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Policy Forum

Foreign Aid and the Weakening of Democratic Accountability in Uganda

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Auditorium/Wintergarden
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Featuring
Featuring Andrew Mwenda, Political Editor, Daily Monitor (Kampala, Uganda), with comments by Mauro De Lorenzo, Resident Fellow, American Enterprise Institute.

The international aid lobby claims that increased foreign aid will help to solve Africa’s problems. But, as the case of Uganda shows, foreign aid can exacerbate those problems. Foreign aid, Andrew Mwenda writes in a recent Cato study, has provided the Ugandan government with an independent source of revenue that has allowed it to remain unaccountable to Uganda’s citizens. Moreover, aid has enabled the government to pay its bills without having to undertake further necessary economic reforms. The government has wasted much of the aid money on military equipment and political patronage. To promote democracy and accountability, the West should discontinue future aid flows to Uganda.