The heads of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank urged developed countries on Friday to boost aid flows to Africa and to do so fairly and predictably.
”There is a need for more aid, but there is also a need for better aid,” IMF managing director Rodrigo de Rato told reporters in Cape Town on the fringes of a gathering of the Parliamentary Network of the World Bank.
He said the conditions attached to aid should be harmonised, with assistance flowing more predictably to the countries needing it.
”Many of the challenges of African governments, especially the ones who have lower fiscal resources, is to be able to plan infrastructure investment, health investment, education investment.
”All those investments … need a substantial amount of predictability and that is lacking in the strategy of some donors.”
World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz said aid to the world’s poorest continent had dropped in recent years, some of the money going instead to debt relief and some to conflict regions like Iraq and Afghanistan.
”And arguably the quality of aid has gone down [too],” he told the meeting.
Wolfowitz urged parliamentarians from donor countries to promote increased aid back home.
”There is an opportunity in Africa. It would be incredibly short-sighed given the relatively small amounts of government funding involved not to step up to the plate.”
In his own country, the United States, for example, one cent of every dollar was spent on foreign aid — an amount Wolfowitz said could be increased to 14 cents without objection from the American public.
”I think it is time the US, the Europeans and Japan … step up … also China. It is good to have emerging donors.”
Rato warned against African countries starting to pile up debt again after recent relief granted by the international community.
But despite strong economic growth in recent years, Africa would not meet the so-called Millennium Development Goals, including halving extreme poverty by 2015, at its current growth trend.
”The challenge is not small. Even though it is the best growth environment in the last 40 years, we … need more growth.”
Rato also urged donors to make good on promises to double aid by 2010.
”It is a very important commitment that is not being fulfilled up to now. It is needed given … many of the challenges, social and physical, that Africa faces.”
Aid to sub-Saharan Africa has dropped from 35% of world share in 2003 to 30% in 2005, South Africa’s Finance Minister Trevor Manuel told the gathering, adding that donor countries should pool their resources to make them more effective.
The network offers a platform for policy dialogue between more than 800 parliamentarians from 110 countries and the World Bank. This was its first meeting on the African continent. — AFP
