It's Our Turn to Eat (25 page)

Overwhelmingly positive, the public reaction came as a massive relief to Clay. In theory, his speech had been vetted by the Foreign Office, but staff in Whitehall, not expecting their envoy to Kenya to present a problem, probably skimmed it so quickly they missed the juicy bits. Clay knew he had caught his colleagues in London on the hop. ‘It was clear to me that if it had gone wrong, I'd have been dropped like a stone. It was a bit like walking the plank. Instead, the British government saw what we saw, that there wasn't great public support for the official Kenyan line.' He had, in fact, become a hero to many Kenyans, in whose eyes he was playing the rambunctious role they expected of foreign donors. But Clay was about to run up against a far more formidable opponent than the Mount Kenya Mafia: his own government.

In public, British ministers supported their outspoken high commissioner. But as he set about drafting further speeches on government sleaze, Clay found he was fighting over words and phrases with Whitehall, fully alert now to their firebrand representative's capacity to stir things up. He was grateful for the lawyers' steers–no one wants to be sued for libel–but this went further. His colleagues in King Charles Street were essentially questioning the wisdom of speaking out at all. ‘It was extremely tedious. I didn't expect London to try to teleguide what I was trying to do and say in my own way. I remember taking a call on my mobile from somebody in London trying to get me to pull one of my speeches as I was actually walking into the venue to deliver it. I said, “It's too late. And why?” He said, “We don't have time to go through all this,” meaning: “We don't have time at the Foreign Office to have this internal debate.” So I said: “Then leave it to me.” By the time I gave Vomit Two, I'd fought over every word and sentence.' Clearing the speech took two months.

These conversations were with staff at the Foreign Office, but behind them Clay sensed a brooding presence. ‘Someone was whispering in their ears.' That someone, he was certain, was the Department for International Development.

By the turn of the century, Western policy in the developing world was increasingly being set not in ministerial offices but by the NGOs–organisations like Oxfam, Save the Children, Christian Aid. The Make Poverty History campaign, pushing for the cancellation of Africa's foreign debt and dramatic increases in Western aid levels, was gathering momentum. Jeffrey Sachs, the brilliant American economist who campaigned in favour of a massive hike in funding, appeared to have won the emotional, if not the intellectual, argument. Other analysts might shake their heads at Sachs's simplistic formula for the continent's recovery, but he had successfully wooed pop-star campaigners like Bono and Sir Bob Geldof, and their ability to mobilise a younger generation bored by traditional politics awed Western governments. Whether on the right or left, political parties realised that promising to ‘save' Africa was a potential vote-winner in the eyes of an idealistic coming generation. No wonder members of the African elite, aware of these pressures, sometimes sounded unappetisingly smug when contemplating tortured Western attitudes to the continent. As one Kenyan newspaper editor told me: ‘What we Africans have realised is that your leaders need to lend to us more than we need to be lent to.'

An early convert to the cause of vastly boosted aid was Tony Blair, who denounced the state of the continent as ‘a scar on the conscience of the nation' and called for a Marshall Plan for Africa. He pledged to raise British aid levels to the 0.7 per cent of GDP demanded by the NGOs and agreed to the creation of DfID, a ministry whose development agenda, separated from the Foreign Office, would no longer be tainted by national self-interest, so the theory went. The American-led 2003 invasion of Iraq, bitterly contested by the British public and deeply unpopular with the left wing of Blair's Labour Party, further boosted his interest in the continent. Africa was one of the few remaining areas where a compromised prime minister with a liking for the international stage could still show moral leadership.

In May 2004, just as the Anglo Leasing scandal was breaking, Blair launched the Africa Commission, whose recommendations–writing off debt, tripling aid by 2010 and improving trade terms–paved the way for the 2005 G8 meeting at Gleneagles in Scotland. The Gleneagles summit, Downing Street trumpeted, would be the climax of a Year of Africa, marking a turning point in the continent's relationship with the West. Playing to the industrialised world's guilt complex, the Make Poverty History campaign, Africa Commission and Gleneagles summit all shared one characteristic: the emphasis was on Western, rather than African, action. Top-down, statist, these initiatives were all about donor obligations, pledges and behaviour. What they definitely
weren't
about–despite token references to the importance of ‘good governance' and a supposed pact between North and South–was highlighting the shortcomings of African governments set to benefit from future Western largesse.

