₦airaland Forum

'Hope so. Otherwise it would be like pushing someone into a war , taking his money and crushing him with heavy debt.

Yeah it's free. That's why it's called "military aid"

Nothing is free when it comes to international politics. The aids may come at no cost now, but you'll be required to reciprocate later in terms of allegiance, trade or other forms of assistance. If you don't you'll receive direct or indirect sanctions.

Tmberwolf1:
Yeah it's free. That's why it's called "military aid"

Western aid is NOT free. We know it for a fact in Africa, that as a system foreign aid is a fraud, not to say a scam.

Reading

As a system, foreign aid is a fraud and does nothing for inequality
Kenan Malik
Sun 2 Sep 2018 00.59 EDT
The Guardian

The five poorest countries in the world, measured by GDP per capita, are the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, Uganda, Tajikistan and Haiti.

One might imagine, then, that these countries are among the top recipients of UK aid. Wrong. The main beneficiaries are, in fact, Pakistan, Syria, Ethiopia, Nigeria and Afghanistan. Not one of the five poorest countries is among the top 10 recipients of British aid.

Last week, during her tour of Africa, Theresa May proclaimed that, in the post-Brexit world, Britain’s aid budget would be used to promote British trade and political interests. That, though, is exactly how aid is already used. The countries that currently receive most British aid are primarily either significant markets, such as Nigeria, visited by May last week, or of geopolitical importance, particularly for the “war on terror” – Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syria.

The same is true of America, too. None of the poorest countries in the world is among the top recipients of US aid. Most aid goes instead to Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Afghanistan and Kenya, again for reasons of geopolitics and trade.

Nor is it any different with multilateral aid (funds channelled through international organisations such as the World Bank rather than directly between donor and recipient). Again, not one of the poorest countries is among the top 10 recipients of multilateral aid.

Many on the right detest foreign aid, insisting that the money should be spent at home. Many on the left laud it as a means of redistributing global wealth. But aid is not given away as charity – it is wielded as a weapon to boost trade and further political aims.

Many rich nations receive more in interest payments from recipient countries than they give in “aid”

Half of all international development aid is “tied”, meaning that recipient countries must use it to buy goods and services from the donor nation.
As the USAid website used to boast (until the paragraph became too embarrassing and was deleted in 2006): “The principal beneficiary of America’s foreign assistance programmes has always been the United States. Close to 80% of the US Agency for International Development’s contracts and grants go directly to American firms.”

Aid has “created new markets for American industrial exports and meant hundreds of thousands of jobs for Americans”. Long before Trump entered the White House, USAid was “putting America first”.

A high proportion of foreign aid is in the form of loans, which cripple developing countries through the accumulation of debt. Many rich nations receive more in interest payments from recipient countries than they give in “aid”. Especially since the 2008 financial crash, western governments have exploited their ability to borrow money at low rates by setting up aid programmes lending to poor countries at much higher rates, minting money on the backs of the poor. This is not aid, it’s a scandal.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/02/as-a-system-foreign-aid-is-a-fraud-and-does-nothing-for-inequality