Donated supplies make huge profits in Africa.
One Saturday morning you see an advert in the newspaper soliciting donations for the starving people in the DRC, Sudan or Somalia. The photographs fill you with guilt and despair so you dig deeply into your pocket and send $100 to one of many aid organisations. Most are quite legitimate. You receive thanks for your donation and are told the money will be used for food, clothing or medical supplies. In fact, you receive a further note telling you that you personally paid for ten bags of maize. Your donation is flown into an impoverished country, offloaded and stored in a warehouse.
That’s when things start to go slightly awry. One or more of the following may happen:
- The warehouse is unguarded, poorly built and has cheap locks on the doors. Guess the rest.
- The guard who guards the warehouse sleeps a lot. He is unaware that supplies are being stolen from under his nose. Or he may be paid to turn a blind eye to the theft of goods.
- The guard, one of the warehouse workers or a labourer has an uncle who buys maize. He will offer a good price. All three conspire to remove 100 bags of maize.
- The Army General in the area “confiscates” the maize for his troops. His troops will sell it for him.
- A truck carrying the maize to a distribution point is waylaid by bandits who are probably in the employ of a senior government official.
- A man on the back of a truck carrying maize to a distribution point offloads 50 or so bags (while the truck is moving) at a place where his cousin is waiting with a pickup truck.
- A man on the back of a truck hands bags to passersby so they can sell it.
- Rebels steal all the maize from a warehouse and set it alight.
We could have a competition thinking up ingenious methods used to steal your maize. In some countries there is little or no theft of aid goods. In others it is rife. Not every aid organization can protect goods everywhere or every step of the way. Often goods, especially medicines, are stolen after the handover by the aid agency.
Let me give you some actual examples: In an unnamed African country a pantechnicon pulls up outside a house in a peaceful street. Vietnamese rice is unloaded. So is American Maize. There are pallets of South African tinned goods and there is a pallet with British tea. The cargo is received and stowed away by army officers (I kid you not). The cargo is neatly stored for later distribution. Most of it has been donated to the poor people of said country. Most of it is sold on the black market and massive profits are made from these deals. Multiply this activity a hundred times and you will have an idea of the shady deals going on in many an African city. It happens in many third world countries—not just Africa.
In the Highlands of Lesotho I have seen bags of Vietnamese rice and US maize (clearly marked as “Donated by the US government” and “not for sale”), being sold openly in markets. I have seen similar bags being traded in Zambia and Zimbabwe. In Somalia, Sudan and Mocambique medical supplies are sold at huge profits to locals. Who cares whether it was originally donated or meant for distribution to the needy? It gets there at times, but, through devious means, at high prices, through a middleman who takes his cut too.
So, where does your dollar go? It is rumored that ten percent of aid is stolen and if that is correct then your $100 could be buying cigarettes and beer for a guy in a Land Cruiser somewhere in Africa. He’s got air-con and music and he sold your ten bags at a nice profit!
I know aid agencies are tightening up security and I know that many host countries help them with that so I have to admit that corruption is not rife in every country. It is usually in the most unstable, war-torn countries that the supplies do not reach their intended destination.
I’m not telling you or your government to stop donating. That would have tragic consequences for many starving people. Instead, push your congressman to put pressure on all aid agencies to properly secure all donated supplies and therefore ensure that they end up in the right mouth.
Any other solutions?
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