DfID, the only British ministry with explicit instructions from the Treasury to boost rather than slash spending, swiftly won respect in other Western capitals for its focus, energy and principled insistence on untied aid. In development, at least, a fading imperial power could still claim to ‘punch above its weight' on the global scene. At home, DfID's altruism, combined with its readiness to challenge decisions taken by fustier, more parochial departments, meant it was seen as a sexy place to work: 85 per cent of those applying to the Civil Service
put it top of their list of preferences. Yet DfID's ‘spend, spend, spend' philosophy was beset with difficulty.

Critics of international aid, like the American economist William Easterly, point out that one of the defining characteristics of the industry is its inherent unaccountability. An institution setting itself a narrow goal can statistically assess whether or not its efforts are having an impact. The more it takes on, the harder it is to separate out the various strands and quantify success and failure. ‘Some of its goals are so huge as to be meaningless,' wrote
The Times
on the occasion of DfID's tenth anniversary. ‘As well as saying that “our overall aim is to get rid of world poverty,” it wants to scrap the EU's Common Agricultural Policy, complete the Doha Round of world trade talks and combat climate change.'
³²
‘If you are responsible for everything, you are responsible for nothing,' comments Easterly. DfID gauges improvement by a country's progress in meeting the UN's eight millennium development goals, but DfID is not the only organisation disbursing aid, and recipient governments, after all, also play some role in determining their national course. This leaves the amount of money which is disbursed as the only solid yardstick of progress, hardly a situation likely to encourage discrimination amongst the officials who are responsible for approving projects.

DfID's first boss, the principled and forceful Clare Short, ruled that the department's efforts and funds should be focused on the ‘poorest of the poor', countries where annual per capita income was $875 or below. This only seems right and proper. But nations emerging from civil war, authoritarian rule and military dictatorship are by definition those where governance is poorest, corruption rife and aid most likely to be diverted. ‘Experience proves it's possible to usefully target aid, even when working in very corrupt environments,' DfID officials will tell you, insisting that projects are so carefully monitored in the field as to be effectively ‘ring-fenced' from surrounding sleaze. Not possible, argues Daniel Kaufmann, former Director of Global Programmes at the World Bank Institute, who has spent decades quantifying graft's impact on development. ‘The idea that donors can
immunise their projects in a corrupt country is absurd, it's not what the evidence shows. When there is no integrity on the part of the leadership, no systematic approach to governance, civil liberties, rule of law, donor aid is simply wasted.'

The World Bank's own research bears out his scepticism, not just generally, but in the specific Kenyan context. A strictly confidential review by the bank's internal anti-corruption unit into four Kenya projects approved between 2000 and 2005, worth $375 million, found three suffered from ‘serious irregularities'. It cited almost every imaginable stratagem for ripping off an externally-funded aid project, from the bribing of public officials to abuse of office, inflated expenses, fraudulent claims, conflict of interest, the concerted rigging of bids, failure to carry out allotted tasks, and blatant nepotism by MPs. Two of the projects were AIDS-related, and the report's compilers highlighted one of the most obscenely ironic consequences of the abuse: because grant money went to bribe officials rather than being spent on orphans' school fees, many children dropped out of education and resorted to prostitution. A project intended to reduce HIV infection helped, instead, to spread the virus.
³³

DfID, then, might be trying to do the impossible, seeking reliable partners just where they are least likely to be found. Even if these fundamental questions are put to one side and the correctness of DfID's philosophy accepted, problems of how to put it into practice remain.

One challenge is how to disburse the increasingly generous sums channelled DfID's way. In Africa, a shortage of qualified bureaucrats, lack of institutional experience and the absence of many of the legal checks and balances routinely required by Western partners mean poor countries struggle to access the money donors want them to have. Because of this ‘low absorptive capacity', many African states regularly fail to claim the full amounts allocated them by Western governments each year.

Add to that the tarnished records of the Renaissance leaders the West once regarded as safe bets and it is clear DfID might struggle to spend its rising yearly budget. Having variously rigged elections, altered constitutions in order to hold office indefinitely, jailed their
rivals and invaded neighbouring states, once-favoured African leaders have become targets of virulent campaigns by human rights organisations with international followings. DfID had promised the British electorate, and the rest of the G8, that it would massively increase aid. But once you subtracted oil-and mineral-rich African states that didn't need foreign aid, then removed those which were undoubtedly dirt-poor but whose leaderships were considered beyond the pale, the list of governments meeting the criteria for partnership became embarrassingly short.

