7 Graduation from aid
70. DFID's Annual Report and Accounts for 2011-12
state that 'DFID's key challenge is to help Zambia grow into a
sustainable middle income country using its own resources....
and graduate from aid'.[92]
The Report and Accounts do not make a similar statement about
any other country, including countries with similar per capita
incomes such as Ghana or neighbouring countries such as Tanzania
and Kenya or countries with large GDPs such as India. Zambia,
as this report has shown, suffers from severe rural poverty and
is off-track on several MDGs.
71. We raised the issue of graduation from aid with
the DFID team in Zambia and questioned the Minister about it.
He replied:
In Zambia, we do not have a timetable for graduation...The
right mindset for the way we design our programmes and approach
for all of us, beyond humanitarian, is that we should all be seeking
over time to graduate from being in an aid relationship, and to
move towards proper state-to-state trade and other diplomatic
and political relations. Whether that is going to be in five years
or 50 years-on certain projections, one could look at Zambia and
extrapolate figures that suggest it could be 70 years.
..this approach helps to school and discipline
the thinking behind making sure that we are doing the right things
either to address MDGs or to put in place essential basic services...[93]
72. DFID's Annual Report and Accounts for 2011-12
states that DFID is working to help Zambia graduate from aid.
We note that no similar comment is made in the Report and Accounts
about any other country, including those with a similar per capita
incomes. We agree that DFID should work towards graduating from
aid, but this should apply to all countries. Given the extent
of poverty we do not believe that Zambia will be in a position
to graduate from aid for many years and are pleased that the Minister
agrees.
92 DFID, Annual Report and Accounts, 2011-12, p
71 Back
93
Q 65 Back
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