source of revenue (budget) for the TPLF
regime is foreign aid constituting “a whopping 97 percent of the government's budget.”
Budget support has
been the preferred method of delivering multi-donor “development
assistance” to many developing countries and particularly to Ethiopia as
a poverty reduction strategy. “Budget support” is supposed to be a
kinder and gentler version of the “Washington Consensus”, that
abominable and villainous “neoliberal” economic policy straightjacket
devised by the the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and U.S.
Treasury Department in 1989 and imposed on crisis–ridden developing
economies to presumably stabilize and put them on the path to trade,
investment and expanded domestic entrepreneurship. (In an article
included in a book edited by the old anti-neo-liberal warhorse Joe
Stiglitz, Meles proclaimed, “The neo-liberal paradigm is a dead end
incapable of bringing about the African renaissance, and that a
fundamental shift in paradigm is required to effect a revival.”)
On
the grave-site of the “Washington Consensus” grew the tree of budget
support where baksheesh states could seek shelter from the exacting
demands of donors and loaners and untether themselves from the attached
strings of the Consensus. With budget support, the donors and loaners
would no longer impose aid/loan conditions or demand policy alignments
from recipient countries. Rather, they would select and align their
conditions with the recipient country’s strategy on development and
poverty reduction. Simply stated, budget support is a clever strategy to
conceal the rampant corruption that takes place in baksheesh states and
shield corrupt leaders in recipient countries from public
accountability and transparency.
In
September 2009, Meles “called on international development partners to
support Ethiopia’s growth and transformation over the coming five years
thorough releasing budget aid.” His harebrained and much vaunted “Growth
and Transformation Plan”, based largely on “development aid” through
budget support, is expected to propel Ethiopia into becoming a “middle
income country by 2015”. Meles
quixotically claimed that by undertaking massive infrastructure
construction and large-scale agricultural production, Ethiopia will
achieve middle-income status. In its “Country Development Cooperation Strategy, 2011-2015, USAID chimed in declaring,
“Over the next five years, Ethiopia can be transformed to a stable,
growing economy, with solid social services and a resilient
population.” We are now two months away from 2015 and a year away from 2016 and Ethiopia remains the second poorest country in the world!!!
The “developmental state” v. the “baksheesh state”
On September 25, 2014, President Obama said,
“there is no better example of progress in Africa than what has been
happening in Ethiopia — one of the fastest-growing economies in the
world.” The President’s statement is not only unfounded in any
demonstrable fact but also embarrassing because he was merely parroting a
canard cleverly fabricated and perpetrated by the late Meles Zenawi.
For
the past decade, Meles Zenawi and his disciples have been bragging that
their “developmental state” has produced stratospheric economic growth
in Ethiopia in the first decade of the 21st Century. In March 2009, Meles
crowed that he expected the Ethiopian economy to grow by 12.8 percent.
He assured his Parliament in 2010, “We will be seeing an economic growth
rate of 10.1 percent this year, while inflation will fall to 3.9
percent.” Such hyperbolic claims were roundly discounted by various international institutions. According to a 2010 report of the Center for Global Development,
average growth rates per capita for the period 1996–2008 was 4.1
percent. The International Monetary Fund also stated in 2009 that given
the global economic crises, Ethiopia could expect only about 6% economic
growth. In November 2007, the Economist magazine reported,
“The government claims that the economy has been growing at an
impressive 10% a year since 2003-04, but the real figure is probably
more like 5-6%, which is little more than the average for sub-Saharan
Africa.” The Economist magazine in March 2012 concluded
Meles’ claims of “double-digit growth rates predicted by the government
of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi look fanciful.”
There is no question that Meles cooked the growth statistics as I have demonstrated beyond any doubt in my commentary, “The Voodoo Economics of Meles Zenawi”. In 2011, Meles admitted that “some” of his economic statistics were questionable when he said,
“The precision of the (economic) data is disputed, and we have an
ongoing conversation ourselves with partners, including the government
itself, about some of that data. But the headline issue, which nobody
disputes, is that there has been from a low base tremendous development
progress in Ethiopia over the last eight to ten years or so.” Benjamin
Disraeli correctly observed that there are “Lies, damned lies, and
statistics.”
