Why are we giving most foreign aid to the world’s most corrupt countries?

Yesterday I bemoaned the fact that the April 2013 �2.6bn�increase in Britain’s foreign aid budget (from �7.9bn to �10.5bn a year)�would have been enough money to pay the salaries of the 40,000 troops and 32,400 police being fired to save money. And I suggested that most of our �10.5bn foreign aid was being lost due to corruption and incompetence. So today, I thought I should provide some facts to support my claim that much of our aid disappears into the very deep pockets of Africa’s and Asia’s kleptocrats.

Each year an organisation called Transparency International publishes a Corruption Index in which it rates countries from 1 (least corrupt) to 174 (most corrupt) – (click to see more clearly)

I looked at a British government report listing the top recipients of British aid and then noted where each country stands on the Corruption Index

So what do we see? The two most corrupt countries in the world – Somalia and Afghanistan at 174= on the Corruption Index�- do pretty well from our foreign aid. Number 173 – South Sudan – is also in the top 15 recipients of our aid. Two countries – India and Pakistan – are both major recipients of our aid and yet have enough money to have developed their own arsenals of nuclear weapons. Smart. huh?

Nigeria, the fifth on the list of aid recipients, has massive oil wealth and should be one of the richest countries in the world were its leaders not so corrupt.

Congo Congo Land does quite well from our generosity. And Ethiopia, the number one recipient of our aid, has a tendency to use our money to buy weapons to help fight its regular wars with its neighbours. In fact when multimillionaire Saint Bob Geldorf did his great Band Aid thing, there were reliable reports of the food sent to Ethiopia being loaded directly onto Russian cargo ships – the food intended for starving Ethiopians was sold by the Ethiopian government to get money for buying arms. Though Saint Bob vigorously denies this every happened.

Our shoving �10.5bn a year into the hands of the world’s most corrupt people would be laughable……

……�if it wasn’t so tragic.