A top-ranking Ethiopian diplomat says the Canadian government should give aid directly to recipients rather than going through third parties like Canadian groups.
“We believe that the development finance and the development assistance the Canadian government is giving has to go directly to the recipients,” said Ethiopian State Minister for Foreign Affairs Taye Atske-Selassie in an interview on March 3 after the first of two days of talks with Canadian officials in Ottawa.
Aid could be sent through Ethiopian non-governmental organizations or local governments, he said.
“Rather than going through other third parties. The more you involve a number of parties within a given project, at the end of the day the recipient or the end users, they wouldn’t embrace it as something they own.”
Plus, he said, it’s expensive to put a number of implementing agencies in the middle of an aid transaction.
Canadian NGOs can play a role in evaluating and monitoring projects, he said, “But a substantial amount of the earmarked money has to go directly to the beneficiaries.”
Ethiopia was the top recipient of Canadian aid in 2013-14, according to the latest available Canadian government statistical report. It took in more than $188 million in Canadian aid that fiscal year. Canada is among a handful of top bilateral donors to the east African country.
A lot of Canadian money is funnelled through Canadian-based NGOs and international institutions like the World Bank mainly for agricultural and food security projects and efforts to help keep mothers and children healthy.
Canadian aid groups in many cases work with local groups in the countries they’re working in to help build their skills and knowledge, said Chantal Havard, a spokesperson for the Canadian Council for International Co-operation, which represents Canadian foreign aid groups.
“As much as our sector values and believes in long-term partnership to have a meaningful impact and good outcomes, I think that Canadian organizations are also always concerned with putting local organizations in the driver’s seat, and making sure that they reinforce their partners so that they can be agents of change in their own society,” she said.
At the same time, for Ethiopian aid groups to flourish, they need the freedom to advocate for certain policies, without harassment, and challenge the government when necessary, she suggested.
“I’m sure that there are very capable and strong organizations in Ethiopia,” she said. “But, for example, we know that there has been a constraint in how much foreign funding organizations can receive for their work. So that can be seen as a limitation of the type of work that they can engage in. They should be able to receive the funding that they need from different sources, as long as there is transparency on how the funds are being used and there are good reporting mechanisms.”
In 2009, the Ethiopian government adopted a law regulating charities that critics said would restrict those that work on human rights, especially given new rules on foreign funding of local NGOs. The government argued at the time that charities were being used by political activists working on issues other than catastrophes that required aid, according to the IRIN news agency.
A spokesperson for Canada’s foreign ministry wasn’t able to respond to Mr. Taye Atske-Selassie’s comments by deadline. In 2014-15, the Canadian government gave more than $2 million toward a larger project supporting Ethiopian civil society groups including so that they could talk to their government about the impact of the charities law.
Fighting terrorism ‘an international collective responsibility’
The diplomat was in Ottawa for the fifth in a series of Ethiopian-Canadian talks that regularly review the full gamut of their ties, from trade to their work to help resolve conflict in Somalia, for instance. He met with the deputy ministers of foreign affairs and international development, Daniel Jean and Peter Boehm.
With more than 50 years of diplomatic ties, Ethiopia has been an important ally in the Horn of Africa for Canada and other Western governments interested in fighting terrorism in the region. Its efforts to lessen poverty and its double-digit GDP growth have also made Ethiopia an attractive partner.
Though trade between Canada and the country of nearly 100 million people is modest, that’s where Mr. Taye Atske-Selassie said he’d like to see the relationship going.
“It’s not only about aid, but it has to be also trade as well as development financing,” he said.
Canada’s help to the drought-prone country over the years has boosted its ability to cope with its current El-Niño-driven drought crisis, he suggested.
“What Canada has been supporting Ethiopia over the years has helped us to withstand some of the challenges that we face, even though the severity of the drought is so enormous,” he said.
The weather phenomenon has contributed to a reported tripling of humanitarian needs in the country since the start of 2015, according to the UN, because of successive crop failure and large-scale livestock deaths.
Canada has given more than $50 million, he said, to help feed some of the 10.2 million people who are now food insecure. Mr. Taye Atske-Selassie said he’s grateful for the help, which came quickly.
He’s seeking more Canadian help when it comes to fighting terrorism in the region, including in Somalia next door.
“We want more Canadian involvement in the fight against terrorism,” he said.
It could help in intelligence sharing, for instance, he said, or in fighting illicit financing. Canada could support the ongoing AMISOM African Union Mission in Somalia in terms of financing operations, training and capacity building, he said.
“It is an international collective responsibility,” said the diplomat.
Mr. Taye Atske-Selassie also responded to human rights groups critical of his government for using force against protesters, jailing bloggers and reporters and cracking down on dissent.
“Nobody is [taken to] jail because he is writing. But unfortunately the Ethiopian media, and that’s my opinion…didn’t get a chance to grow naturally and evolve naturally when the new proclamation and constitution was put in place,” he said.