Meles’
self-styled “developmental state” is actually a thinly-veiled
bakshseesh state garbed in neo-socialist ideological rant against
“neoliberalism”. In his unfinished “Master’s theses” at
Erasmus University, Meles condemned the “neo-liberal state” as a
“predatory” “night watchman state”, and defined it as “a state whose
intervention in the economy is very limited”. He argued the neo-liberal
state is structurally incapable of “overcome[ing] the vicious circles
and poverty traps.”
In
contrast to the “predatory night watchman neo-liberal state”, Meles’
argued that his “developmental state“ conceives of development as “a
political process first and economic and social process later.” Meles’
“developmental state” plans, initiates, implements, monitors and totally
controls the development process. It is the only institution with the
capacity to “eliminate rent-seeking behavior” [which economists
variously define as a system in which “individuals or groups lobby
government for taxing, spending and regulatory policies that confer
financial benefits or other special advantages upon them at the expense
of the taxpayers or of consumers or of other groups or individuals with
which the beneficiaries may be in economic competition.”] The private
sector is at best a spectator and a passive lackey (not even partner) to
the developmental state which has a singularly commanding role in the
economy. According to Meles, “without a developmental state, most if not
all of these [developing] countries will be stuck in the poverty trap
and the substantial business and middle class will not be created.”
Meles’ “developmental state” is the silver bullet that could solve all
of Ethiopia’s and Africa’s economic, social and political problems.
In my commentary “The Fakeonomics of Meles Zenawi”,
I demonstrated that Meles’ “growth and transformation plan” (the
undergirding structural foundation of the developmental state) is
nothing more than a make-a-wish list of stuff. It purports to be based
on a ‘long-term vision’ of making Ethiopia ‘a country where democratic
rule, good-governance and social justice reigns.’ It aims to ‘build an
economy which has a modern and productive agricultural sector with
enhanced technology and an industrial sector’ and ‘increase per capita
income of citizens so that it reaches at the level of those in
middle-income countries.’ It boasts of ‘pillar strategies’ to ‘sustain
faster and equitable economic growth’, ‘maintain agriculture as a major
source of economic growth,’ ‘create favorable conditions for the
industry to play key role in the economy,’ ‘expand infrastructure and
social development,’ ‘build capacity and deepen good governance’ and
‘promote women and youth empowerment and equitable benefit.’
However,
stripped of its collection of hollow economic slogans, clichés,
buzzwords and catchphrases, Meles’ growth and transformation plan is
plain sham-o-nomics. If the “growth and transformation plan” is a sham so is the developmental state! In
2009 at a high level meeting of Western donor policy makers in Berlin, a
German diplomat suggested that Ethiopia’s economic woes could be traced
to “Meles’ poor understanding of economics”. (It is a pity the German
diplomat was unaware that Meles almost got a Master’s degree in
economics from Erasmus University and that he “studied for a degree in Business Administration at the Open University in 1991 (graduating first in his class).”
Meles
went to extraordinary lengths to justify the perpetual (dictatorial)
rule of the “developmental state” because there is “the need for
continuity of policy. Developmental policy is unlikely to transform a
poor country into a developed one within the time frame of the typical
election cycle. There has to be continuity of policy if there is to be
sustained and accelerated economic growth. In a democratic polity
uncertainly about the continuity of policy is unavoidable. More
damagingly for development, politicians will be unable to think beyond
the next election etc. It is argued therefore that the developmental
state will have to be undemocratic in order to stay in power long enough
to carry out successful development.”
The
private sector must totally submit to the “developmental state” because
it is that state that has the capacity to maintain a “stable,
democratic and at the same time developmental coalition… in a developing
country.” The developmental state “must have the ability and will to
reward and punish the private sector actors depending on whether their
activities are developmental or rent seeking.” In his conclusion, Meles issued the following mind-boggling but supremely self-serving pronouncement:
Where
the circumstances for a developmental state do not exist the chances
for a stable democracy to emerge are indeed very remote. Where they
exist while there is no guarantee for democracy, there is a reasonable
chance for a developmental and democratic state to emerge. In the
end, therefore, the chances of a stable democracy in a poor country are
related intimately to the emergence of a developmental state and
accelerated development associated with it.
