Excerpt, editing by Carolyn Bennett
For twenty years, aid donors have
been pushing poor countries to privatize their basic services and ‘liberalize’
their economies.
Conditions attached to aid and debt relief have been combined
with technical assistance and other forms of “knowledge transfer” to ensure
that recipient countries comply with donor demands. [Report by England and
Wales charity ActionAid]
Cautionary tale
Notes from Action Aid Report’s conclusions
Disregarding public opposition and failing to take into
account potentially negative consequences to poor people, the World Bank,
particularly, has continued “to push for risky and unproven economic ‘reforms’
such as water privatization.”
Tanzania: Dar es Salaam
One of the poorest countries in the world, Tanzania is
doubly burdened with thousands of refugees fleeing regional wars and conflicts.
And IFIs take by force.
One of the main aims of IFIs’ privatization project leveled against
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, according to the Action Aid report, “has been to
increase Dar es Salaam’s population’s ‘willingness to pay’ (force them to pay) for
water. Yet those designing and implementing the reforms seem to have paid scant
attention to the fact that 80 percent of Dar es Salaam’s residents are poor.” For
these people, “‘unwillingness’ to pay could in fact be ‘inability’ to pay.
Those forced to pay for water are
likely to have to forgo other basic essentials such as food or education – a
burden which will most likely fall most heavily on women and girls.
Most poor people do not have direct
water connections and rely largely on neighbors or water vendors.
As prices go up, and metering means
that every single drop of water is charged for, they are likely to suffer most
from the ‘reforms’.
There is already evidence that poor
households are shifting toward unsafe water sources, with serious consequences
for their family’s health.
“Meanwhile, it is abundantly clear that the ‘pro-poor’ measures,
ostensibly designed to increase water access for poor households, will only benefit a very select few, if anyone at
all. …
|
“Action
Aid believes
it is time for donors to end the practice of tying IFI (International financial institutions) loans, bilateral aid and debt relief to such risky and unproven policies.” |
What donors (World Bank and others) should do, Action Aid
says, is (a) “restrict conditionality to what is necessary to ensure that aid
is spent on those it is intended to benefit; and (b) give countries the space
to develop locally grown solutions that meet poor people’s needs.”
Sources and notes
“Turning off the taps: Donor conditionality and water privatisation
in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania” (from Conclusion “Water privatisation in Dar: the
role of donor conditionality”), 2004 Report by ActionAid, a registered charity (number
274467) and a company limited by guarantee and registered in England and Wales (number
1295174), https://www.actionaid.org.uk/sites/default/files/turningoffthetaps.pdf
Tanzania
BBC Tanzania Profile June 18, 2013 excerpt: One of the
poorest countries in the world, Tanzania hosts thousands of refugees from conflict
in the neighboring Great Lakes region, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-14095776
Tanzania /ˌtænzəˈniːə/, officially the United Republic of
Tanzania (Swahili: Jamhuri ya Muungano wa Tanzania), is a country in East
Africa bordered by Kenya and Uganda to the north; Rwanda, Burundi, and the
Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west; and Zambia, Malawi, and
Mozambique to the south. The country’s eastern border is formed by the Indian
Ocean. Kilimanjaro, Africa’s highest mountain, is in northeastern Tanzania.
The official capital of Tanzania since 1996 has been Dodoma
where the National Assembly and some government offices are located; between
independence and 1996, the main coastal city of Dar es Salaam served as the
country’s political capital. Dar es Salaam remains Tanzania’s principal
commercial city and is the main location of most government institutions. It is
also the principal port of the country. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanzania
IFIs
International financial institutions (IFIs) are financial
institutions that have been established (or chartered) by more than one
country, and hence are subjects of international law. Their owners or
shareholders are generally national
governments, although other international institutions and other organizations occasionally figure as
shareholders. The most prominent IFIs are creations of multiple nations,
although some bilateral financial institutions (created by two countries) exist
and are technically IFIs. Many of these are multilateral development banks
(MDB). The following are usually classified as the main MDBs: World Bank; European
Investment Bank (EIB); Asian Development Bank (ADB); European Bank for
Reconstruction and Development (EBRD); Inter-American Development Bank Group
(IDB, IADB); African Development Bank (AfDB); Islamic Development Bank (IsDB), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_financial_institutions
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