Aid for the lazy

A friend of mine wrote to me and said:

I have been a development planning advisor to local government in Ghana for 2 years. I took over the planning as the planning officer was not interested at planning at all (none of the planning officers are: they just want to manage EU funded projects so they get "supervision allowances"). I think Ghana should transfer government of the country over to KPMG, PriceWaterhouseCoopers or Ernest & Young.

Doesn’t this example just sum up the whole problem? Bureaucrats sitting on their fat arses when the people have put their trust in them to improve the country and their lives. What’s worse, the ministers are aware of the problem but no one is taking steps to deal with it. Probably because they are all at the same game! Where is the accountability, monitoring and evaluation?

It just reinforces the position of all those who say that sending aid to Africa is not the solution.