As the UN scrambles to procure financial resources in order to deliver humanitarian resources to the people in East Africa, the African governments continue to escape from their responsibility to assist. At a conference held in Addis Ababa last week, the showing was dismal and the results insufficient. To date, all the African governments have pledged less money than Canada alone. African civic groups believe the governments have plenty of money and the economy is healthy and should be able to be more helpful. The underlying problem to the famine seems to be poor governance and corruption.
How can African governments continue to request financial aid from other countries when they are not even willing to clean up their own act to help their own people to access basic needs? The obvious solution would be to impose conditions on the aid itself, such as democratization, transparence and accountability. However, past attempts at this have shown that it is the people who suffer and not the members of government.
