Andrew Mitchell, formerly of DFID, urgently needs Coffee Housers’ help. It seems he won’t believe DFID wastes money, unless he sees actual, concrete examples.
Last week, in the magazine, we ran a foreign aid special in which Jonathan Foreman and Justin Shaw showed us how and why we waste so much on ineffectual aid. In principle of course aid is a wonderful idea, but it can also be a blight: propping up dictators and entrenching corruption in the countries that are struggling most.
We identified two major concerns:
- A lack of DFID due diligence
- The daft ring-fence around aid 0.7% of GDP which means the DFID has its work cut out trying to get rid of all the cash quick enough, and has an incentive to turn a blind eye to what happens to it on the ground.
If you confront politicians about this, writes Jonathan Forman, they respond with sentimental guff about saving childrens’ lives as if that puts an end to the argument.
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