Western aid has “offered legitimacy to corrupt and autocratic regimes, allowing them to hang on to power even when they have lost popularity with their own citizens”, according to Sorious Samura in a BBC news report. For many countries in sub-Saharan Africa, the amount of foreign aid has been around half of government expenditure for decades. This has encouraged governments to concentrate on pleasing donors, rather than being accountable to their own citizens.
According to Samura, aid sponsors failure, but rarely rewards success. Aid tends to fund the lifestyles of ineffective bureaucrats, rather than stimulating innovation and creativity. Substantial incoming streams of foreign money from donors artificially inflates the value of the local currency, so that the country’s export goods are less competitive in the global marketplace. Thus foreign aid stifles the local economy.
Because salaries in most African countries are very low – except for politicians and government officials – many talented people are unable to earn a reasonable living locally. Each year 70,000 of the best-educated people leave Africa – often after their education has been funded by foreign aid – to pursue employment opportunities elsewhere.