READ: The Ebola crisis in Liberia has shone a spotlight on the faults of the international development system that has propped up Sirleaf’s political leadership. In many ways, one could argue that Ebola serves as a cautionary tale about the dangers of ignoring cronyism in countries where a government that is friendly to Western governments is in place. Liberia is one of the most dependent countries on Earth: 73% of its gross national income comes from aid agencies and Monrovia, its capital city, is crawling with aid agencies. There are literally hundreds of international NGOs with offices in the city, and in addition to the 800 million the country receives in foreign assistance each year, the UN spends an additional $500 million annually on maintaining a peacekeeping force. So one might have expected that the easiest place to contain Ebola would have been Liberia. There are already 7500 UN troops on the ground who would be able to mount the kind of logistical effort necessary to reach homes and communities with chlorine bleach, to transport the sick and to ensure stability should panic spark violence. The reality has been the opposite. From day one, the handling of the Ebola outbreak has been a study in the dysfunction of the aid system. The aid community has created a mentality that the country cannot act on its own. Instead Liberia’s leaders have chosen to wait for the slow moving bureaucracies that have occupied it for a decade to wake from the inertia of the well-fed aid system. They have convened press conference and made pledges, but there is no plan in place for a comprehensive response. africasacountry/there-is-no-ebola-here-what-liberia-teaches-us-about-the-failures-of-aid/
Posted on: Sun, 19 Oct 2014 17:26:23 +0000
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