Why pumping aid money into Africa will not fix the problems

• If the latest book by Greg Mills secures the readership it deserves, it could make an incalculable contribution to the development of the continent

At university, I had a very religious friend called Adrian. So we called him Christian Ade — a pun on the name of a prominent charity.

These days I am a bit more aware of many of the nuances, the pros and cons, of international aid, but I could never hope to rival one of SA’s most gifted academics, strategists, analysts, government advisers and think-tankers (or is that tank-thinkers?) — the prolific Greg Mills.

When I say prolific, I mean prolific. Mills — who heads the Oppenheimers’ The Brenthurst Foundation — has probably written more books in recent years than I have read. Not an impossible task, I am forced to admit.

His latest effort is Expensive Poverty: Why Aid Fails and How it Can Work. Can there be any more important question for we Africans? Despite their own vast distance from extreme poverty, it is a welcome field of research for the Oppenheimers to be backing.

Before I read this, I was a novice. Had I paid proper attention and digested it all, which is an exercise this work does deserve, I would probably now understand the challenges of aid, development, tackling poverty and dealing with bent politicians and officials better than many experts in the field.

Mills, who certainly does understand it all, sums it up very well when he says: “No country ever developed through aid — or at least through aid alone. That is the principal lesson of over $1-trillion in donor spending in Africa over the past 30 years.”

It would be impossible to sum up such a painstakingly researched, scholarly yet readable, work in a few paragraphs. However, themes that are explored include the need for partnership between, and a common strategy by, both the aid donor and the recipient.

As Mills puts it: “Big results depend less on the donors than on whether Africans themselves want to reform, tackle corruption and inefficiency, and use aid for development rather than as a means to externalise their problems.”

There is also a vital role for the private sector, because when aid is given to and handled by governments, this is not always the optimal way to operate.

Mills suggests: “Outsiders need to get insiders to do their jobs better. This is the key lesson from years of aid to Africa, from which the continent has little to show. Most of the aid given has been consumed, some by the donors themselves, much of it by local governments and elites. While it may have made things ‘less bad’, it has not proven the development panacea that Western leaders, among many, once hoped.”

A central theme of this book states the bloody obvious, though it has not always seemed so obvious to those inept donors with funding budgets much more expansive than their bellies and brains: that aid donors must have a precise idea of what they hope their aid will achieve. And how to achieve it.

As Mills puts it: “Nearly all Western leaders have reverted to the same basic formula when confronted by myriad developmental problems, in Africa as elsewhere: more money and more ambitious targets. Little, if any, evidence suggests that this has worked.”

He argues: “Current Western aid effectiveness tools are largely focused on how money should be spent rather than on evaluating how well it is spent. As a result, they are concerned less with the measurement of impact than the efficiency of the process.”

Though Africa’s challenges lie at the heart of this book, this lesson may be best illustrated in the chapter on Afghanistan, a basket case that saw a brief surge in media attention a while back but which has more recently been supplanted on the front pages.

If you read nothing else in this book, do yourself a big favour and read Mills’s thoughts on Afghanistan. He analyses and explains what went wrong, how aid filled the pockets of the corrupt and how so little was achieved before the shambolic and shameful recent retreat by the US and its allies.

Mills, whose rich curiosity trumps his sense of selfpreservation, visited there extensively over several years and served as an adviser to Nato. He took the time and trouble to do something many Westerners have failed to do: he got under the skin of the place so he could really understand what was going on, and especially what was going wrong. Why was so much military effort and sacrifice, and so much money, achieving so little? “Failure … was down to the weakness in leadership and political direction among the people responsible for making the decisions,” he concludes. “The blame for this must lie squarely with George W Bush and Tony Blair.”

As well as looking at more conventional donor aid, Mills discusses military aid, with the warning that unless it’s applied with sufficient thought and research, it might be a wasted undertaking.

To understand what has gone wrong in Africa, he explores what has gone right in Asia. Why are those tigers so much more successful than we lions?

Comparing Mozambique with Singapore, Mills speaks of the “relative impotence of donors to enable development” in the former.

He adds: “While aid has flowed into the region [Asia] at a lower rate than in Africa, it has been comparatively well used because the recipient countries have been clear about their own development agenda, and aid has not been the dominant funding aspect. Overall, aid was successful because the economies of Asia were growing, and it was used increasingly to supplement rather than supplant internal initiatives.”

The recipients need to play their part. Corruption and greed are unlikely to see the channelling of aid to where it can do real good, as Mills explains in another comparison with Asia: “If the explanation for the growth of East Asia resides largely in policy changes, the failure of Africa to develop at comparative rates rests in such decisions not being made.

“The reasons behind this failure often relate to the existence of a patronage-ridden system of government, where investment and economic decisions are not made solely on economic principles …” He notes: “Restoring states is essentially an internal task, which depends for its success on a leadership with both the vision and the skills needed to build a domestic constituency in favour of change.”

He notes how Africa’s inefficiency is exposed not just in the way you must attempt to navigate the poor, potholeinfested roads, but with the corrupt officials and soldiers around every bend, seeking their bribes before they wave you on your way.

Border posts, our leaders tell us, should facilitate the movement of goods inside Africa. Not so, as Mills witnessed at some of the most corrupt border posts on our continent: “My personal experience of the Congo and Zambia was one of stunning inefficiency, corruption, bribery, poor infrastructure, big-man politics, rent-seeking, pettymindedness and externalisation of its problems and possible solutions. A return visit in 2016 was scarcely better, for all of the international aid money focused on reducing the bureaucratic and infrastructural hurdles at the border post,” he recalls.

If I have one quibble, it is with the length of this 400-page opus. Reading such a long, detailed book requires vast resources of time and patience, and perhaps Mills is asking a bit much of his reader.

While nothing was poorly written or irrelevant, there were a lot of meanders along the way, trips to several continents, a lot of anecdotes and other colour.

A better and braver editor might have made the book more digestible, but maybe the publishers are fans of that Monty Python sketch when the overstuffed diner Mr Creosote explodes after being given one last, tiny, tiny, wafer-thin mint chocolate.

I have no idea how much the Oppenheimers are paying Mills, but his extensive travel, meeting the good, the great, the not-sogreat and the pure evil, must put an enormous strain on his credit card. However, based on this superb book, they are getting excellent value for money.

I can only hope the reader will appreciate Mills’s mastery of his subject, the immense respect he has won by many on the African continent and further afield, and the compelling way in which he looks not just at problems but also at their solution.

If this book secures the readership it deserves, it could make an incalculable contribution to the development of Africa — if it helps the donors to use their brains as much as their cheque books.

IF YOU READ NOTHING ELSE IN THIS BOOK, DO YOURSELF A BIG FAVOUR AND READ MILLS ’ S THOUGHTS ON AFGHANISTAN