Accra Ghana: Government ministers from over a 100 countries will for a better part of this week spend tax payers' money to discuss strategies to make aid effective. In a world where development is perceived to have drivers and passengers, initiating 'dialogue' among passengers (poor countries) and drivers (developed nations) on how society can avoid potholes in a fast moving bus will definitely lead to a disaster. African officials should instead opt for meetings that discuss how to get off aid (development aid) and not the other way round.

Poor countries are tired of being passengers; they too want to drive their economies. The aid effectiveness initiative is geared towards sustaining poor nations in the seat of expectations. In the words of an 80 year old mzee in Western Kenya; Africans are poorer than they were when the majority were illiterate.

"Son, you people have education, but you cannot afford a cow to pay dowry, and even if you married, your wife has no land to till – we (educated and illiterate) all retreat to our villages and stare at each other!" He said.

Africans stare at each other waiting for the next move from donors - not Africans themselves.

Development is not static. There is no way poor nations will play catch up by simply pegging success through the lenses of developed societies; what countries in Africa ought to be doing is to focus on learning the secrets behind the success of wealthy nations. No such secret will be revealed at the 'aid effectiveness partnering forum' - the key focal point for such a meeting will be to basically institutionalize aid consequently dependency. 

The over US$ 650 billion (2004 prices) that was pumped to sub Sahara Africa for the last 50 years may have brought a highway, hospital, airport, and even a school among others; but it failed to build a confident African that would creatively utilize them to confront his daily challenges. That explains in part why African countries that boast of 13% of World's oil reserves still import oil and refined fuel. The Democratic Republic of Congo for example, a country that holds  an estimated 70% of  the world’s Coltan and 34% of Cassiterite (two strategic minerals in the production of cell phone, laptops and other portable electronics) will still join the aid effectiveness queue.

Donor countries on the other hand have a constituency of citizens who transform problems into money making opportunities. For instance, Africans have witnessed a tremendous growth in the cell phone industry that grows at 39% annually against the global growth average of 22%. In Kenya, the traditional fixed line telecom started uprooting its old phone booths from the city center in late August in preparation to go wireless. African people want opportunities to make money like their developed country counterparts and not to be closed in some feel good aid initiatives.

Africa is rich in opportunities; extracting minerals from underground and adding value to them, providing quality and relevant education, healthcare and sanitation, agricultural produce and food and infrastructure among others.

Billions of dollars are trapped in African potential by reliance on aid. The aid effectiveness conference will further trap Africans in what Prof. Gregory Clark refers to as the Malthusian trap where "...technological advances merely produce more people and living standards are driven down to subsistence."

Nowhere in the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness will one find a resolution to set Africans free to travel the world, learn, develop and make money. Hushed up in the big sounding partnership objectives is the rich nations' quest to lock Africans in Africa by attempting to export the West to Africa! As Prof. Gregory Clark argues in his book "A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World" A visitor to the planet earth ignorant of its history  "... would see, ringing the modern West, a series of fortifications protecting it from invasion by the poor societies  of South America, Africa, and South Asia." Such a visitor will witness the fears of Western societies through Paul Collier's (author of "The Bottom Billion") quest to protect his son from a world with vast running sore-a billion people stuck in desperate conditions alongside unprecedented prosperity!

Clearly, the agenda in the aid effectiveness meeting is not 'owned' by poor nations; because if it were - such a meeting would focus on how to make resources on continents such as Africa benefit African people. If the agenda were to be set by poor nations, they would be pushing for opening up of commercial financing institutions to support African entrepreneurs to be globally competitive. Other than addressing aid effectiveness, poor nations ought to address what causes prosperity and unleash it upon their populations.