Global News Journal
Beyond the World news headlines
A Taxi, an accountant and his four sons
It was a simple question but it touched a raw nerve.
Mohamed, my 46-year-old taxi driver, had been wondering where I learnt Arabic. So I explained that I had been based in Egypt a few years ago and had now returned to take up a new post in the Reuters bureau. So, I asked, how’s life these days?
And then it began. He launched into a tirade about an economy where the rich were getting richer and the poor poorer,a government that only seemed concerned about staying in power and the difficulty of paying for the education of his four sons — the eldest of whom he is now supporting through university.
Taxi drivers are an all-too-common sounding ground for foreign journalists and the kind of rant I listened to is probably not so unusual the world over. But what made Mohamed’s comments striking is that taxi drivers in other countries probably aren’t, like him, fully qualified accountants.
“There are doctors, engineers, teachers, all of them driving taxis. They just don’t earn enough otherwise,” he told me, grinding to a halt as a pick-up tried to do a U-turn in the middle of a narrow road. “This government doesn’t even provide order.” It’s hard to argue with that point on the streets of the capital where even the newest cars have scratches and dents, testimony to traffic rules that seem to be regarded — at least to any visitor — as optional.
Mohamed quit accountancy 15 years ago when he realised it couldn’t pay the bills. Now he earns about 50 to 60 Egyptian pounds, $9 to $11, for each 10-hour day. That’s what he takes home after paying for fuel and keeping his car on the road, giving him about 1,200 to 1,400 pounds a month. He might earn just half that as an accountant for the government, which still dominates the job market despite a raft of liberalising reforms introduced by a cabinet appointed in 2004.
Development aid: how can it work?
Ministers and officials from more than 100 countries, as well as representatives of multilateral development and financial agencies, are meeting in Accra, Ghana this week (Sept. 2-4) to discuss ways of making development aid more effective.
At its best, development aid from rich countries to help the world’s most needy can really touch the poor, giving them the means and the know-how to transform their lives and future in self-sustaining projects that profitably plug their labour and activities into the globalised world.
A project I visited in Senegal is helping Senegalese peasant farmers to become international exporters of melons.
But horror stories abound in the international aid community about wasteful proliferation, confusion and overlap of aid projects — the so-called “Tower of Babel” syndrome in which aid projects sometimes go ahead without the full collaboration of host governments and may even compete with each other.
If badly conceived and applied, aid projects can squander hundreds of millions of aid dollars in costly “white elephants” that end up providing uncontrolled funds and expensive SUVs to a handful of corrupt officials, while leaving the intended recipients as poor as they were before.
President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal, the African country which has received one of the highest levels of aid per capita on the continent since independence, has criticised some aid NGOs as being “greedy gobblers of aid resources, absorbing the best part of this through all kinds of schemes, in administration, travel and luxury hotel costs for so-called experts — rather than spending on actions”. He recommends innovative aid initiatives that “help people to stand up”.
Some might ask what Senegal really has to show for this aid influx over the years, when we see an exodus of many young Senegalese risking their lives every year in rickety, open boats to try to reach Europe to seek a better life.
Development aid or development cooperation (also development assistance, technical assistance, international aid, overseas aid or foreign aid) is aid given by governmental and economic agencies to support the economic, social and political development of developing countries.
i read an article that 40% of europeans are mentally ill…and i wanted to clarify that europeans are not just living in europe…..they live in usa too…and the reasons behind some bipolar ‘?disease?’is due to drug/alcohol use from a young age and heriditary…plus what better way to sit at home, smoking,drinking and just being plain lazy if people can get the government to send them a check every month…have you seen the things people buy with food stamps?????….i work 40hrs plus a week and cant afford to spend money on those things…