There is also a manpower issue. While the British Treasury had promised to raise DfID's budget, it expected the ministry to cut staff numbers just like every other government department. With fewer staff available to disburse more funds, DfID is understandably keen on moving wherever possible from time-consuming project aid to direct budgetary support. But that requires confidence in the government concerned. ‘They are desperately pushed by the need to disburse,' says Edward Clay. ‘It's supply-side pressure. Most departments have the Treasury breathing down their neck to spend less. DfID is unique in that it is required to spend more, and farther away from scrutiny than any other department.'

Last, but not least, comes the China factor. In the last decade, resource-hungry China has been making sweeping inroads on the African continent. On the hunt for the oil, timber, copper and other resources needed by its expanding economy, Beijing offers in exchange cheap funding without the moralising lectures and conditionalities of Western donors. Just as Western governments thought they had put their colonial guilt firmly behind them and established a post-Cold War consensus on what was needed in Africa, a giant player dangling no-strings-attached funding–on governance matters, at least–enters the game. Yet another argument, in the eyes of development ministries suddenly facing their own irrelevance, for erring on the side of leniency.

Small wonder, given these various factors, that DfID in 2004 had little appetite for the antics of a high commissioner who appeared to have launched a personal crusade against government venality in a
key African ally. ‘They found it an embarrassing obstacle, because it got in the way of their plans to spend more,' says Clay. ‘They found it unpalatable to have an ambassador who had a high-profile role on it and was not going to pipe down.'

 

By the time Clay arrived in Kenya he already nursed reservations about DfID's role. He was beginning to suspect that while the department dutifully recited the ‘good governance' mantra, it essentially regarded the fight against corruption as an inconvenience. ‘They've said for years, “Good governance is at the centre of development,” and it's been easy because they thought their bluff would never be called.' Now he couldn't help registering that the amounts involved in the dodgy Anglo Leasing deals were roughly equivalent to the sums the Kenyans received each year in aid. Was international generosity merely encouraging those in power to feel they could help themselves to equivalent amounts?

A principle, he felt, was at stake: the link between voter and government in a young democracy. Critics of international aid often claim it all ends up in Swiss bank accounts, a charge development officials easily swat away, pointing at the accountants and consultants who police spending. The argument should be a different one: not that the aid is itself stolen, but that donors make it possible, via that aid, for governments to dip their hands elsewhere in the budget while still delivering basic services, thereby escaping the electorate's wrath. Accountability moves offshore, thanks to aid's fungibility.

Surveys in Kenya showed that the one area in which NARC consistently won top marks from otherwise disillusioned voters was its free primary education programme. In rural areas, families who had rationed attendance to an eldest boy could now send all their children to school. In actual fact, DfID funding made it possible for the government to keep class sizes down and make schoolbooks available. Yet, fretted Clay, NARC would get the credit come the elections, and might win another term on the back of DfID's input. If that happened, British taxpayers would effectively have shored up a
corrupt regime, not only shielding it from the ire of its voters but buffing its image. Was that really the role they should be playing?

The identity of the minister for education rubbed salt into that wound. Finance minister under Moi, George Saitoti was a man long suspected by the donors of involvement in the Goldenberg scandal. Yet London yearly bestowed a £50-million blessing, and with it international credibility, on Saitoti's head. ‘What the Kenyan public see is a minister of education who has been alleged to be a central character in Goldenberg, being chummied and rewarded by the British, who regard him as the most important single partner in their development work. The message that conveys should make us uncomfortable.'

During Clay's tenure, the topic of shifting from project to budgetary support in Kenya cropped up with a regularity that left little doubt where DfID's inclinations lay. The department was champing at the bit, desperate to make the move. ‘Unfortunately, they've had to confront the evidence that they can't justify doing it, because the “fiduciary risk” was too high. What they have tended to do is to shoot the messenger.' And the tension between DfID's need to spend and its prospective customer's soiled track record could only, Clay recognised, get keener with time, increasing the temptation to turn a blind eye to government theft. ‘DfID have got themselves into a position where they talk about not wanting to waste “their investment” in Kenya's education. It isn't really an investment, of course, it's an expenditure. But when people talk about investment in that way, they start thinking about defending it, and the more they invest, the more they will be inclined to say, “We mustn't pull out now.”' Kenya's education system represented an expanding ‘sunk cost' for DfID, its abandonment less acceptable with every passing year.

In the high commissioner's view, Britain's integrity was on the line. He, for one, had taken on board Whitehall's briefings on a new line on graft. ‘Governments have been telling us diplomats for the last ten years: “You have to take up the moral high ground.” My argument was, I'm in Kenya, we have the evidence, this is something we can do something about. For God's sake let's do it if we mean what we say.'