Norway’s new Minister of International Development, Heikki Holmås, recently went on his maiden voyage to Africa, with Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania on the itinerary. This was a journey into a confusing landscape, into a tangle of dilemmas and breakneck rhetorical exercises. 

Take, for example, Ethiopia: According to prominent activists in the Nordic countries, the Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi is a dictator who daily violates universal human rights¹.

Many of these activists are Holmås’ comrades in the Socialist Left party SV, and they would have told him to give the Ethiopian authorities a sharp reprimand for the arbitrary detention of assumed political opponents and lack of respect for the freedom of expression. The most uncompromising of them would have insisted that he threaten to stop aid unless Zenawi shapes up.

Zenawi does not care about criticism from the Nordic countries. The authorities in Addis Ababa can rightly point out that they uphold human rights in their own way.

The country’s economic growth rate is well over 7 per cent, and living standards are rapidly improving. According to the World Bank, less than one in five Ethiopians had access to clean water in 1990. In 2010, the share had increased to nearly two thirds. Equally positive are the figures for the decline in child mortality, and the rising proportions of children who attend school and of households receiving electricity, to name a few.

“It’s amazing what Zenawi has achieved; he is the type of leader Africa needs. Should we not assist millions of Ethiopians to get out of poverty because his human rights policies are discouraging?” said a senior development policy official at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) at a recent public debate in Oslo.

 The event was the first of four this spring under the heading “Africa for growth. What is good development? “. They join a number of debates and new books about the impact on Western countries of the total change in the premises of development cooperation over the last 20 years.

The biggest change is that sub-Saharan Africa is experiencing strong economic growth ― 4.9 per cent for the whole region in 2011, according to the World Bank, with over 6 per cent for countries such as Mozambique, Ghana and Nigeria. But growth is distributed unevenly. The upper class and an emerging middle class are getting richer while the poor are left behind.

Secondly, new hardball players are joining the field, such as China, India, Brazil and Qatar. Aid and investment flows from these countries are intertwined, but they ensure at least that the Western countries’ assistance hegemony in Africa is history.  

Another important change is that there are fewer conflicts, and therefore a better basis for development.

And not least: The humble African’s time is over. The post-colonial intellectual elite, educated and shaped in western systems, is about to die out. And with it disappears the notion that Europe and the U.S. are superior to other countries.

These fundamental changes are described in a new book about Africa’s great transformation by the Norad (and NAI Programme and Research Council) veteran Asbjørn Eidhammer: Afrikas tid (Unipub, Oslo 2012). “The rise of new actors in the field of international development cooperation makes for a whole new ball game, where the rules will change as the number of players grows,” writes Eidhammer.

What does that mean? Well, it will have consequences for what in the jargon is known as ‘aid conditionality’. That is, policy conditions that the recipient country’s authorities must meet in order to receive assistance. The word has a bad reputation, thanks to the so-called structural adjustment programs under the auspices of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), in which poor countries were required to liberalize the economy and cut public spending.

Norway is also keen on conditionality, according to MFA officials. But then it is a matter of purportedly good causes, such as requiring promises of democratization and freedom of speech before aid starts flowing.

And these are controversial terms, given the increased self-confidence of African leaders and the new donors joining in. China has drawn millions of people out of poverty without having to democratize the country. Why then would Meles Zenawi and Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni worry about Western countries trying to force them to allow divisive opposition politicians time and space in the media? They can choose to look to China instead.

Eidhammer points to another certain feature of future development in Africa: “The economic inequalities  will be much larger than today.”

The MFA official formulated the dilemma surrounding the gap between rich and poor in developing countries as follows: “Does it mean that our aid contributes to growth for just one group and not for the poor?”

Good question from someone who is central to managing the NKR 28 billion that Norway gives in development assistance this year, which also accounts for about 4 percent of global aid. Together with Eidhammer’s book, this is a good example of those “within” the system, at least in Norway, asking the sharpest questions about development policies. Just as the NORAD-owned magazine Bistandsaktuelt represents the most systematic, critical journalism in the field. 

Heikki Holmås has announced that he will make sure Norwegian aid still has broad popular, domestic  support. But he may  face problems with that, and the challenge is pointed out by his senior official:
“Why do not   rich businessmen in the developing world  pay proper taxes? Why use taxes paid by a Norwegian single mother for aid instead? ”

This is the core of the aid debate we should have in the Nordic countries over the next few years, in my opinion. It is highly provoking to watch the luxurious life style of the upper class in many developing countries. An effective wealth tax in Kenya could have financed the country’s educational system. However, as the Kenyan corruption hunter John Githongo has revealed, the country’s ministers are using their ministerial posts to enrich themselves rather than to establish fair tax schemes.

Githongo’s revelations of a culture of corruption forced him to escape from Kenya in 2005 ― while the spider of the corruption cobweb, Mwai Kibaki, is still the country’s president.

There are also good reasons to discuss the paradox that Brazil is the largest recipient of Norwegian development assistance, with 1.4 billion NOK a year, almost twice as much as Afghanistan.

Sure, the money goes to rain forest projects to save the global climate, which is good for all of us. But still, Holmås: Is it not absurd that Norwegian tax money equivalent to maybe one day’s income from Brazil’s oil industry, should be transferred into an economy that is almost as big as that of France?

If Brazil is to receive Norwegian aid, then we may soon consider adding Spain to the development budget. There is now great distress  among  desperate, unemployed Spanish youth.

In three years the Millennium Development Goals are to be met. They were adopted by world leaders in 2000, and aim to reach a number of quantified targets for reduced poverty with improved health and education for all by 2015. The debate is already underway on how to replace the UN Millennium Development Goals.

Norway is one of the countries that will insist on including a measure of equitable distribution of the new prosperity from growth in developing countries. However, many of these countries will have none of that.

“I will help create a more just world,” Holmås declared when taking up his new job. At the same time, in line with government policy, he has to use aid to meet Norway’s diverse interests.

The new reality in Africa means that aid can no longer be portrayed as an apolitical instrument with undisputed noble and selfless aims. Holmås is not the government’s guardian of good intentions, but only one of 19 ministers who are engaged in realpolitik. I hope his bureaucrats will help him keep that in mind.

¹ See for example the NAI Forum article Atrocities in Ethiopia? No problem! Just close your eyes and send more money! with its 47 comments.