Aid to Incompetent, Corrupt and Abusive Governments : Thomas Ekvall

When considering the effect of aid, the case of Uganda might be illuminating. When the country attained independence in 1962, Uganda had a GDP of about $75 per person. At the time, the global GDP was around $500 per person. In other words, Uganda’s GDP per capita was 15 per cent of the global average. Today, the global average is $12,200 and Uganda’s GDP is around $1,000 per person - just above 8 per cent of the global average. This trend does not make for sustainable development. President Museveni has been in power for 37 of the 61 years that Uganda has been independent. Since Museveni took power, Uganda has been a top recipient of development assistance.

In 2006, an election year, budget support provided by the international aid community amounted to 42 per cent of Uganda’s budget; it has since lessened to about 25 per cent. In 1992, the total aid package for Uganda was 19 per cent of the country’s GDP; it is today about 10 percent. In spite of this considerable financial development assistance, Uganda is a lot poorer today, in relative terms, than it was at the time of independence. Surely, this must raise red flags when appraising the utility of aid to countries with less than stellar governance.

The International Corruption Perception Index ranks Uganda as 142nd of 180 countries. Sixty-nine per cent of the people of Uganda think that corruption is getting worse. The Ibrahim Index of African Governance ranks Uganda in 22nd place, Mauritius on top and Somalia at the bottom. According to Human Rights Watch. human rights not only remain problematic but are getting worse and “elections are marred by widespread abuse”. Poverty rates are high and rising, as is unemployment. Over 40 per cent of the 18 to 30-year-olds are not engaged in any productive activity, as established by the Uganda National Labor Force Survey. According to the Center of Disease Control (CDC), 29 per cent of children under five suffer from stunting. Schooling is low; the exceptionally long COVID shut down has not helped. Disparities are very high; the north and northeast regions are much poorer than those in the south and southwest. The Gini coefficient stands at 0.43 and is trending upwards. On the "Atlas of Impunity", recently published by the Eurasia Group, Uganda is in 26th place from the bottom – worse than in Russia. Uganda remains one of the poorest countries in the world and military adventurism under Museveni has not helped to change this.

High level officials have often been caught transferring huge amounts of aid, intended for budget support, directly from government accounts into their own. Such serious crimes have resulted but in a slap on the wrist by the aid community; there might have been a small reduction in budget support for a limited time – and soon everything went right back to business as usual.

There are vastly differing figures as regards Museveni’s private wealth. It is substantial by any account and even lower estimates appear disproportionate to his stated monthly salary of $15,000.

Interestingly, Museveni’s family was given refugee status in Sweden when he was busy fighting a war to overthrow the sitting government. His wife studied in Sweden and is a minister in his government. His eldest son is a general the army. It must have been comforting to have the family taken care of by Swedish taxpayers, while he was fighting a war. Swedish taxpayers have supported him ever since he took power.

Some three million individual taxpaying workers in Sweden have provided $1,000 each to Uganda between 2018 and 2023. The tax base is very broad in Sweden; even a small salary is taxed heavily. Two thirds of the three million workers can be considered relatively poor or having rather modest incomes. In light of this and the demonstrated corruption in Uganda, there appears to be some truth in the common saying of cynics critical of aid: “aid is about transferring money from the poor in the north to the rich in the south, with the aid industry being the corrupt bankers”.

I am convinced that had the tax payers in Sweden been aware of this situation, they would have come up with better ways of helping Uganda with their hard-earned tax money; but they and taxpayers elsewhere in the north have been kept in the dark. Equally, had the people of Uganda been kept abreast about their government’s use of their money, they would have found a way to vote Museveni out of power. But they, too, were kept in the dark.

Swedes seem to be particularly gullible when being swayed to have their aid used to keep incompetent, corrupt and abusive governments in power. Afghanistan is a case in point. Afghanistan, a country Sweden had no previous relations to, became the biggest recipient of Swedish aid during the previous Afghan government.

Clearly, taxpayers in the north and more importantly the Ugandan people got a bad deal. They both have been cheated. They have been sacrificed on the altar of some political agenda that neither group understands, but that works against both of them. It did not have to be like that.

Given its enormous potential, there is no reason why Uganda could not, by now, be a developed country - if it just had a competent, honest and caring government that had corruption under control. Churchill did not call Uganda “the Pearl of Africa” for nothing. A Singapore style government would, without a penny in aid, have made Uganda one of the richest countries in the world over a 37-year period.

In light of the above, it must be evident that Museveni’s 37 years in power has not been good for Uganda. It must be equally clear that the considerable aid to Uganda during his time has helped Museveni stay in power. It is a distressing legacy that we should reflect on.

We, who know the aid business better than anyone else, should stop reminiscing about some decade-old initiatives that changed nothing; we should stand up and let the world know some uncomfortable truths about the industry. It otherwise will be an unbearable legacy.

There must be better ways of spending the annual $ 170,000,000,000 aid budget; ways, that will make a real difference. Addressing climate change should be a top priority. It is incumbent on us to actively work for making this shift happen to atone for our poor results of the past.

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Thomas Ekvall can be contacted via: thomas.ekvall9435@gmail.com