£11m aid fiasco – and a lesson we never learn
Your article last week showing how £11million of our foreign aid money was spent on 25 villages in Ghana with such little effect left me feeling frustrated – because it should work.
The injection of large sums of money into developing countries otherwise gripped by poverty or war should, in theory, improve lives and raise people out of poverty, leading to sustainable growth and development.
Sadly, the truth is that foreign aid has often presented more challenges than opportunities.
We’ve seen small improvements across the globe, from reducing poverty to slowing population growth to curing and preventing diseases – progress that would have been absent without an outpouring of foreign support.
But there is a problem in that the countries we help often have a phalanx of corrupt, meddling and overpaid bureaucrats. Shulah Clarkson, Ormesby, Norfolk
In 2008 the Rotary Club of Leigh commenced a project with Ashanti Development, a London-based charity, to refurbish the village of Bimma in the Ashanti region of Ghana. Over the next three years we raised and spent about £80,000 – we provided six capped and pumped boreholes, a foodprocessing plant, a secondary school and a kindergarten, and gave loans that enabled villagers to start small enterprises.
This village is now the biggest producer of vegetables in Ashanti and the 2,4000 inhabitants have worked themselves out of poverty. They did all the work themselves with us providing materials, advice and specialist skills. From losing one in five children to malnutrition and waterborne diseases, they now don’t lose any.
If we can do it, why can’t the Government do the same? Barrie Coates, Rotary Club of Leigh
People in poor countries have the same aspirations as those in rich countries – to have the same opportunities, good healthcare, clean running water and highquality schools. The key to understanding and solving the problem of poverty is to recognise why it arises in the first place. Ria Harding, Somersham, Cambridgeshire
I have made five trips to Kenya and Johannesburg with a youth organisation to help build homes and kitchens for orphans. By doing this I saw first-hand that my money and my efforts helped benefit the communities there. Richard Stephen, Buckley, Flintshire
It should come as no surprise that the Government’s pumping of millions of pounds of aid into a group of Ghanaian villages produced no tangible improvements. Charities would never engage in such mad ‘fund and forget’ schemes. Close DFID down now and transfer £3 billion to charities which know a thing or two about aid, £1 billion to the MoD for logistics, and give the remaining £10 billion to the NHS. Roy Daniels, Luton