We have had and continue to have instances where the same donor organisation funds parallel programmes across different agencies in one ministry without bothering to conduct needs assessments to help determine what is required the most as against what is considered convenient.
Development cooperation is as old as history itself, just like how effective this is between the “rich” north and “poor” south, and the more recent debate on how transparent and accountable donor-funded projects are in Nigeria.
Nigeria has continued to enjoy a high inflow of development aid across various sectors of its socioeconomic and political spheres, however one thing that has stood out is the debate on the effectiveness of several projects advanced as development cooperation initiatives in the country.
We have had and continue to have instances where the same donor organisation funds parallel programmes across different agencies in one ministry without bothering to conduct needs assessments to help determine what is required the most as against what is considered convenient. I will explain the position above with what is presently happening across various on-going programmes in Nigeria in the guise of supporting the buy Made-in-Nigeria campaign in the next few paragraphs.
Nigeria’s ranking in the global ease of doing business report is an open source information, and as at today we are ranked 169th across the globe. Of importance is that the factors that combine to rank us this poorly are the very same factors responsible for low economic activities in the key areas of production for consumption and export in the agriculture, extractive, technological advancement and innovation and small scale industries sectors, and sane minds would have expected any support from donor agencies to be channelled towards helping us move up the global ease of doing business ranking.
The campaigns presently being funded by an array of donor agencies are largely seeking to promote “finished” products in Nigeria, when whereas over 60 percent of products so labelled “Made in Nigeria” are largely assembled in Nigeria, since virtually all the components used in their production still remain imported into the country.
It is also worthy to note that recent data from the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria clearly indicates that an average of one industrial concern has been closing shop or reducing production activity/retrenching staff on a weekly basis in Nigeria in the past one year, such that all efforts geared at promoting the so called Made-in-Nigeria goods seems to be clearly out of context with the present realities of what is produced and what is assembled in Nigeria.
It is also on record that the Nigerian government has not done a review of past economic growth and development programmes/ initiatives with a view to understanding the shortfalls of the past initiatives and avoiding the same in the ones being planned, and that most of these initiatives received donor funding and support. Yet, despite this obvious misnomer of not reviewing and evaluating past projects before launching new ones, donor agencies still keep supporting and funding new initiatives that often make very little or no impact as they are designed with the same conditionality’s that combined to frustrate the past initiatives.
When the Nigerian government, with the support of some donor agencies, launched the Nigeria Industrial Revolution Plan (NIRP) in February 2014 with a major component being the National Enterprise Development Programme (NEDEP) that had the One Local Government One Product (OLOP) approach to accelerating economic development and growth in Nigeria, there was indeed wide applause on the vision and thinking behind the initiative. But, as always, we asked Nigerians to thread with caution as we already had a history of launching such initiatives in vacuums.
NEDEP as at today has made little or no impact in driving economic development/growth in Nigeria as clearly indicated in the report released by the desk officers of the programme when we wrote asking for the progress report of the programme, and one would have expected the donor agencies that funded it to demand for an audit of the programme but no, they rather went ahead to support the same ministry (Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment) to launch a new initiative called GEM (Growth and Employment Project) in February 2016, exactly two years after, we at MSME-ASI have looked and searched for possible justification for this and found none and have been willing to have a conversation with anyone who can justify this brazen acts of using financing and support for MSMEs as conduit pipes to move funds for other purposes.
Okeke Celestine is Lead Partner, Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Advocacy and Support Initiative; Email: celestine@msme-asi.org.
Image Credit: ZAM.
