"The hand that receives is always below the hand that gives"-- African proverb. The President of Uganda began behaving badly in 2005. Yoweri Museveni successfully changed his country's constitution to allow him to run for a third presidential term in early 2006.  He began muzzling the press in his country.  He also locked up his main challenger and former personal physician, Dr. Kizza Besigye, on dubious charges of treason and rape.

The Right Honourable Hilary Benn, Britain's Secretary of State for International Development, sent Museveni a stern letter announcing the withholding of some of the development aid his country had lavished on Uganda since Museveni took power in the 1980s.  Benn cited the imprisonment of Besigye and the use of government resources in campaigning for the ruling National Resistance Movement.

President Museveni went ballistic.  In a widely published response, he lambasted the ‘donor’ and ‘beggar’ relationship between the West and Africa.  He accused Britain of trying to exercise ‘suzerainty’ over Uganda's ‘sovereign’ issues.  He mocked Mr. Benn for pointing out the fact that Britain had contributed £800 million to Uganda since 1986, claiming that the quantum of money received by Africa in aid paled into insignificance when compared with what it lost due to unfavourable terms of trade.

The president listed various forms of ‘meddling’ by donors: in counter-terrorism; in interfering with state support of industrial enterprises; even in dam-building.  He asked Mr. Benn to ‘point out to me one single Black African country that has transitioned because of…aid from the West since Ghana's independence in 1957. And he finished with this conclusive remark: ‘What Uganda and Africa need most is independence in decision-making, not subservience, satellite status or dependency status.’

What was most interesting about this ill-tempered exchange was that it did not involve one of Africa's notorious Big Men.  Up to that point, Yoweri Museveni had been the aid industry's poster child, one of the ‘new breed of African leaders’ that Britain and America had been hailing since the 1990s.  Uganda was supposed to prove the argument once and for all: That aid given to the right countries in the right circumstances with the right conditions produces the right results.  The country is estimated to have received $11 billion since 1987 – and the result, as we saw in 2005, is the pointing of fingers and the hurling of accusations and counter-accusations.

It makes you wonder, does it not, about the nature of this ‘relationship’?  Both sides seem happy – one to bestow, the other to receive – until, for whatever reason, the flow is interrupted.  Then the acrimony begins.  Don't tell us how to run our lives, says one side.  You're misusing our money and abusing our trust, says the other.  Don't interfere in our affairs, shouts one.  You happily took the money and blew it on parties, screams the other.

Meanwhile, in neighbouring Kenya, Sir Edward Clay, Britain's High Commissioner to the country (who had also served as Britain’s High Commissioner to Uganda when Museveni was still the darling of Western donors) became famously undiplomatic in 2004 when he was so incensed by the failures of President Mwai Kibaki's NARC government to contain grand corruption that he likened the recipients of Her Majesty's aid money to ‘gluttons’ who were now ‘vomiting on our shoes.’  He continued his outspoken campaign even after he left Kenya, railing against the World Bank's decision to resume aid to the country in 2006.  In an open letter to the Bank's President, Paul Wolfowitz, he accused the institution of ‘adding to, not subtracting from, the sufferings of the peasantry.’  He asked the Bank to ‘sharpen up its political awareness’ and to ‘avoid blind and offensive blundering.’

Should all this tetchiness surprise us?  I don't think so.  Even in ordinary life, relationships between givers and takers are always fraught with difficulty.  As an example, consider this: at some stage in our lives many of us (especially those of us who live in Africa) have had to support disadvantaged friends or relatives.  Where that exchange involves reasonable sums provided to overcome temporary difficulty, both sides are happy.  The giver basks in the glow of philanthropy or duty; the recipient is grateful for the kindness shown at a time of need.

It all goes horribly and predictably wrong, however, if the dependency continues indefinitely.  Once the kind-hearted, socially responsible one has been doling out large sums for many years and the needy, dependant one has been pocketing them, the recriminations begin.  The giver will start to notice that the beggar he's supporting does not seem to have as frugal a lifestyle as one should expect in the circumstances.  He begins to question the dependant's efforts to reduce his dependence.  He starts handing out lectures about how he works hard for his money, and how he should not have to pay for the laziness or poor judgement of others.

