Foreign Aid ... why, why, why?

[Toogoodtobeforgotten]

On R4 this morning. JH asking a representative from Rwanda why they have made the decision to sponsor Arsenal FC £30m to advertise the country as a tourist destination. JH explained the UK gave Rwanda £60m in aid last year. (This is the gist of the context here).

JH also asserted in the interview that Rwanda has a poor human rights record and refused inspections that would ascertain if the country had dedicated torture facilities.

The spokeswoman was unrepentant for both the decision to lodge £30m with Arsenal and for Rwanda's human rights record.

So why is this country knowingly giving aid to a country with human rights issues and who has decided they can afford to sponsor a football club? Makes me want to puke in righteous indignation.

I don't think that list is going to be anywhere near covered by the 30million. It's peanuts in terms of government budget.

Although if the government could get away with giving NHS workers a £6 a year pay rise I'm sure they would.

Christian Aid spends voluntary donations, foreign aid is spending tax payers money, not the same thing.

It's a bit of a big number fallacy
If someone in this country was on benefits yet could afford a sports car I would not expect them to be getting any more state aid. Saving that he might win a race and pocket prize money does not mean it is a good use of tax payers money.

Aid should come with strings.

It’s rather more like a person on benefits in the UK spending a tenner on copy of Microsoft Office for Dummies in the hope of brushing their CV up.

Or, more specifically, someone who earns 9,995 pounds a year and gets a 5 pound benefits top-up spending fifteen quid on a couple of For Dummies books on the hope of improving his CV.

Whoops, wrong way round, they earn 9,950, they get a top up of fifty quid and they spend 15 quid on educational books.

Wyclef

Especially given your last point, you would never give foreign aid at all. "Every pound spent" is a completely unrealistic target.

Ok, apparently 'In 2016, the UK spent £13.4 billion on overseas aid, in line with the 0.7% target.' I don’t necessarily think that Britain should not engage in foreign aid at all, just that our leaders have a duty to the people who pay for it and the people in whose name they serve to spend the money well. "Every pound spent" should definitely be the aspiration and the flow of this money should be fully and properly audited. In the face of how much this money is needed in the UK, any lack of accountancy is not acceptable.

You are raising the bar to such a standard that aid should only go to foreigners if we are living in a utopia (no potholes on the road).
The last item was tongue in cheek, but the fact is the state of our roads is an emerging problem and potential danger to us all.

I think you are also confused about where the money is coming from to sponsor Arsenal. It's not coming from UK tax payer's money. Maybe in a very very indirect way it is, in that the money raised from tourism could go directly to infrastructure, but governments are a bit more complicated than that.

That was rather patronising. Of course it's not "directly" coming from the UK and of course no government structure is that simple. However, if a country receives foreign aid as additional funds, what's to stop them diverting the equivalent of their existing budget say from providing public services into something else? How would we know that the £30m earmarked by Rwanda into sponsorship for Arsenal is not as an indirect consequence of the £60m received from the UK?

If reports are to be believed, the waste and corruption that goes unseen or unchallenged foreign aid is a kick in the teeth both for the people at home who pay the bill and for the people aid is supposed to be helping. If we want to maximize the impact and reach of international aid, we need to ensure that every pound is spent as efficiently as possible. We can only do this with better information and a clear understanding.

Also there is a lot of information available about the pros and cons of foreign aid, as per the link below.

www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/10/13/why-trying-to-help-poor-countries-might-actually-hurt-them/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.c36e29d04ee6

We should not use examples such as this to argue for a reduction in overseas aid, more to spend it differently. More and more match funding is used so charities on the ground are working to alleviate poverty both short and long term.

Does anyone know how much a 3year global advertising campaign with an ad company might cost?

There’s probably lost of variables to take into account but given this is MN somebody must have an idea about a ballpark figure.

A suppose a parallel might be like saying that you would refuse to give to charity as long as the government spends a single penny on non-essential things like Royal weddings or FA cup finals.

Having visit Rawanda on the sleeve of a football shirt hardly seems like the best way to promote the country. Not exactly a memorable visual is it. Visit Rawanda - is going to make football fans rush there! 30 million is shocking. Its a pathetic attempt to hob nob with the Arsenal Big Wigs.

I have been to Rawanda as part of an overland tour, it is stunning country but with a stomach churning past. Frankly, I would rather see 'aid' go towards the women who have been sexually mutilated and tortured. Or to The Survivors Fund a British charity working with the children of rape. UN reckons, 5000 children. Survivors Fund think the number is closer to 20,000 - these children are rejected and stigmatised and they are not entitled to any government assistance.

I tend to think that awareness of Rwandan tourist opportunities is at such a low level that a simple prompt might be useful actually. The simple words, even on this thread, produce a “holiday in Rwanda? Really?” reaction and then you’re primed and curious for follow-up marketing by whatever means. I’m not going to state that it’s VFM; I have no idea, but I can see how it could work. Quite a lot of zero brand-awareness firms have started a marketing push with football sponsorship.

