A 'second Marshall Plan'?
The UN secretary-general's representative for the Great Lakes region of Africa has floated the idea of a 'second Marshall Plan' for the area.
Mamadou Bah, special envoy of the African Union Commission for the Great Lakes region, said the time had come to undertake development projects because "on the whole, the political and security environment is improving".
However, good governance should be factored into any massive infusion of foreign cash. Uganda and Rwanda each have serious problems with human rights and political freedom. Burundi is in a precarious political situation. The DR Congo is effectively a country without a government as well as being home to arguably the world's worst humanitarian crisis.
And given the massive corruption in Africa, which wastes a staggering 25 percent of the collective continental income according to Nigeria's president, good governance would be absolutely integral for any 'second Marshall Plan' to have the slightest hope of succeeding.
Oversight would have to be rigorous, lest there be a repeat of the Chad/World Bank debacle.
posted by Brian @ Wednesday, February 22, 2006
1 comments
1 Comments:
Hey, did you see this statement in the linked article from the Angola Press?
"...The European Union special representative, Aldo Ajelo, addressing the opening session, expressed satisfaction over the adoption of a new constitution in DR Congo and renewed the EU`s commitment to support the Great Lakes Conference."
I would like to draw readers attention to the Reuters NewsAlert article "EU snagged on U.N. request for Congo force" (21 Feb 2006) and other related news about this subject. What commitment is he talking about?
I'd favor a new Marshall Plan for African Great Lakes countries if a number of the despotic Presidents and corrupt MP's and bureaucrats there would step down AND the U.N. was NOT placed in charge of the money. Paul "the Wolf" Wolfowitz at the World Bank could probably handle it. Or John Bolten maybe?
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