The recipient has no choice but to listen, but seethes with anger.  He, in turn, looks at the giver's opulent lifestyle and rages at his mean-mindedness in withholding what must be small change for him.  He resents being questioned about his efforts to secure his own income.  He reminds the giver of the favours he has bestowed on his benefactor in times past.  He dreams about the day when he will fling the money back in his tormentor's face.

Far from being productive or necessary, the donor-dependant relationship most often ends in mutual hatred.  And amid the final acrimony, one crucial fact is forgotten: the longer the relationship has carried on, the less capable the dependant is of reducing his dependence.  The years of being held up by another do take their toll: skills wither, and a loss of confidence grows insidiously.  Even with all the taunting and goading he is subjected to, the dependant is not motivated to rise up and finally fend for himself: no, all he is able to think about is switching donors.

Whether it's between nations or individuals, the donor-dependant relationship weakens both sides.  One side loses its kindness and tolerance; the other its dignity and self-respect.  In the end, neither benefits.  In the end, friendship and kinship are lost.

The aid charade

It is this basic aspect of human nature that is being forgotten in the aid debate.  For too long, we have been misled into thinking many fallacious things: That poor countries (particularly African ones) cannot make it on their own; that rich countries owe some historical debt to the poor ones, and must therefore keep slipping them some money to alleviate their guilt; that more development money equals more growth; that development plans can be orchestrated from up above and far away; that poverty can be ‘made history’ by the rich nations.

Fortunately, this conventional wisdom is increasingly under challenge.  Joseph Stiglitz, winner of a Nobel Prize for economics, weighed in first with a stinging critique of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank and the conditions they attach to development aid.  He asked for nothing less than an overhaul of the international financial framework that governs trade and aid.

William Easterly, a former World Bank economist, pointed out that after pumping in nearly 2.3 trillion in aid to developing countries, ostensibly to remove poverty; the West has little to show for the effort.  He rails against the idea that complex, utopian plans can be devised for poor countries from afar.  He dismisses the efforts of foreign technocrats and aid workers as (mostly) well-intended meddling that has almost never had the desired effect of hauling nations out of crippling poverty.

Robert Calderisi, another former World Bank functionary, has written of the shortcomings and indulgences of foreign aid in Africa.  He asks the continent to take a hard look at its own problems and weaknesses, and writes damningly of the aid charade: ‘In trying to please aid officials, African countries feel debased, like circus dogs forced to perform tricks.’  One of his radical prescriptions is to cut direct aid to individual countries in Africa by half, arguing that less aid would force giver and taker to use it better.

Percy Mistry, an investment banker and Chairman of the Oxford International Group, tells us that Africa's problem is not a lack of financial capital (having received, and largely squandered, nearly $1 trillion [in 2005 dollars] in foreign aid since 1965), but a crippling shortage of human capital, the skills and expertise needed to take the continent onto a self-propelled growth trajectory.  Mistry believes that African countries must focus on their own resources by harnessing savings and investment capital while simultaneously investing in developing the right skill-sets for their economies.

These are thoughtful and forceful critiques.  The prescriptions for change are also far-reaching and often radical.  Yet to even get to an agenda for reform, one must begin with the psychological insight: Great harm is done to people when they are made dependent on others.  The hand that receives will one day rise against the hand that gives, and vice versa.

Able-bodied beggars

Recently, when I wrote about Bill Gates and Warren Buffet and their remarkable initiatives in changing the world of philanthropy in my weekly column in Kenya's Sunday Nation, I was horrified to find my mailbox filled with pleas from Kenyans to connect them and their ‘projects’ to the two great men so that they could solicit donations. At every level, this affliction reveals itself.  Our governments attend global begging shops looking for ‘development aid’.  Our businessmen and women scour the globe seeking ‘investment capital’ at preferential rates.  Our NGOs work the international charity circuit, pleading for ‘operational funding’.  And able-bodied beggars line our roads, seeking their next meal to enable them to live to beg for another day.  If this is not the same problem in different guises, I am missing something.

