Aid Abuse and Mismanagement in Africa: Problems of Accountability, Transparency and Ethical Leadership

Abstract

Fighting poverty by supporting economic growth and development in the developing countries has been, and continues to be, a major objective of foreign aid, originally conceived as temporary assistance which could be phased out when a country reaches a point of development ‘take-off’. Sub-Saharan Africa has been a long-term recipient of foreign development assistance and most countries in the region have, since their independence, become increasingly dependent on aid. Unfortunately, the impact of aid has been largely disappointing both in terms of the degree of dependency on aid resources and economic growth performance (Carlsson et al. , 1997). In fact, the region has fallen behind the rest of the developing world in virtually all the crucial indicators.