Ghana may not require any aid at all …
For Yakubu, help is, luckily, at hand, since Sachs has travelled here to formally announce that the next “Millennium Village” will be in Kpasenkpe. The Millennium Villages project is led by the Earth Institute, the development organization Millennium Promise and UN agencies. It takes a radical approach to aid, targeting five principal causes of extreme poverty and addressing all of them in an integrated way: health, education, agriculture, rural infrastructure and economic development. The aim is to create one joined-up aid programme instead of having different aid agencies tackling these issues separately.
The most radical aspect of the Millennium Village concept is twofold: firstly, it involves local government and implementation by the communities themselves; and secondly, it is designed to create sustainable communities that will outgrow the need for aid. A village will be subject to rigorous evaluations in order to demonstrate sustainability and scalability, and that aid developed with an exit strategy can actually work.
In an external review of the Millennium Villages project, the Overseas Development Institute recorded crop yield increases of between 85% and 350% and reductions of up to 50% in the incidence of malaria.
It is this evidence-based approach that gives Sachs the confidence to stand in front of what seems like the entire village gathered in the elders’ meeting area to greet the delegation of politicians and development experts. Sachs is unequivocal as he takes the microphone and proclaims, in almost messianic fashion: “You are going to see an improvement in the lives of your people. I promise you, one year from now, your health facility will be functioning and known throughout the region.”
He then lists the improvements to come for farmers, students, mothers, girls in education; it is akin to a stump speech and is greeted with cheers by the locals. “We have five years to make programmes that work for farming, health care, schools, for increasing incomes and improving the lives of your communities. We have a lot of work to do together.”
The Kpasenkpe clinic must wait for the aid to arrive but the omens are promising, because the next day we visit Tema hospital in Accra, which has been receiving aid from the Global Fund. The contrast with Kpasenkpe couldn’t be more stark. And the contrast between the brave but beleaguered Yakubu and Tema staff doctor Patricia Asamoah could not be more marked. Asamoah is positively beaming as she shows us around. This is a happy hospital; a functioning hospital. But it wasn’t always like this.
The impact of the Global Fund is everywhere. We visit the anti-retroviral unit, where patients with HIV/Aids are being treated. It is ordered and functioning much as any hospital would. But Asamoah remembers a different time: “Before we got help from the Global Fund, these kind of patients in the ARV unit were all wheelchair-bound. Now they can walk in themselves.”
Access to drugs explains the difference. “Our clinics were empty because we didn’t have drugs, and instead the hospitals were full. They were more like hospices than hospitals – we didn’t have anything to treat patients with.”
The same story is repeated all over the hospital: babies being diagnosed with HIV early enough to save their lives; men and women being restored to health after contracting TB; radiant mothers and babies at the antenatal clinic; smiles from the staff and heartfelt gratitude from the patients.
At one point, unprompted, one of the recovering TB patients points to Asamoah and says: “She’s my mother – she looked after me, it’s all down to her.”
This is how it should be, but it’s not necessarily how it always will be if the west reneges on its commitment to the next tranche of money for the Global Fund.
Jamie Drummond, the executive director of ONE, says: “ONE helped get the first financing for the Global Fund 10 years ago and it’s had a wonderful multimillion-life-saving first decade – but needs a big boost for the next 10 years to not just halt but turn back the tide of Aids, TB and malaria.
A survey just found the Global Fund the second most transparent aid mechanism in the world. That’s why One is pushing for the UK to double its funding this year.”
The UK government has been steadfast in maintaining its commitment to international aid, drawing high praise from Bono and Sachs (see right), despite a growing clamor for it to cut back on foreign donations.
But the battle for aid will only get more difficult, which is why smart aid programmes like the Millennium Villages project and the Global Fund are all the more important in convincing politicians that investment in Africa makes ethical and economic sense, as a whole new continent of consumers come on stream in a newly dynamic Africa.
And there are the political motivations for tackling poverty too. As Bono remarks: “When extreme poverty, extreme climate and extreme ideology come together, it’s a difficult thing to undo.”
Increasingly, senior military figures in the US are looking at how aid can be a politically stabilizing force – or, as Bono says, “instead of putting out the fires, it is a lot cheaper to stop them in the first place”. The fruits of extreme poverty, climate and ideology are being reaped in the horn of Africa, with devastating results.
And then there is a more simple, human response to extreme poverty. As Bono concludes: “It’s impossible, I believe, to keep up the scam that brutal, ugly, dumb poverty is something we can live with. That’s a scam. You can’t live with it if you see it. We bring over tough US military guys and US senators to Africa. When they see it up close – you can’t live with it. The only way you can live with it is to lie to yourself and pretend it’s not what people say it is.”
Posted by admin
on Feb 11 2012. Filed under African News.
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