In every African country, there are two groups of people whose lives should be intertwined but are not. On the one hand, you have – and forgive me for being extremely vague but it is simply for clarification purposes – the indigenous populations, whose people simply ‘get on with it’. Apart from exhibiting higher rates of poverty, these populations are little different than those in say, Europe or North America: they have classes, and are comprised of people from different ethnic groups and with different educational backgrounds. On the other hand, you have what I call the ‘Eat Well, Live Well Club’, or the collection of people of the expat variety whose mission is to help the burgeoning groups of impoverished but who seem to be eating well and living well at their expense. This division is more evident in Sierra Leone than in any of the other countries I have worked in.
Based on the couple of days I have spent in Freetown, I find myself questioning more and more what people from multilateral and bilateral agencies actually do in Africa, apart from driving the latest SUV down the potholed roads they are supposed to oversee the paving of and eating at the best restaurants in town. The purpose of the ‘UN mission’ here, for example, is very unclear. I went to an amazing restaurant on the first evening of my stay, which was populated exclusively by UN workers: we could barely turn our small taxi around in the parking lot because of SUV congestion. Here, prices are pretty much on par with London. I was told – and forgive me if I am wrong here – that the UN mission, the aim of which is to ‘peace keep’, will (finally) come to an end in December. But the last time I checked, there was no war here: there has been little need for peacekeeping, particularly the ineffective laissez faire type the UN espouses, in this country for years.
The UK Department for International Development’s (DfID) presence here is also a point of contention. After all, this is an agency being propelled by taxpayer’s money. Would we not, therefore, like to see our monies, earmarked in the name of development, being used to upgrade say, a water treatment plant, or to pave a road in a rural area? This country is Britain’s largest bilateral partner and there is little evidence of any of the hundreds of millions of pounds being spent on aid here being used meaningfully. Forget the fact that some of the roads in Sierra Leone have not been re-paved since the colonial period or that shanty towns still proliferate; rather, every time you open the newspaper, it seems that there is a new DfID tender for security or peacekeeping.
The development agenda is now heavily centred on the issues of good governance and transparency, the main focus being on the institutions and regimes money is being dispensed to. But while we are at it, why not kill two birds with one stone and do an audit of our own agencies? I think that everyone would be shocked to find out what the money is being spent on, although I can tell you right now: SUVs, good food, quality imported liquor and six bedroom houses.
Welcome to the ‘Eat Well, Live Well Club’.