Simply stated, Ethiopia can only achieve economic growth, development, democracy, good governance, human rights, etc., IF and ONLY IF
it is led by a permanently entrenched political party committed to the
ideology of developmental statism under the leadership of one man. It is a stunning theory of political economy coming from an arrogant autodidact!
Meles
fancied himself as a prodigious economist and a polymath. Steeped in
his youth in the bush in the now discredited political economy of
Marxism, Meles (and his disciples) once in power, tried to redeem and
rhetorically reinvent himself as the “chief architect” of
“revolutionary democracy” and the “developmental state” in Ethiopia.
Incredibly, neither Meles nor his witless acolytes took the opportunity
to articulate their theory and practice of revolutionary democracy or
the developmental state. Instead, they have chosen to mount blathering
rhetorical attacks on “neoliberalism” while making a beeline to the
gilded gates of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the
embassies of Western governments with stretched out hands and cupped
palms for alms. “Baksheesh, pretty please!!!”
The BIG LIE about the developmental state in Ethiopia
History’s
greatest propagandist said, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep
repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” When that big
lie is repeated by the biggest leader in the world, it has the potential
to become a big truth. But “A lie however big does not become truth,
wrong does not become right and evil does not become good, just because
it is repeated by the high and mighty or even accepted by a majority.”
… I think there’s no better example than what has been happening in Ethiopia — one of the fastest-growing economies in the world.
We have seen enormous progress in a country that once had great
difficulty feeding itself. It’s now not only leading the pack in terms
of agricultural production in the region, but will soon be an exporter potentially not just of agriculture, but also power because of the development that’s been taking place there.
It
is embarrassing for the President of the United States to be so
misinformed to the point of publicly misrepresenting a simply verifiable
fact. Just three weeks before the President made his statement, USAID’s August 15, 2014 report which completely contradicted him:
Despite a fast-growing economy, Ethiopia remains one of the poorest countries in the world. It
experiences high levels of both chronic and acute food insecurity,
particularly among rural populations and smallholder farmers.
Approximately
44% percent of children under 5 years of age in Ethiopia are severely
chronically malnourished, or stunted. This lack of nutrients results in
irreversible cognitive and physical impairments. The long-term
effects of chronic malnutrition are estimated to cost the Government of
Ethiopia approximately 16.5 percent of its GDP every year according to
the UN World Food Program (WFP).
If
Ethiopia's economy has been growing by double-digits annually in excess
of 10 percent as the TPLF regime claims, but loses “approximately 16.5
percent of its GDP every year”, is it economically developing? This
reminds me of Alice’s conversation with the Queen in Lewis Carroll’s,
“Through the Looking Glass”. “There’s no use trying, one can’t believe
impossible things,” said Alice in exasperation. The Queen corrected her.
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice. When I was your age, I always
did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as
six impossible things before breakfast.” So we must also believe in at
least six impossible things about the TPLF baksheesh regime before
breakfast.
For
several years now, Meles and his TPLF disciples have been advertising
their “Productive Safety Net Programme” (driven by foreign aid in the
form of budget support) as the mechanism to end the “cycle of dependence
on food aid” by bridging “production deficits and protecting
household and community assets”. In October 2011, Meles told his party
faithful: “We have devised a plan which will enable us to produce
surplus and be able to feed ourselves by 2015 without the need for food
aid.” His “plan to produce surplus” was to be achieved by “leasing” out
millions of hectares of the country’s prime agricultural land to
so-called international investors (land grabbers) whose only aim is to
raise crops for export. According to the World Food Programme report
(WFP) (the branch of the United Nations and the world's largest
humanitarian organization addressing hunger and promoting food
security), in 2014, 2.7 million Ethiopians and WFP plans to assist
nearly 6.5 million vulnerable people with food and special nutritional
assistance, including school children, farmers, people living with
HIV/AIDS, mothers and infants, refugees and many others. The humanitarian requirement for 2012 identified 3.76 million people in need of emergency food aid;
in 2011, the number was 4.5 million; 5 million in 2010 and 2009 and 6
million in 2008.34 million Ethiopians--40 percent of the population--are
considered chronically hungry.
