The prevailing narrative, where rich country governments say their foreign aid is helping Africa, is “a distraction and misleading”, stated the campaigners for Global Justice Now, a social justice organisation working to challenge the powerful and create a more just and equal world.
In fact, recent analysis in a report entitled Honest Accounts 2017: How the world profits from Africa’s wealth, published by a coalition of UK and African organisations, including Global Justice Now, Health Poverty Action and Jubilee Debt Campaign, found that more wealth leaves Africa every year than enters it – by more than $40bn (£31bn) – according to the research that challenges “misleading” perceptions of foreign aid.
The analysis found that the rest of the world is profiting more than most African citizens from the continent’s wealth. The report makes a series of recommendations as to how the system extracting wealth from Africa could be dismantled. These recommendations include promoting economic policies that lead to equitable development, preventing companies with subsidiaries based in tax havens from operating in African countries, and transforming aid into a process that genuinely benefits Africa.
Aisha Dodwell, a campaigner for Global Justice Now, said: “There’s such a powerful narrative in western societies that Africa is poor and that it needs our help. This research shows that what African countries really need is for the rest of the world to stop systematically looting them. While the form of colonial plunder may have changed over time, its basic nature remains unchanged.”
Read the full article from The Guardian here. Access the full report here.