Who is really benefitting from the USAID US$19.8 million food insecurity project in Zimbabwe?

While Washington boasted that it had poured US$3 billion into Zimbabwe over the past 30 years, Zimbabwe says sanctions have cost it more than US$42 billion over the past 17 years.

What is more interesting, however, is that, according to American researcher Jake Johnston, “the principal beneficiary of America’s foreign assistance programmes has always been the United States”.

Writing about USAID role in Haiti following a devastating earthquake that killed more than 200 000 people and displaced about 1.5 million, Johnston said for every dollar that USAID spent in Haiti, less than one penny (cent) went directly to Haitian organisations, the rest went to US corporations.

“As a jobs creator back home, USAID’s Haiti reconstruction effort has been an astounding success,” Johnston wrote. “The single largest recipient of USAID funding in Haiti was a for-profit, DC-based firm, Chemonics International, through USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives.”

Chemonics has been one of the top contractors for USAID though it has been cited in numerous congressional reports for doing shoddy jobs.

Its performance has been questioned in Afghanistan, Haiti and in the US$9.5 billion global health management supply chain. It has done such poor work, but continues to be awarded contracts, that one congressional report in which it is cited is entitled: Rewarding bad actors: why do poor performing contractors continue to get government business?

Chemonics made headlines in Zimbabwe in February 2018 when it ordered malaria test kits worth nearly US$500 000 which had been rejected by the Zimbabwe government.

The Para-Check test kits were rejected by medical practitioners in Zimbabwe in 2012 because they were not giving accurate results.

Chemonics did the same thing in Afghanistan where it built grain storage silos and greenhouses which locals never used because they had not been consulted. When asked, the farmers said they would never have used the silos because their fruits, grains and vegetables would have been easy prey for thieves.

But that is not all. Chemonics had to pay nearly US$500 000 in damages after it was accused of discriminating against blacks.

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