AFESEH NGWA: Fueling the mendicant cycle.

By Hilary Afeseh Ngwa


Picture credit: The Economist

Some persons who receive drugs intended to heal and cure hang on a delicate balance which can very easily tip towards dependence and addiction. Increasingly more and more people are abusing prescription drugs especially pain killers and addiction is on the rise. It is thought that some of the symptoms typical of abusers include complaints of continuously losing prescriptions, evidence of seeking prescriptions from more than one doctor, taking higher and higher doses despite warnings and forging prescriptions. An interesting yet heart breaking semblance can be seen with aid in African developing countries.

Countries which lend out a basket for hand outs in financial aid not because of an arisen emergency but as a source and steady flow of income upon which economic growth is contingent, hang on a perilously fragile and lethal thread of dependence and addiction, hand outs which create fat holes in the basket in which it is put. The Zambian economist Dambisa Moyo in her book 'Dead Aid' states that in 1970, 10% of Africans lived in poverty; it’s now more like 70% and in many countries as high as 80-85% of Africans are living in poverty at a time when the aid model has become so dominant. The World Bank defines extreme poverty as living on less than 1.25 US dollars per day. In Sub-saharan Africa for example which has thirty-two of the 48 poorest countries, it is estimated that extreme poverty rose from 41 percent in 1981 to 46 percent in 2001. Some reports have it that almost 50 percent of the population live on under 1 US dollar a day which is the highest rate of extreme poverty in the world and the number of impoverished people has doubled since 1981.

It is also a known fact that in the past fifty years, more than $1 trillion in development-related aid has been transferred from rich countries to Africa. Aid can wire the psyche of the receiver for a near incorrigible cycle of dependence which quickly shifts to addiction. Aid can be the worst abuse substance, for as the evidence shows, it can clip the flight wings of development and mire a potentially prosperous nation in a quicksand of economic stagnation. Like every addict the only way out of the dire consequences which loom and come with addiction is to be finally weaned off the abuse substance.

A careful look at the addiction of many African countries to aid reveals similar symptoms seen in the prescription abuser mentioned earlier in the write-up, to wit - complaints of continuously losing aid money, evidence of seeking aid from more than one donor, taking higher and higher doses of the abuse substance(money) despite warnings and forging prescriptions to get more aid. See how many countries ran in a race to be the poorest countries during the world bank driven Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative.

I propose, partially echoing what some have said before that NO financial aid may be given to african developing countries. All non emergency related aid must be in the form of structures/infrastructure which will last or in the form of capacity building and human resource. All aid must be equipping the aided in every form possible to sustainably live without need for more Aid.

It is painful to watch motherland suffer a mendicant cycle of unseen proportions, spiraling out of control, feeding on aid as it grows and growing as it feeds. To the aid giver may the verity captured in the words of Phillips Brooks forever ring in their hearts, - “The truest help we can render an afflicted man is not to take his burden from him, but to call out his best energy, that he may be able to bear the burden.” To the aid receiver may the words of Miguel de Cervantes rouse the sleeping giant in him/her individually and collectively as a people, -“Never stand begging for that which you have the power to earn.” I rest my case.