Donors should cap aid concentration in Africa… and everywhere

Sir, coming from an oil cursed country (Venezuela) and knowing too much about having to live with governments that are made wealthy independently from their citizens, I absolutely agree with the general concept that Adrian Wood expresses in “How donors should cap aid in Africa” September 3, though I cannot understand why he makes a specific exclusion in the calculations of the revenues from oil and minerals.

If we are to have sustainable democracies, where governments are accountable to their citizen, then a rule that caps all the revenue that the State obtains, whether from aid, oil or whatever not paid directly to it through non-coercive means by their own citizens, to a certain percentage of GDP, for example 5 percent, and otherwise obliges that all aid (and hopefully oil revenues too) is distributed directly to the citizens would seem like a much better alternative.

You should not impose a limit on how much help donors want to give, not with the many needs at hand, nor at how much a citizen could receive, not with the many needs at hand, and I do not know of any such limit that has helped a developed country to develop, but, you sure could help to impose limits on how to avoid to concentrate the aid given and received in too few gubernatorial hands. Please go ahead!