Let the international aid game indeed reform itself.  But the first thing to do is to break away from our own dependency.  President Museveni took umbrage against the patronising attitude of the British, but why did he relegate his country to beggar status in the first place?  Why did he accept a situation in which more than half of his country's budget was being financed by donors?  Why did he stand by and allow his ministers to be dictated to about which roads to build, which sectors to invest in, and what laws to pass?  When a hard-nosed operative like Museveni (who launched a successful guerrilla campaign against an oppressive regime) puts himself in the hands of the aid industry for so many years, we have reason to be worried.  He only appears to have rediscovered Uganda's need for ‘sovereignty’ once the money taps were turned off.

Self-reliance can be achieved.  Kenya has made great financial strides in this regard, increasing its generation of tax revenues remarkably in recent years.  It has harnessed its own capital sources, using the surplus funds of its own businesses and its Diaspora.  It is successfully designing a long-term, home-grown economic growth plan that is aimed at reducing donor dependency and increasing self-sufficiency.  Yet the aid habit is hard to kick.  President Mwai Kibaki is still playing the donor-switching game, successfully wooing the Chinese and the Arabs to provide aid for projects when the traditional donors act coy.  The deadening mindset is intact.

We will learn.  A new generation of Africans is questioning the need to beg.  We are beginning to realise that something that takes ten years to do with your own ideas and your own resources is superior to a three-year programme planned, funded and dictated by the IMF.  We are waking up to the fact that we cannot always be unschooled bumpkins in someone else's flawed game; we must generate our own development, by ourselves and in our own way.

Africa's real problem has been the appalling leaders who have steered its path since the 1960s.  The dearth of talent and ethics at the top has gone hand-in-hand with aid dependency.  It is far easier for the ignorant, the unimaginative and the grasping to simply take the aid on offer, rather than engage in the much more difficult task of self-determined economic growth.  And the donor community, to its discredit, has engaged in an unseemly waltz with Africa's incompetent and greedy leaders, occasionally going into a sulk and sitting out a dance, but always returning to the floor when the music changes.  So, what then is the point of the angry and forceful words?  Museveni may have accused the British of many things, but Uganda is still feeding at the aid trough.  Britain may have had its footwear soiled by Kenyans, but it is still priming the pump.  Both sides seem very comfortable with all the hypocrisy.

Home-grown development does occur: Indeed, history has always taught that it is the norm rather than the exception.  William Easterly points out that the countries with the best per capita growth rates from 1980 to 2002 also had low dependency on foreign aid; the ten lowest-performing countries, on the other hand, were almost all heavily aid-reliant.  More depressingly, almost all the countries in the former group were Asian; the countries that were poor and dependent were mostly African.

The countries that have transformed themselves have never been in the donors' high-dependency unit for long periods.  They have used aid, yes; but judiciously and for limited periods.  They have depended on themselves, empowered themselves and thought for themselves.  Indeed, they have almost all come in for great criticism from the West: China, for being too authoritarian; Japan and South Korea, for their governments' penchant for intervening in their economies, and for favouring large conglomerates; India for pursuing its ambition to become a nuclear power.  By and large, these countries have ignored the prescriptions from the rich countries and have charted their own paths.

True success in individual life rarely comes from being given a drip-feed of money and being led by the nose by a benefactor who doesn't understand you but is full of patronising advice.  It comes from a personal sense of purpose, determination and clear thinking.  Money tends to follow success, not to lead it.  African leaders keep forgetting what they know to be true in their personal lives: At the end of the day, achievement comes from knowledge, enterprise and dedication to a cause, not from handouts.

By Sunny Bindra. He is a management consultant and business advisor. He has worked in a senior capacity with a number of leading management consultancy firms in Kenya and the United Kingdom.