Bad governance

Ofeibea Quist-Arcton sounded awfully excited in this broadcast. She was either indifferent or ignorant to the waste that Niall Ferguson condemns:

Last year, the United States Agency for International Development gave Ghana $22.5 million in food aid.

Last Monday, that same country began a 12-month celebration of its independence from British rule, which was granted 50 years ago, on March 5, 1957. The total budget for these festivities, which commenced with an all-night party in Accra, is said to be $20 million.

He concludes,

Today, there are still people who fondly believe that all of Africa's problems are a legacy of colonialism — the fault of the wicked British. Those people also cling to the notion that this legacy can be expunged only by the payment of reparations in the name of "aid." Fifty years on, we can surely think more clearly.

In virtually every case (Botswana is the sole exception), former British colonies in sub-Saharan Africa have fared worse under independence than they did under British rule. In virtually every case, as New York University's William Easterly has pointed out, the expenditure of billions in Western aid has failed to raise their rate of economic growth.

In his forthcoming book, "The Bottom Billion," Oxford economist Paul Collier brilliantly anatomizes the true causes of Africa's post-colonial failure. He identifies four traps into which a depressingly large number of sub-Saharan countries have fallen since the 1950s. Some are trapped by their dependence on natural resources, such as diamonds or oil; some by being landlocked; some by recurrent civil war. But the fourth trap is the one that applies to Ghana: the trap of bad governance.

To illustrate the folly of giving aid to chronically misruled countries, Collier cites a recent survey that tracked money released by Chad's Ministry of Finance to fund rural health clinics. Just 1% reached its intended destination. The rest was raked off by one corrupt official after another.

So forgive me if I don't join Ghanaians in partying all year. I really don't see much to celebrate if independence is just a euphemism for aid-dependence.