Peter Bismark, Executive Director of the Institute for Liberty and Policy Innovation (ILAPI), believes that the US government’s directive to place all directly hired staff of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) on leave will have serious consequences for countries that rely on the agency for aid.
He predicted that there would be job losses for humanitarian workers, administrators, coordinators, country directors, and a slew of other people returning to their home countries, hopeful or not.
The policy analyst, when asked what the impact would be on Africa, had an interesting narrative where he pointed out that because of aid, many African countries do not plan on withdrawing aid in future years on certain health interventions like tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, and other social interventions.
These countries, he said, report a higher number of beneficiaries for more aid, rendering the developing countries like house helps.
He argued that African countries would have to restructure their economies and have buffers to ensure sustainability without aid.
According to the African countries taste for aid, it has made developing countries behave like NGOs that can only operate with donor-funded projects.
‘’It is a great wake-up call for developing countries to learn fishing and stop the corruption and wasteful spending of taxpayers money. It’s a great call for developing economies to learn how to fish than being fed with aid. Without aid, African countries can now negotiate on the sales and export of natural resources to benefit their own.
Mr. Kwofie added that as an individual, he does not believe in aid because it is an investment over just a complementary support to government interventions. Although it is not, at some point, because developing countries need aid to support medical and humanitarian interventions, it leads to exchanges with natural resources at lower levels of prices than usual.
By: Rainbowradioonline.com/Ghana