U.S.
food assistance in Ethiopia is administered Ethiopia exclusively
through three foreign NGOs (Food for the Hungry (FH), Save the Children
(SC) Catholic Relief Services (CRS) and one domestic NGO, Relief Society of Tigray (REST). REST describes itself as the “humanitarian wing of the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF)”. As I have demonstrated previously,
after the passage of the so-called “Proclamation on Charities and
Society”, “the number of civil society organizations in Ethiopia was
reduced from about 4600 to about 1400 in a period of three months in
early 2010. The only domestic civil society institutions allowed to
operate in the country are those that are wholly owned subsidiaries of
the TPLF or others who have established partnership with individuals and
organizations affiliated with the TPLF. The TPLF administers
foreign aid through its subsidiary TPLF REST. Simply stated, the TPLF
regime begs for development aid and launders it to enrich its leaders
and members of the ruling class through its own “NGO”. Hence, the baksheesh state.
The fall of the baksheesh state in Ethiopia: Can rich beggars eliminate poverty and achieve economic development by begging?
I
have previously written that the late Meles Zenawi was Africa’s
beggar-in-chief. I did not make the statement out of malice or
disrespect to the man but strictly based on fact. In April 2012, Meles told the China Daily, “The fact of the matter is that it was the Africans who asked the Chinese to build this conference hall for Africa. It
is not the Chinese who offered to build it. We asked them to build it
and they agreed and they have delivered, and we have no reason to
criticize this.” The Chinese squeezed out $200 million in hard cold cash
to build and deliver the African Union Hall.
Simply
stated, Africans themselves could have built their own iconic signature
building by chipping into an “Africa Union Building Fund”, but why pay
out of your own pocket when you can beg or pick someone else’s? To add
insult to injury, the tiled silver dome which is the centerpiece of the
African Union Hall shockingly resembles a giant overturned beggar's
bowl. That was why I wrote my angry commentary “African Beggars Hall”.
The bottom line is that the developmental state of Meles and his
disciples is based precisely on the same logic: Why bust your behind
trying to develop the economy on your own when you can panhandle your way into economic development and growth?
In
her book, “Dead Aid”, Dambisa Moyo debunked the fable that the billions
of dollars in aid sent and loans provided by Western and other
industrialized countries to Africa have helped to reduce poverty and
increase growth. She demonstrates that despite billions of dollars in
aid and loans, the incidence and severity of poverty in Africa has
increased while economic growth has declined. African countries
(regimes) have become addicted to aid which has distorted local
economies and served as a petri dish for the propagation of corruption.
Moyo categorically states no country has ever developed by sucking on
foreign aid. She argues, “aid has never created jobs in the African
continent.” What aid has done is make lazy and shiftless African
governments and regimes even more lazy and shiftless. Moyo argues
Africans do not need aid and handouts; they need trade, foreign
investments, capital markets, remittances, micro-finance and savings to
spur economic growth and reduce poverty. She points to South Africa,
Botswana, China, Brazil and India as successful examples of development
without massive and unending foreign aid. For Moyo, Africans need jobs
and become entrepreneurs and she places her hopes on Africa’s burgeoning
youth population.
Moyo
is not opposed to all aid. She has no objections to humanitarian aid
given to remediate natural and other disasters. She thinks aid provided
by NGO’s is at best “band aid” on serious structural problems. Her
objection is to the billions of dollars transferred from Western
governments and multilateral institutions and wasted by African
governments and regimes. She is correct in insisting that Western aid
and loans fuel corruption, encourage African governments to abdicate
their responsibilities to provide, education, health care and care for
the welfare of their citizens and allow someone from the outside to come
in and do their jobs. It is an undeniable fact that Africans must be
able to develop and grow without foreign aid or aid-related assistance.
