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From The Times
July 2, 2005

Where the money went: self-interest and stupidity

  • KENYA In 1981 the Norwegian International Development Agency built a fish-freezing plant at Lake Turkana in the desert to help 20,000 nomadic subsistence cattle farmers to exploit fish stocks. The diesel-powered generators cost more to run than the fish were worth so it was adapted to produce dried fish. It closed after the 1984-85 drought killed most of the fish.

    • The French Government and French companies gave £277,000 to Kenya to build a dam in Turkwell Gorge. It cost more than double the price than had it been put out to tender, but large payments were made to Daniel Arap Moi, then President, and his Energy Minister. The dam operated at less than half capacity for 2½ years

    LIFE ON THE CHEAP: HOW HARDSHIP HAS REMAINED THE NORM

    THE WIDOW Mako Gabe, a mother of three, cannot remember the last time she ate meat. “I think it was last Easter, but who knows,” she says as she sits by a tiny fire inside her mud hut in the village of Tadecha Gurach. “We never have enough to eat, the land is no good now and there is never enough rain.” Her husband was conscripted into the army of Mengistu Haile Mariam, the former dictator, and never returned from the war

    THE SCHOOL TEACHER Hawa Deaso, 28, walks for an hour every morning to reach the school in the village of Arebagosa. “The children are often hungry; they fall asleep,” she says. Every weekend she attends a nearby college to study for a diploma, which will mean a pay increase from about £50 to £60 a month

    THE POLIO VICTIM Taye Tadesse, 24, came to the capital three years ago to earn his living as a beggar, leaving his home in the southern town of Arba Minch. Mr Tadesse, who suffered from polio as a child, earns about 25 birr (£1.70) a day. He asks for cash from passing cars at one of Addis Ababa’s busiest junctions, yards from the headquarters of the UN’s Economic Commission for Africa

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