Need for Accountability (Poor Use of Foreign Aid in Cameroon)

 Originally published in Cameroon Tribune 
 
Several companies that win and execute contracts on development projects unsatisfactorily in some countries today are being dragged to court and made to pay back the money for which such contracts were awarded. Many countries are fast getting into this new system of accountability. A study on Cameroon’s foreign aid consumption capacity reveals that aid paid into the country by development partners to be injected into various projects is insufficiently put to use. The study, conducted by the Berlin Global Public Policy Institute which, in effect, analyses factors restraining the capacity of Cameroon to absorb foreign aid, compounds the observations and fears expressed by parliamentarians during budgetary sessions. The men of law have often indicted government for registering a percentage consumption that is almost permanently below average.

Even though the study brings out a medley of factors that prevent the country from using its aid, there seem to be two major impediments: selfish tendencies and incompetence. Vote holders and the chain of actors involved in the execution of projects initiated within the framework of foreign aid deliberately refuse to collaborate and communicate, especially when they do not see clearly the benefit to be pulled from there. The education, air transport, health, and customs sectors are palpable examples. In the same vein, some senior government staff involved in the management of projects, lack the competence to conceive, execute, follow up, assess and draw up terms of references.

Some projects are initiated without a well stated or finalised regulatory and legal framework. Sometimes when these setups are available, State engagements in the financing agreements are either not respected or are implemented late as a result of inertia and other administrative bottlenecks. The multiplicity of sensitisation programmes to enable actors understand the functioning of the country’s public contract system, has not fully produced expected results. All the stages in the contract system are imbued with intrigues, starting from contract award through execution to evaluation.

The poor consumption of foreign aid has pulled the country into a mess wherein one finds aid packages disbursed and wasted just to go back and request for more aid. This is quite disturbing for a developing country like Cameroon that has even been declared as poor and heavily indebted. A critical examination of the reasons behind poor credit consumption tells of nothing short of lack of patriotism. Talk of foreign aid and the minds of some executors run to their stomachs. This, in effect, is what has paralysed the country.

Apart from what the study of foreign aid consumption proposes as lasting solution; one that is based essentially on capacity building, some countries who find themselves in this mess have adopted a rather radical approach. Any contracting company that fails to deliver the goods is immediately dragged to the law court for judgement. And once found guilty, it is made to pay back the money.

Were it not the case, it could be necessary to extrapolate the French-piloted debt relief approach, C2D to ordinary foreign aid. This, of course, will entail creating a mixed commission with representatives of the donor organisation and those of the State to jointly work together to ensure the smooth execution of projects designed under such aid. This will certainly enforce checks and balances and discourage evil-oriented acts.
 

Comments

[Alain Dipoko, Yabassi Boy.]

This article is surely not from Cameroon Tribune. I read everything from Cameroon Tribune but have never seen anything like that.

[Va Boy]

Propaganda stinks dear Professeur Aggregated Dipoquo. You really think we are idiots, don't you?

[Etchu Pryde]

The Cameroon Tribune link to the original article: http://www.cameroon-tribune.cm/article.php?lang=Fr&oled=j20042010&idart=62816&olarch=

[Chief Ayuk Arrey]

How can there be Accountability when all are guilty.Who wants to expose the other.

[Dr A A Agbormbai]

What Cameroon is experiencing today is the curse of the political injustice that stems from the events surrounding the country's independence.

A group of patriots (UPC leaders), who had the country at heart, fought for its independence, only for tricksters, usurpers, or opportunists to emerge from a vacuum and take over what they did not deserve.

Cameroon is still run by descendants of these opportunists, who know not what it means to labour for one's keeps. They never worked for the country's independence, yet are having the best that the country can offer.

That's how it is. When you don't earn what you have, you'll never want to suffer to learn how to manage it. I'm afraid, Cameroon's leaders are spoiled kids who only know how to consume from other people's sweat. They don't know how to sweat or sacrifice to achieve anything.

They cannot produce, only consume. An underpinning trademark of such persons is SELFISHNESS. That's the characteristic mark of the opportunist personality.

These people judge their lives according to how luxurious their lifestyle is, and will walk over other people and spill their blood - only so that they can maintain their luxurious lifestyles. Personal achievement means nothing to them. Their only emphasis is on life's pleasures. They don't want even the least pain.

They think of themselves as kings, but forget that kings are people of a warrior spirit. You cannot be a warrior if all that you can think of is life's pleasures (such as living in palaces, dressing up in luxurious garments, sleeping on sumptuous beds, etc.). You cannot be a warrior if you don't know the other side of life - the pain, the suffering, the sacrifices, the hard work, the grind, etc.

True kings of old had it all - the pleasures of their palaces and the pains of the battlefield!

Cameroon is run by opportunists, crooks, usurpers, tricksters, etc. As long as the descendants of Ahidjo, the chief usurper, continue to rule Cameroon, the country and its people are doomed.

You may call this the curse of the noble UPC leaders who saw the results of their hard work stolen by nonentities, while they themselves faced the firing squad. As long as these nonentities continue to make a mockery of Cameroon the country and its people are doomed!

Cameroon must be cleansed. The usurpers and tricksters must be annihilated. The spirits of the dead and noble UPC leaders must be gratified.

Cameroon must see a re-start, a re-birth, with patriots filling all the hierarchies of its government. Without this, the curse of the dead and noble UPC leaders will stand to destroy the nation.

[Alain Dipoko, Yabassi Boy.]

Thanks people for the clarification. Go Cameroon Tribune!

[Egha]

We can not be talkig of accountability and efficiency when those who win these contracts are party barons.To ask them to account for these funds will mean the end of the Great Party.Camerooniansespecially those in leadership position are very unpatriotic and selfish.

[njimaforboy]

You can't blame all Cameroonians as being Selfish and unpatriotic.

Cameroon is where she is today due to the failed leadership of Paul Biya. Mr. Biya is responsible for this culture of unpatriotism and selfishness among the leadership and the rest of the country.

The ultimate success of a leader is in the legacy you leave behind for others to follow. What will be Paul Biya's legacy?

Mr.Biya has lost intergrity with mjority of Cameroonians, it makes no difference what he says. Most Cameroonians consider Biya a thief.

He has been stealing elctions for 28 years, and has vastly enriched himself at the expense of the suffering masses.Robert Townsend said "True leadership must be for the benefit of the followers,not the enrichment of the leader"

[nji]

BEWARE OF THESE FOREIGN STUDIES IT ALWAYS HAS AN AGENDA BEHIND.Why do the European Union use it power to force African goverments to lagalise behaviours we consider an abomination but cannot use the very power to force African leader to manage the aids properly??The answere is simple, we the citizines are their tadget we are being fed with false imformations conserning the so call aids therfore sowing distrust between Africans and their leaders.This means when they don't want any leader in power for what ever reason, the people will be used to do the dirty job.The real story about this aids is, the donors when coming with aids they make anouncement of 100m dolards but they send their own people to spend the aids which means about 50percent or more being taking back by the donors but we the citizen are not being told obout this we are still left with the knowledge that aids has been giving to African leaders.