- The Observer,
- Sunday August 31 2003
The World Bank and aid agencies are accused of causing famine and ignoring corruption and incompetence in revelations that will send shockwaves through the development community.
In a book to be published this week, Peter Griffiths, a leading international aid consultant, exposes how measures by the World Bank preventing the Sierra Leone government from importing food in favour of the private sector caused disaster in the late Eighties.
In Malawi in the Nineties, Griffiths witnessed the failure of a $20 million credit scheme despite similar schemes getting nowhere.
Griffiths paints a picture in which World Bank staff are promoted only for implementing rigid orthodoxies while whistleblowers questioning government corruption are expelled.
'Most of the Washington package of privatisation and free markets still applies,' said Griffiths, whose attack comes as campaign groups line up to attack the World Trade Organisation ahead of next week's trade talks in Cancun.
Campaigners have written to senior ministers urging them to back moves to make the WTO less opaque. Research out on Tuesday will reveal the arm-twisting negotiations between powerful nations and the world's poorest countries.
