Explanations

Petition for a detoxified development aid policy

1. If development aid had achieved its goals, we would be discussing how to phase it out today.  But the opposite is the case: it is to be increased. There are even calls for a Marshall Plan for Africa.
2. Despite the justified disappointment at the lack of development successes with a lasting impact, it should not be underestimated that there has been development progress in some areas (health, education, democratic co-determination, the advancement of women, IT and communication). Some NGOs, political foundations and church development services, among others, have played a key role in this.
3. Nevertheless, poverty has remained at a high level for years (approx. 50% of the population). States are imploding; ethnic and cultural conflicts are increasing in intensity in many places. All attempts to curb state corruption - Africa's main evil - have so far proved largely ineffective. State sovereignty is misunderstood and abused as a license to cheat and oppress.
4. The industrialized countries of the North are partly to blame for this misery: development aid  has turned out to be a drug that spoiled consumers cannot get enough of. As the agreed use of the financial transfer cannot be controlled (e.g. by parliament and the judiciary in the recipient countries), it reinforces the illegal, sometimes criminal machinations of democratically weakly legitimized governments that are more interested in self-privilege than in effective development policy for the benefit of their people. This complicity between parasitic state leaders and Western donor organizations is ethically indefensible: taxpayers' money is being burned! Development can only come from within.
5. We therefore call for a detoxification of current development cooperation (DC) practices and a return to the real purpose of development aid: to encourage people in poor countries to activate their development potential for a "good life", i.e. to help them overcome obstacles on the way to a self-determined life through their own earned income.
6. The efforts to understand and reconcile socio-cultural differences should be taken much more seriously again.
7. All practices in trade and economic relations with African countries that have a fatal "job-killing" effect, especially the competition-distorting practices of the agricultural and fisheries policies of the EU states (production subsidies), should be avoided. We should start with the production systems that are particularly damaging for Africa.
8. False incentives in the education system must be eliminated (brain drain). Instead, a stronger focus on vocational education and training is recommended, including technologies adapted to local conditions. In particular, the teaching of STEM subjects, e-learning and "sur place" scholarships should be promoted as well as the equipping of universities through sustainable institution building.
9. Cooperation with the African diaspora, which is sometimes very active, should be promoted. For example, incentives and assistance would be useful to enable professionals practising in Europe to return to their home countries.
10. The recipients of development aid should not only be the governments of developing countries, but also institutions that broaden the social spectrum of aid recipients: selected non-governmental organizations and entrepreneurial elements of the middle classes, which have so far been stifled by a parasitic patronage state. For governments that do not comply with agreed DC standards (DC criteria catalog) to the detriment of their populations, DC transfers should be canceled, in blatant cases of corruption for the duration of the incumbent president's term of office. Uncontrolled "budget support" should be stopped more consistently than in the past. We oppose the current tendency to resume development aid for superficial foreign policy reasons for countries that are not eligible for it due to human rights violations.
11. In contrast, more funds should be made available for priorities with a sustainable impact on the development potential of the working population. Greater support for family planning programs is urgently needed in order to limit the strong population growth that is destroying socio-economic progress.
12. More support is needed for micro-loans to women's groups according to the criteria of the Grameen Bank.
13. More support is needed for German small and medium-sized enterprises with greater use of venture capital.
14. In all aid measures, the donor countries should coordinate with each other in order to improve coherence.

Cologne, 27.11.2016