Misplaced Priorities of the EU migration policy and its relation to aid
The idea of states with border-controls is a very recent
phenomenon. Just 100 years ago people could move more or less freely across the
globe. But times have changed. Borders have been erected and patrolled, and as
a farmer in Northern Ghana observed in 2016: “now they turned into transparent
bullet-proof walls”.
Reflecting on the different stages
of ‘development’ between our continents he adds: “You are already way ahead!
Can’t you stop chasing the money? Don’t you know that it is all about being together?
You’re just creating more pressures!” The pressures he is referring to are the ostentatious
ways-of-life Westerners (and other global elites) like to flaunt via online
platforms ranging from Facebook, Twitter to Instagram.
At the same time progress in many so-called ‘developing-countries’
has been rather slow. Countries that the World Bank ranks as “Lower-Middle-Income”[i],
such as Ghana, where the average Gross National Income per person per year is said
to be US$ 1,5000, has made rather unequal progress in showing an improvement of all people’s lives. In fact,
the Ghana Statistical Service found in 2018 that inequality has increased,
poverty in relative terms only marginally decreased (from 24.2 percent to 23.4
percent) and alarmingly underlines that extreme poverty in absolute terms has increased
in recent years. Extreme poverty, which is defined as earning less than GH¢792.05
per year (or US$ 143/year).
While Ghana has been praised as the ‘beacon of democracy on the continent’ and continued to be sort of an ‘aid darling’ with the international community, the number of Ghanaians suffering from extreme poverty has actually increased between 2013 and 2017, from 2.2 million in 2013 to 2.4 million of people being unable to consume the minimum daily requirement of 2,900 calories (per adult & food per day), even if they were to spend all their expenditures on food. But this increase of suffering has not been spread equally either. Instead it is affecting mostly the rural savannah zone, and mostly farming households! Put another way, the men and women that derive their livelihoods from agriculture, i.e. producing food, cannot ensure sufficient food for themselves and their families throughout the year. This is particularly absurd, as the international donors have focused their intervention of the agricultural sector in the rural savannah zone.
A senior manager of USAID, the biggest aid donor in the
agricultural sector in Ghana, observed about the Feed-the-Future initiative,
which was funded under the Obama administration that: “There is no two ways
about it. The rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer”. This Chief-of-Party
(COP) was not just talking about the Ghana as a whole, but the farming
households in particular. While most donors claim to be smallholder focused,
the statistics speak of a huge failure of aid. Or how else can we rationalize
that after the Feed-the-Future FTF alone invested a budget of US$ 400 million
over a five year time span (2013-2018), just above the 8th Parallel (Latitude 8°N), i.e. the rural savannah zone, extreme
poverty has increased?
At the
same time Ghanaian farmers, who are producing rice, maize, poultry, tomato etc.
have to compete with the highly subsidized food producers in the North, i.e.
Europe, with little or no real support by their government and donor
organization. Instead of fixing our aid system or actually allowing for a ‘fair
trading system for all’, the EU is now spending millions on their migration
policy to keep the ‘others’ outside with EU border, most recently with outsourcing
of control to African governments, tougher “Regulation”
for Frontex – the EU border guard agency, and newly a biometric Migration
Information and Data Analysis System, or MIDAS, which captures fingerprints and
facial images in countries like Niger to be shared with INTERPOL and PISCES
(Personal Identification Secure Comparison and Evaluation System), a biometric
registration arm of the US Department of State.
To me this newest absurdity in
international development cooperation of attacking symptoms instead of root
causes, e.g. for migration, is evidence for deliberate ignorance to seriously ‘aid’
other nations and people, and instead keep international, as well as national
imbalances intact and untouched. First thing that should be done is to talk
honestly about the system and structures in place. Next, let’s actually attempt
to address them with more honesty, transparency and vigor and the necessary
moral fiber intergraded and upheld in dealings with each other.
#MisplacedPriorities
[i] Lower-middle-income economies
are those with a GNI per capita, calculated using the World
Bank Atlas method,
of more than $1045 but less than $4,125
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