The multi-billion aid industry has largely failed in Africa. The foreign NGO movement has grown as Africa`s crisis has deepened. Africa can prosper without vast amounts of new aid.
In the latest issue of The Africa Report, Michael Holmen (former Africa editor of the Financial Times) challenges the demands and PR-message for more aid to Africa that international NGO`s have become expert at campaigning for.
"Aid isn`t working, but the aid lobby pretends it is," he writes. He points out that there are more foreigners working in Africa now than there were at independence five decades ago.
"As foreigners arrive to take up short-term contracts, each year about 70000 skilled Africans - doctors, engineers, nurses - leave to work abroad. Western governments should ask whether the growth of NGOs is not only a symptom of Africa`s crisis, but perhaps part of the cause?" he suggests.
It is a relevant question and one that NGOs in Europe do not seem to keen on discussing.
By Jan Speed
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