In 1997, three years after the genocide in Rwanda, the United Nations organisation that I worked for sent me to Kigali to document progress made on its projects there.
I was taken aback when the project manager in Kigali took me to a government building and showed me the broken toilets and leaking roofs the project had rehabilitated.
The building still had bullet holes in it — evidence of the fighting between the Interahamwe militia and the Rwanda Patriotic Front — but I was assured that the holes would be fixed when the project started work on the exterior of the building.
At the time, it seemed odd to me that the Rwandan Government was prioritising toilets in government buildings rather than using the funds on other needs, such as the resettlement of displaced people.
But years later, I can see the logic of it.
President Paul Kagame’s government understood that the people of Rwanda would not regain confidence in government institutions if civil servants worked in buildings that leaked or had no furniture. To instil faith in government institutions, it was necessary to rebuild those institutions, not in an abstract sense, but literally.
I was reminded of my trip to Kigali when I read an interview of Somalia’s new President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud in which he complained about the dysfunctional state of the President’s Office in Mogadishu.
President Mohamud said he was shocked to learn that he had inherited a government whose coffers were so empty that army commanders were threatening a mutiny because they had not been paid for five months. He had to call up Somali businesspeople and donors for emergency financial assistance to pay their salaries.
Meanwhile, donors are unsure about how they should continue assisting Somalia, given that there are no functioning and accountable public financial institutions in place.
A World Bank assessment of Somalia’s finances in 2012 found that the Ministry of Finance, the Central Bank, the Accountant-General and the Office of the Auditor General were institutions in name only, and did not have the capacity to collect government revenues.
At an informal donors’ meeting recently, some Western donors talked of forming a co-ordinating mechanism that would oversee donor funding.
In principle, this is a good idea. However, it is important to recognise that most donor-funded projects can take years to implement, and can be unnecessarily wasteful, consuming up to 75 per cent of funds on administrative and operational costs.
There is also a tendency among Western donors, particularly in relation to Africa, to emphasise “good governance” rather than bricks-and-mortar issues that focus on rebuilding of infrastructure and institutions.
This means that a lot of time and resources are spent on peace and reconciliation meetings, the drafting of constitutions and the holding of conferences.
Infrastructure is key to good governance and security. For instance, if Mogadishu’s crumbling football stadium was rebuilt, a lot of idle youth would spend time there, instead of being recruited by militia.
If there was an efficient tax collection system, perhaps some of the millions of dollars earned by businesses could go towards rebuilding the country.
Good governance is not an abstract concept; it requires infrastructure to be meaningful. The Turkish government has understood this well, hence its emphasis on rebuilding schools and hospitals, among other infrastructure. Institutions also need to be supported. The government cannot claim to be functioning if soldiers and civil servants are not paid.
It is likely that donors will continue doing “business as usual” in Somalia by imposing their own priorities, rather than asking the Government of Somali what its priorities are.
Western donors are understandably cautious about working bilaterally with the new government; many are still relying on their traditional partners — the UN and NGOs — to implement projects, which focus on humanitarian and emergency aid.
However, past experience has shown that these projects did little to rebuild Somalia’s shattered infrastructure or to make the country more self-reliant
By: Rasna Warah
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