Visiting US Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill said Monday that aid to Africa was better used when channelled directly to grassroots-level community projects.
”This is the kind of African leadership where money should flow. It is pointing to one issue, that it is possible to get more from the money,” O’Neill said after he toured the Kolokolo-Yobo water project, 35 kilometres northwest of Kampala.
O’Neill was on a four-nation tour of Africa with an unlikely companion, Irish rock star and aid activist Bono, who has said he persuaded the US finance chief to come and see aid programmes in action. They have already visited Ghana and South Africa.
The water project, a primary school and a health centre are run with funds saved under Uganda’s debt relief programmes.
”On the one hand it is satisfying to see how the community is taking matters in its own hands and on the other it is gratifying to see how too much was got from too little,” O’Neill told reporters.
Addressing policy makers, academics and the business community at Kampala’s Makerere University, the US official later called for accountable governments, economic freedom and people-focused development planning.
”Developing countries must demonstrate a strong commitment to ruling justly, encouraging economic freedom and investing in people,” he said. He regretted that official development assistance to poor countries had so far been ”disappointing”.
The community-run Kolokolo-Yobo project was started with $1 000, and 420 people in 75 households are currently benefiting from it.
O’Neill and Bono sat on wooden benches surrounded by children of Kasimbiri Primary School as they answered questions from journalists. The school was previously made of mud and grass thatch but was recently refurbished with funding from an American women’s organisation and money saved under an international debt relief for Uganda.
Uganda in 2000 qualified for the International Monetary Fund and World Bank debt service relief under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative (HIPC).
”I have seen children who are have gone hungry to learn. It is a win-lose situation. It is kind of frustrating,” said Bono, whose visit had helped put a human face on the campaign against poverty in Africa, according to Uganda’s state-run New Vision newspaper.
”He may not be a household name in Uganda, because his genre in music, rock, is not particularly popular in this part of the world,” the paper wrote.
”But Bono’s status as one of the world’s big music icons is certain to give his mission the attention it deserves,” wrote the newspaper in an editorial.
O’Neill wondered whether Africa’s leadership had its priorities right, noting that up to 9,5-million Ugandans had no access to clean drinking water, although only $25-million to would be required for water for all.
”The objective is clean water, not pipes and pumps. We should be clear about the objectives and involve the people on the ground level,” said O’Neill. He praised a recent US proposal that 50% of World Bank and other development banks lending be in the form of grants rather than loans.
”It will thereby eliminate the next generation of debt service problems. It is time to end the sad cycle of indebtedness for countries committed to success,” said O’Neill.
O’Neill’s and Bono’s final stop after Uganda will be Ethiopia, where the US treasury chief will this week attend the African Development Bank’s annual meeting to discuss efforts to raise the effectiveness of financial assistance to the continent. – Sapa-AFP