SHIRT OF SHAME
UK gives over £62m in foreign aid to vicious dictator of impoverished African state. He splurges £30m to sponsor Arsenal -- his favourite team
AN IMPOVERISHED African country which has received hundreds of millions of pounds in aid from British taxpayers is paying £30million to sponsor Arsenal – one of the world’s richest football clubs.
Rwanda, which is getting more than £62million this year alone from the UK, has paid the club to promote the country’s tourist industry on players’ shirts.
The astonishing deal will also give Rwanda’s despotic ruler Paul Kagame and his cronies the use of an exclusive hospitality box at the London club’s Emirates Stadium, piles of match-day tickets and access to star players for promotional work.
Last night, furious critics of the UK’s £13billion-a-year foreign aid programme said the deal proves that British taxpayer cash is being flagrantly wasted.
Last year, Britain gave £27 million directly to the Rwandan government for poverty relief and spent a further £37 million on aid projects in the country.
But despite the vast amounts of cash being given by the UK and other countries, hospitals, schools, businesses and homes are without electricity much of the time.
Most people survive on less than £1 a day under Kagame’s tightly controlled authoritarian regime.
Meanwhile, teachers in some parts of Rwanda have not been paid for five months.
Instead, Kagame, who has been accused of murdering and torturing his opponents, funds ‘prestige’ projects such as running an airline which loses £750,000 a week.
The message ‘Visit Rwanda’ will be emblazoned on Arsenal players’ left sleeves and on pitch-side screens, at an annual cost of £10 million for the next three years.
Tory MP Andrew Bridgen described the deal as ‘an own goal for foreign aid’. He added. ‘British taxpayers will be rightly shocked to learn that a country supported by huge handouts from the UK is in turn pumping millions into a fabulously rich football club in London. It’s ludicrous.’
London-based Rwandan human rights campaigner Rene Mugenzi, whose life is under threat from Kagame’s hitmen, said: ‘It is hard to believe that Arsenal really conducted due diligence on this obscene deal, and they should scrap it.
‘How can a country which receives tens of millions of UK aid start spending money on a football club in London, just because the president supports them?’
Earlier this year, International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt pledged the British Government would no longer invest ‘when others should be putting their hands in their pockets’, adding that the public had ‘legitimate’ concerns over how the £13 billion aid budget was spent.
Rwanda is also one of four ‘partner countries’ named in the Scottish Government’s international development policy. The others are Malawi, Pakistan, and Zambia. In September 2017, Scottish aid worth £8.76million was awarded to projects in Rwanda over the next five years. Scotland’s £10million annual aid budget is on top of UK foreign funding, meaning taxpayers here contribute twice. A Department for International Development spokesman said: ‘All UK aid to Rwanda is earmarked for specific programmes, such as education and agriculture. We track results to ensure value for money for UK taxpayers.’
An Arsenal spokesman said: ‘Rwanda… is now regarded as one of the most advanced and respected countries in Africa.
‘We believe that, having conducted due diligence, it is a partnership that will help Rwanda meet their tourism goals while developing football in the country.’
The Rwandan Development Board’s CEO, Clare Akamanzi, said last week: ‘We’re thrilled to be partnering with Arsenal and showcasing the beauty of our country.’
BRITAIN’S extravagant foreign aid policy, driven not by need but by an arbitrary target, has had many indefensible results. These have been documented by The Mail on Sunday. But few can match the absurdity of the deal between Rwandan strongman Paul Kagame and London’s super-rich Arsenal football club.
Mr Kagame is brilliant at promoting himself abroad. But he is feared and disliked at home in his poor, ill-run and increasingly undemocratic country, where he has repeatedly changed the constitution to ensure that he stays in power. His opponents face violent suppression and jail.
But somehow the Department for International Development (DFID) is still happy to give him £27million a year in poverty relief and to spend a further £37 million a year on other aid in Rwanda. In what can only be described as blatant mockery of this generosity, Mr Kagame’s government is to spend £30million over three years buying sponsorship – and perks – from Arsenal.
DFID argues that it is helping Rwanda to stand on its own two feet. It would be more accurate to say that it is helping Rwanda’s unpleasant government to reach into British taxpayers’ pockets with both hands.
There is good foreign aid, and plenty of it, and The Mail on Sunday strongly endorses it. But if President Kagame can afford to spend millions on buying advertisements on Arsenal football shirts, it is clear that either he does not need our money or that he is mis-spending it.
The International Development Secretary, Penny Mordaunt, has rightly said we should not spend our money when others are in a position to pay their own way. She recognises legitimate public concerns. This is surely a case where she can intervene.
But in the long run these problems will continue until Britain abandons its dogmatic policy of spending 0.7 per cent of Gross National Income on aid, rather than judging requests solely on their merits.