4
the money spent
The world spends massive amounts of money in Africa on ‘aid’. Note: For the purpose of these posts, I am calling ‘aid’ the voluntary (more or less) transfer of resources to countries with the said purpose of benefiting the receiving country.
Let’s begin by looking at the numbers as they add important context to this discussion. We will come back to the numbers again at the end. Finding even an approximate total for the amount spent on ‘aid’ is impossible because of the thousands of different agencies, organizations and individuals spending money here. There are 4 main groups I see spending money here in Africa with the said purpose of benefiting Africans: the United Nations (UN), most countries’ aid arms, private grants/foundations and faith-based organizations. Collectively, they spend tens of billions of dollars annually on this continent. Here is a basic overview those four groups and the money spent on ‘aid’:
1) The UN is, by far, the biggest spender in Africa. The exact amount they spend annually is difficult to determine, as the UN budget is complex and money is spent by a web of interconnected programs and agencies. (Remember, the UN budget is paid for by contributing nations, determined by GDP. The US contributes 22% of the UN’s budget ($598 million in 2009), Japan contributes about 17% and from there contribution percentages drop off rapidly.)
Their website lists the annual UN budget at just over $4 billion. That, perhaps, seems reasonable until you find what is not included in that figure. That figure does not include the World Food Programme (WFP), International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, UN’s Children’s Fund (UNICEF) or ‘peacekeeping’ missions. Those exclusions render the ‘annual budget’ figure meaningless. The exclusion of ‘peacekeeping’ missions got my attention because of what these missions involve. Most of these operations are massive, having the equipment, personnel and logistical chain needed for all out war. Currently the UN has 15 ‘peacekeeping’ operations worldwide, 7 of them are in Africa. The budget estimate for the 7 African peacekeeping operations is over $5 billion a year (half of that is designated for Sudan). Suffice it to say that United Nations programs spend at least $10 billion annually in Africa. The actual figure may be well above that.
2) In addition to the UN money, many countries’ aid arms also are pouring money into Africa. The goals of these agencies are inevitably also linked to that country’s foreign policy…not to suggest the UN is free of agendas. The US Agency for International Development (USAID) is the United States’ aid arm. This year, USAID is budgeted to spend just under $100 billion dollars in other countries; $54 billion on ‘International Affairs’ and $37 billion on ‘Foreign Operations’. As you see in those budget titles, the tie between the development of the receiving country and US State Department interests makes USAID, and any other government’s ‘aid’ arm, hard to take at face value. Nevertheless, that is another untold billions of dollars coming to African countries in the form of aid, this time with obvious, though unpublicized, strings attached.
The Peace Corp is another class of organization somewhere between government aid arm and private secular aid organization. The US spends $400 million/year to fund the peace corp, which is an ‘independent federal agency’. Many other countries have organizations such as the Peace Corp.
3) There are also a large number of private, secular organizations and foundations. These organizations are funded primarily by private donors, though some do gather government and corporate contributions. This category includes a host of individual foundations, of which The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is the most well-known and the largest contributor in this group (spending around $2 billion/ year, in order to maintain its non-profit status). This category also includes the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, which spends over $1 billion dollars annually. There are also private humanitarian relief groups such as Doctors without Borders (MSF), a crisis-response medical organization that spends about $400 million year.
4) Then, there are ‘faith-based’ organizations. The organizations under this heading could probably be further divided into three groups: humanitarian/crisis response organizations, long-term “mission” organizations and direct contributions through ‘aid’-type programs of some large churches.
The Christian humanitarian relief organizations include World Vision (which spends $1.1 billion annually), Compassion International ($350 million), Samaritans Purse ($300 million) and many others. I have also seen a growing number of what I would call “new-generation” Christian aid organizations of the Blood Water Mission ($2-3 million) variety, which seem to strive to stay smaller and more streamlined.
Denominational (i.e. Baptists (IMB), Methodists, Pentecostal, Catholic, etc) and non-denominational (SIM, AIM, Wycliffe/SIL etc) mission organizations are harder to track from an ‘aid’-spending standpoint. While they typically don’t spend money on dedicated relief projects, the do put considerable resources into hospitals, clinics and schools and increasingly into development programs such as agriculture and community health training.
Conclusion:
There are thousands of organizations that fall into these categories, all moving money and resources onto this continent. If I had to guess how much ‘aid’ money is spent in Africa annually, I would put it in the $50 billion/year range. Is that too much or not enough? That debate has been raging in development policy forums since the 50’s. My hunch: The money spent might be enough. The problem might be in the methods used.
{2: the methods used} Coming soon.
Links:
USAID’s Strategic plan for 2007-2012
Charity Navigator-tracks donations/spending of charities
7
Does aid help?
Few deny the existence of big problems in Africa. Endemic poverty, AIDS, oppression of women, illiteracy, lack of medical care, high maternal death rates, low life expectancies and huge death tolls from diseases all but extinct elsewhere are some of the burdens Africa shares unequally with the rest of the world. ‘Developed’ countries claim to be helping to remedy these problems through ‘aid’.
My job lets me see a large quantity and wide variety of forms and venues of distribution of international ‘aid’. I have some questions about the steps the ‘developed’ world is taking to help Africa. This 4-part post, will take you through some of the reasons I wonder, “Does ‘aid’ help?”:
{1: the money spent} {2: the methods used} {3: the cycle created} {4: the goal in mind}