For
debunking the fable of foreign aid driven African development, Moyo was
crucified by the international poverty pimps whose very high paying
jobs depend on peddling aid as a vehicle for African development.
Billionaire Bill Gates characterized Moyo’s book as “promoting evil.”
Moyo responded, “To say that my book ‘promotes evil’ or to allude to my
corrupt value system is both inappropriate and disrespectful." Moyo
needs to be mindful that no amount of evidence can convince a
bleeding-heart liberal with a Messiah complex who has made up his mind
that aid is the solution to poverty that aid is not a solution to
poverty.
In 2004, USAID issued its CDCS entitled “Breaking the Cycle of Food Crises: Famine Prevention in Ethiopia.” That report stated,
Ethiopia,
its neighbors and its development partners have collectively failed to
break the downward spiral of hunger, poverty and recurring food crises,
which is a critical first step in improving the health and economic
conditions of present and future generations of Ethiopians…. [S]uccessfully
addressing this challenge will require Ethiopian leadership, commitment
and the will to change. Evidence on Ethiopia’s performance is
compelling and clear. The country has performed badly over the
years, even relative to most other African countries, and to East Africa
specifically… The poor performance of the economy is not due to
drought, but results from the weak economic policies of the country over
a sustained period—characterized by low rates of investment in
economic growth and agriculture by both government and the commercial
private sector, low levels of capacity, and low rates of agricultural
and nonagricultural growth. In turn poor economic performance has led to worsening social standards, and created an increasingly fragile state…
In
2014, the TPLF baksheesh state and its development partners have failed
to break the downward spiral of hunger, poverty and recurring food
crises. That is an undeniable fact!!!
A beggar state for a poor people?
Joseph
de Maistre, the French philosopher and diplomat said, “Every nation
gets the government it deserves.” Does that mean poor Ethiopians
deserve a “beggar government”?
I
have often pondered the meaning of de Maistre’s dictum. Logically, in a
country where there are democratic elections, it is incumbent upon the
voters to be careful who they vote for; and if they vote for incompetent
and corrupt officials, they must accept the consequences of their poor
choices until such time that they can throw the scoundrels out of
office. What if a people do not have a government but a regime that
has imposed itself upon them for decades and clings to power by sheer
force and by stealing elections? Do they deserve the regime that is imposed upon them?
In
May 2015, Ethiopians will get a regime they don’t deserve and once
again they will completely fail in their efforts to get a government
they deserve. They will have an opportunity to choose between Tweedle
Dee TPLF and Tweedle Dum TPLF. In the end, they are guaranteed to get a
Tweedle TPLF baksheesh regime with a victory margin of at least 99.6
percent.
In July 2012, I wrote a commentary entitled, “Ethiopia in BondAid?”
I argued that bondage is the state of being bound by or subjected to
some external power or control. When people are held in permanent
involuntary servitude, they are in “bondage slavery”. When they bound by
debt, they are in “debt bondage”. When they are bound by aid, they are
in bond-aid.
Before
Africa became “independent” in the 1960s, Africans were held under the
yoke of “colonial bondage”. “International aid” addiction has
transformed Africa's colonial bondage into neo-colonial bondaid. Could
it be reasonably argued that Ethiopians are sinking deeper and deeper
into a quicksand of “bondaid” in the second decade of 21st Century?
Perhaps Shakespeare has an inspirational thought for Ethiopia’s poor:
The world is not thy friend nor the world’s law:
The world affords no law to make thee rich;
Then be not poor, but break it…
The world affords no law to make thee rich;
Then be not poor, but break it…
“Unless a beggar shakes off and irrevocably turns his back on his begging habit, he will forever remain a beggar. The more he begs the more he develops the beggar characteristics of lack of initiative, courage, drive and self-reliance.” Chief Obafemi Awolowo
(To be continued…)
Professor
Alemayehu G. Mariam teaches political science at California State
University, San Bernardino and is a practicing defense lawyer.
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