Arsenal reckon their shirt is seen 35 million times a day worldwide. If that’s the case, it might not be as bad an idea as first seemed in terms of advertising.

I’d imagine this press coverage of it isn’t doing the tourist industry much harm either. there’s probably a fair number of people that weren’t even aware that Rwanda had a tourist industry until this story hit the headlines.

Who books a holiday based upon the name on a football shirt?

I suspect its just a fanatic supporter in the Rwanda government who likes all the hospitality that Arsenal provide is a bit closer to he truth. Coruption 101

Toogood I absolutely agree, i remember reading about the aid we give to India, (space programme and nuclear power) and they actually said they don't want it. , but we kind of forced it on them.....Just fucking WHY? Look after your own people first ffs.

Thanks greenvalleys for your support. So far most of the posters here appear to be very protective of our foreign aid policy so I was feeling like a lone wolf until this point. I wonder if some of the defense is due to post-colonial guilt amongst other things.

R4 has done an interview on its series on poverty everyday this week, and the tales of hardship of people trying to get by - people like us so we will all have run into them - are harrowing. It's evidence of a crumbling social welfare state and desperately sad. Right now our country could do with some of that foreign aid to help its own.

So here are my proposals for a branch and root reform of foreign policy:
Replace the 0.7% target with a cap - and cap expenditure to £5bn in any year;
Foreign aid to be ring fenced as an emergency fund to provide immediate relief in cases of natural disasters, disease, famine etc;
Aid also to be ring fenced for education - this would include grants so that people from less well off countries can go to university (and would only be repayable once these recipients were earning sufficient money);
Aid payments will cease to countries that clearly indicate they do not want or need it; similarly to any country embarking on space programmes (except in the case of emergency aid subject to the condition below);
All aid to be channeled via dedicated working groups and not to be given direct to government regimes (let's cut out the corrupt, despotic and torturing middle-men here). All money will be accounted for, audited and transactions will be transparent.

"I wonder if some of the defense is due to post-colonial guilt amongst other things."

Let's unpack this, what do you mean by it?

Can you clarify what you mean by “people like us”?

I’m hoping you don’t mean the way it is coming across.

pigmc

In response to this comment from an earlier poster: If anyone in the west actually Gave a shit they would apologise for the fact that colonialism has left Africa with massive debts and write them off.

Cathinthe

I think on reading again, my choice of words here was clumsy. What I meant to say was, these are people we know, our families and friends who are in positions of poverty - and that's why we should be concerned to help and alleviate their suffering wherever possible. By not dismantling our welfare state would be a good start. Ditto to improve working conditions (address the zero hours contract / gig economy culture) etc etc. I won't go on and I hope I've explained where I'm coming from.

toogood - and that is wrong, because...?

I'm not getti g why you think the two are mutuallu exclusive toogood. And as I pointed out earlier, foreign aid isn't just for the benefit of the recipient countries, it's also very much in our own interest.

How would those policies change this situation though? Rwanda does need aid. We'd still be giving it to them. And the money we give them hasn't been used in this. They're using a small amount of the annual revenue from the national parks to try and increase that revenue and bring money into the economy. Which if it works will continue to reduce their need for foreign aid in the future.

Arguably it might not be the most cost effective form of advertising but the fact that they are spending money on advertising doesn't itself mean we should stop foreign aid.

I doubt cuts to the welfare system have much to do with the foreign aid budget anyway. It's more of a deliberate policy than them not being able to find the money from somewhere.

Perhaps people don't think the Rwandan Government should invest for its future.

Perhaps they'd like to think about the consequences of that a little more....? Or maybe they'd like the country to remain in poverty

In the UK, the foreign aid budget is made from the fees paid by (usually failed) visa applications. Therefore, foreign aid is essentially the U.K. giving a country back some of the money that their citizens have paid to us. So in terms of the original question it’s all a bit swings and roundabouts.

I think giving aid to the Rwandan people is a good idea.

Giving aid to the Rwandan government to waste however they see fit is, evidently and sadly, a stupid one.

It is the frustrating but constant conundrum of how to help the people who need it without simply enabling those who would keep them poor.

But foreign aid is about much more than helping poor people. Aid for favours more like.

Do you honestly believe the poor see all that money fuck it'd not just us giving them money there's other countries giving them it to our charity are regulated so why are the donation to other countries regulated 60mil and they can't build school there's people that go over and do that for them as well the government are corrupt samd with Africa what exactly are they doing with the.money if the adverts on the telly are asking u to sponsor kids surely if they say it costs 3.00 a month to sponsor to feed that child then 60 mil can buy alot of food and put water wells in they should get nothing and they should be asking if you can sponsor a child here poverty is here so why is Africa never giving other countries money the amount of aid they have had over the years