From poverty to power - Oxfam-Québec

5 THE INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM AIDplanning. The same process, however, has also skewed budgets towardspending on technical assistance. The high-priced consultants whopropose, monitor, and evaluate aid programmes now pocket 20 centsof every aid dollar. 144 A study of technical assistance in Mozambiquefound that rich countries were spending $350m per year on 3,500technical experts, while the entire wage bill for Mozambique’s 100,000public sector workers was just $74m. 145 While technical assistancemay be helpful, for example in enabling governments to learn fromthe experiences of others, donors ought to place developing countriesin control of technical assistance funds, so that they can decidewhether to hire local or other consultants to undertake work that fitstheir own needs and priorities.Even when well-intentioned, the long shopping lists of ‘conditions’attached by donors undermines the essential task of building institutionsand policies rooted in local economic and social structures – the pathfollowed by all of today’s successful economies. Of course, taxpayers inrich countries – and citizens of poor countries – are entitled to expectaid to be used to promote development and to be clearly accountedfor. However, many donors undermine quality by imposing their ownpreferred economic policy reforms. ‘Conditionality’ often obligespoor countries to implement policies based on dogma and ideology,rather than on evidence – for example, privatisation and liberalisationwhich, as discussed in Part 3, have a poor track record in triggeringgrowth or reducing poverty.Donor hubris can also erode state institutions. One insideraccount of Ghana’s attempt to adopt new policies after the 2000election of an energetic new president highlights the corrosive impacton institutions of aid dependence. Aid donor staff were ideologicallyhostile to the president’s proposals to promote industry, and distrustedthe abilities of government staff to design such a programme. Theyinsisted that the government use ‘technical assistance’ to design itsflagship industrial policy and, desperate for resources, the governmentagreed. Soon the Ministry for Private Sector Development hadmore foreign consultants than civil servants. With policy backgroundsrooted in the international aid industry, the consultantsthemselves were sceptical of many of the government’s ideas. Insteadof aid backing a genuine effort to build an effective state, it bogged the365