We need aid for communities, not corporations
Date: 10 March 2015
Future UK governments will now be legally obliged to give at least 0.7% of our gross national income (GNI) in aid. The new International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill has been passed by both houses of Parliament and is due to receive royal assent in the next few days. This is great news, but unfortunately an increasing amount of aid money is going to support privatisation and private profits. We must step up the fight to ensure that this money supports communities and not big business.
We’re facing a global crisis of inequality. The gap between the richest and the poorest is growing and the world’s richest 1 per cent is thought to own around half of the world’s wealth. Development aid should work to alleviate poverty and lessen inequality, but nevertheless we see continuous examples of UK aid money benefitting corporate elites rather than ordinary people.
The New Alliance for Nutrition and Food Security
Last year we revealed that the UK is spending £600 million of our aid budget to support this scheme which will benefit multinational companies at the expense of small-scale farmers and is likely to increase poverty and inequality in Africa.
One example of the negative impact of the New Alliance is the so-called Monsanto Law in Ghana which would transfer control of seeds from people to corporations and force small-scale farmers to buy seeds from multinational companies like Monsanto rather than saving and using the seeds they have used for generations.
Aid for luxury hotels
Last May it was also revealed that the UK has spent millions of pounds supporting the construction of shopping malls, luxury hotels and gated communities in the global south. Presumably this should bring development in form of jobs, but this idea of ‘trickle down’ economics has long been discredited and there’s little reason to believe that building gated communities for the rich is going to bring any benefits for the majority of people.
Special economic zones
The UK has also used aid money to support special economic zones in countries like Bangladesh. The idea behind the zones is to boost business (and therefore jobs) by exempting companies from tax and regulations such as workers’ rights. Essentially these zones promote sweatshops and while they are no doubt helpful for boosting profits of big multinational companies, the zones have had very detrimental impact on factory workers.
Support communities, not corporations
Aid budgets are a very small part of the global economy and in itself aid cannot combat global inequality. But aid can play a role in supporting communities to take back control of their local resources and economies through energy co-operatives and agroecology projects.
