Two pieces on corruption in Nigeria and Liberia and the impact on public health and Ebola outbreak.
Q: So why are African countries so badly prepared? Is it a question of money?
A: People say African countries are poor. But it’s not poverty. It’s misuse of what we have. As we are talking, with all the crises that are going on, the presidents of our countries are still traveling in the best of conditions. Some will come to New York in their private jets, although their national airlines collapsed years ago; in addition, they will bring along a long retinue of private, personal, and public assistants, all lodged in the best hotels. I am not saying the president should not be treated well, but these are issues we need to look at.
Take my country: We do not have a national airline, but the number of private jets we have is more than all the airlines in Africa have together.
It’s a matter of priorities. I do not believe there is an African country that cannot buy gloves for its staff. Personal protective equipment may be very costly, they may need assistance on that. But let us participate. As long as we are wringing hands waiting for the next glove to come, we will never be ready. There are certain things we can do now, with the resources we have.
Q: So African leaders should be held more accountable for what they spend money on?
A: GAVI [a public-private partnership that funds vaccines for low-income countries] just sanctioned Nigeria after a critical audit report. GAVI gave us money to do certain things, and we could not account for $2 million or $3 million of it. GAVI insisted that Nigeria must pay back that money, and the government agreed. But our government should not just agree to pay back the money, the government should find out who misused the money, get the money back from those persons and not from public coffers. And those people should be brought before the courts to answer for the deaths of the children who did not receive the vaccines that the GAVI money would have provided.
http://news.sciencemag.org/africa/2...vers-scathing-analysis-africas-response-ebola
and
What Liberia teaches us about the failures of aid
The Ebola crisis in Liberia has also shone a spotlight on the faults of the international development system that has propped up Sirleaf’s political leadership. In many ways, one could argue that Ebola serves as a cautionary tale about the dangers of ignoring cronyism in countries where a government that is friendly to Western governments is in place. Liberia is one of the most dependent countries on Earth: 73% of its gross national income comes from aid agencies and Monrovia, its capital city, is crawling with aid agencies. There are literally hundreds of international NGOs with offices in the city, and in addition to the 800 million the country receives in foreign assistance each year, the UN spends an additional $500 million annually on maintaining a peacekeeping force.
So one might have expected that the easiest place to contain Ebola would have been Liberia. There are already 7500 UN troops on the ground who would be able to mount the kind of logistical effort necessary to reach homes and communities with chlorine bleach, to transport the sick and to ensure stability should panic spark violence. The reality has been the opposite. From day one, the handling of the Ebola outbreak has been a study in the dysfunction of the aid system. The aid community has created a mentality that the country cannot act on its own. Instead Liberia’s leaders have chosen to wait for the slow moving bureaucracies that have occupied it for a decade to wake from the inertia of the well-fed aid system. They have convened press conference and made pledges, but there is no plan in place for a comprehensive response.
The Liberian Ebola situation can be summed up thusly: a virus that is deadly but can be effectively contained with good planning and logistics has managed to escape from a country that has one of the largest concentrations of ‘helpers’ in the world.
http://africasacountry.com/there-is-no-ebola-here-what-liberia-teaches-us-about-the-failures-of-aid/
The second piece has many interesting comments, some which take the author to task for inaccuracies.
Q: So why are African countries so badly prepared? Is it a question of money?
A: People say African countries are poor. But it’s not poverty. It’s misuse of what we have. As we are talking, with all the crises that are going on, the presidents of our countries are still traveling in the best of conditions. Some will come to New York in their private jets, although their national airlines collapsed years ago; in addition, they will bring along a long retinue of private, personal, and public assistants, all lodged in the best hotels. I am not saying the president should not be treated well, but these are issues we need to look at.
Take my country: We do not have a national airline, but the number of private jets we have is more than all the airlines in Africa have together.
It’s a matter of priorities. I do not believe there is an African country that cannot buy gloves for its staff. Personal protective equipment may be very costly, they may need assistance on that. But let us participate. As long as we are wringing hands waiting for the next glove to come, we will never be ready. There are certain things we can do now, with the resources we have.
Q: So African leaders should be held more accountable for what they spend money on?
A: GAVI [a public-private partnership that funds vaccines for low-income countries] just sanctioned Nigeria after a critical audit report. GAVI gave us money to do certain things, and we could not account for $2 million or $3 million of it. GAVI insisted that Nigeria must pay back that money, and the government agreed. But our government should not just agree to pay back the money, the government should find out who misused the money, get the money back from those persons and not from public coffers. And those people should be brought before the courts to answer for the deaths of the children who did not receive the vaccines that the GAVI money would have provided.
http://news.sciencemag.org/africa/2...vers-scathing-analysis-africas-response-ebola
and
What Liberia teaches us about the failures of aid
The Ebola crisis in Liberia has also shone a spotlight on the faults of the international development system that has propped up Sirleaf’s political leadership. In many ways, one could argue that Ebola serves as a cautionary tale about the dangers of ignoring cronyism in countries where a government that is friendly to Western governments is in place. Liberia is one of the most dependent countries on Earth: 73% of its gross national income comes from aid agencies and Monrovia, its capital city, is crawling with aid agencies. There are literally hundreds of international NGOs with offices in the city, and in addition to the 800 million the country receives in foreign assistance each year, the UN spends an additional $500 million annually on maintaining a peacekeeping force.
So one might have expected that the easiest place to contain Ebola would have been Liberia. There are already 7500 UN troops on the ground who would be able to mount the kind of logistical effort necessary to reach homes and communities with chlorine bleach, to transport the sick and to ensure stability should panic spark violence. The reality has been the opposite. From day one, the handling of the Ebola outbreak has been a study in the dysfunction of the aid system. The aid community has created a mentality that the country cannot act on its own. Instead Liberia’s leaders have chosen to wait for the slow moving bureaucracies that have occupied it for a decade to wake from the inertia of the well-fed aid system. They have convened press conference and made pledges, but there is no plan in place for a comprehensive response.
The Liberian Ebola situation can be summed up thusly: a virus that is deadly but can be effectively contained with good planning and logistics has managed to escape from a country that has one of the largest concentrations of ‘helpers’ in the world.
http://africasacountry.com/there-is-no-ebola-here-what-liberia-teaches-us-about-the-failures-of-aid/
The second piece has many interesting comments, some which take the author to task for inaccuracies.