The Hidden Scourge
Africa Tackles Graft, With Billions in Aid in Play
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/06/international/africa/06lagos.html?pagewanted=all
Interesting article on aid to Africa
"Foreign aid must be tied to teaching poor nations how to build accountability into their governments, development specialists contend. In some countries, it is not even clear whether the executive branch or the parliament controls the budget, said Steven Radelet, a senior fellow for the Washington-based Center for Global Development. He warned, however, that such improvements typically require generations to take root.
Nigeria is one of many nations where aid has been wasted, or simply stolen. Lagos, home to 15 million of Nigeria's 137 million people, is among the world's most troubled cities, replete with open sewers, foul tap water, garbage-strewn roads and traffic that perennially seems at a standstill.
Not including World Bank loans, which in some years totaled as much as $1 billion, Nigeria took in $3.5 billion in aid from 1980 to 2000. That was a few hundred million less than Sani Abacha has been accused in news reports of stealing in the five years he ruled Nigeria as a military dictator before his death in 1998. Dismayed, donors pulled back or out. Aid in 1999 totaled half the 1990 level.
Later audits disclosed scores of botched projects financed with hundreds of millions of dollars in international loans. Nigeria's government never even cleared the site for an $18 million construction project. Millions were spent on paper mills that never produced any paper. Eighteen projects costing $836 million were never completed; another 44 either never operated or were quickly shut down, the Nigerian Finance Ministry reported. Of 20 other projects started between 1985 and 1992, more than half had little impact or were unsustainable, the World Bank concluded.
But with the 1999 election of Olusegun Obasanjo, donors' enthusiasm reawakened. Mr. Obasanjo's anticorruption credentials seemed impeccable: he helped found Transparency International, an anticorruption group, and strongly backed a program by African leaders to review each other's adherence to democracy and good governance. Since his election, aid to Nigeria has doubled."
