Aid and Somaliland : Mo money mo problems

[Jacaylbaro]

The Economist is at it again:

 

RULING parties in Africa often have to answer as much to their donors as their citizens. A recent paper suggests that the government in Somaliland has become more accountable to its citizens because of the lack of aid.

 

Somaliland announced its secession from Somalia in 1991 and has operated as a more or less independent country ever since. It has its own president, parliament and constitution. It even boasts a central bank that prints its own currency, the Somaliland shilling. The peaceful existence of its three million mostly Muslim, but secular, residents contrasts sharply with the disorder and instability of Somalia. The world, however, has refused to recognise Somaliland. Reluctant to encourage other separatist movements, the West remains committed to supporting the embattled Transitional Federal Government in Somalia which opposes its separation.

 

In his paper, Nicholas Eubank, a researcher at Stanford University, claims that some of Somaliland's success is down to a dearth of aid. Donors cannot give aid directly to the government since it is not recognised as such. It has been dependant on raising local tax revenue, which the paper says citizens have used as leverage to make the government more inclusive, representative and accountable. For those looking to bash the multi-billion dollar aid industry, it is an appealing thesis. But is it true?

 

READ MORE .... http://www.economist.com/blogs/baobab/2011/06/aid-and-somaliland

[Wiil Cusub]

He is not first who noted this. NY times write similar conclusion about state forming and recognition

 

To Save Africa, Reject Its Nations

 

By PIERRE ENGLEBERT

Published: June 11, 2010

 

Claremont, Calif.

 

In Africa, similarly, the unrecognized, breakaway state of Somaliland provides its citizens with relative peace and democracy, offering a striking counterpoint to the violence and misery of neighboring sovereign Somalia. It was in part the absence of recognition that forced the leaders of the Somali National Movement in the early ’90s to strike a bargain with local clan elders and create legitimate participatory institutions in Somaliland.

 

What does this mean in practice? Donor governments would tell the rulers of places like Chad, Congo, Equatorial Guinea or Sudan — all nightmares to much of their populations — that they no longer recognize them as sovereign states. Instead, they would agree to recognize only African states that provide their citizens with a minimum of safety and basic rights.

 

read whole article

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/12/opinion/12englebert.html