PanAfrica: Aid for the Poor, Not for the Consultants
No less than a quarter of annual development aid — about 20 billion dollars — is being used by donor countries to fund technical assistance of sometimes dubious worth, says ActionAid International in a new report.
The study, titled ‘Real Aid 2’, was launched Wednesday by the Johannesburg-based non-governmental organisation (NGO). As with last year’s ‘Real Aid’, it examines how development funding is spent.
The term “technical assistance” refers to research, training, and the services rendered by consultants — some of whom command fees that ActionAid finds excessive.
According to the report, based on 2004 data, it typically costs about 200,000 dollars a year to keep an expatriate consultant on staff. School fees and child allowances account for more than a third of this expense, which could be reduced with greater use of local advisors.
“Money is being spent on consultants who are earning up to 1,000 dollars a day,” Caroline Sande Mukulira, South Africa country director for ActionAid International, told IPS Wednesday.
Notes the report, “High salaries paid to expatriate advisors can also cause significant resentment among counterparts and the public in the south.”
“In the Ghana education service headquarters, government officials receive about 300 dollars a month, what a relatively inexperienced Ghanaian consultant could expect to earn in a day, and a foreign consultant in a few hours,” it adds.
The report also mentions a former UK-funded consultant’s claim that their daily take-home pay in Sierra Leone was the same as the monthly salary of the auditor general.
Perhaps more alarmingly, however, these high-priced advisors may fail to deliver lasting benefits.
allafrica.com