Today, on the news (BBC Radio 4) I heard an item that rather made me cross. The report from the Parliamentary Select Committee on Overseas Development was released today because it is Mothers Day. The report concerns the issue of women dying in labour or during delivery. It makes the point that the statistics concerning Africa have not progressed one jot for twenty years and this despite all the money that has been injected into Africa during all this time.
What made me cross was the statement in this report that the fact that the situation had not improved for over two decades was; a collective, global responsibility. Sorry, I can't see that at all. Collectively and globally the United States, the UK, the European Community, even Russia and China as well as Australia and New Zealand, the World Bank and the United Nations have poured billions of Dollars as well as agencies and people into the African continent and especially into the usual 'stretchercase' nations in sub-Saharan Africa. So it isn't fore the lack of effort, committment or money that this situation has not improved.
So we have to ask ourselves who is responsible for this situation if it is not improving or responding? Well, how many hundreds of millions of dollars did Idi Amin salt away in Switzerland? Or, more topically, Robert Mugabe is known to have a personal fortune amounting to nearly four hundred millions. When are the Africans ever going to help themselves to more than world money?
I don't think I need a lecture from a bunch of obvioudsly ill informed MP's especially at a time when we are seeing them with their snouts in the trough of their 'private' expenses.
Comments