On 24 October 1970, fifty years ago, the UN General Assembly resolved that all industrialised countries devote 0,7% of their GDP to co-operation aid.

Formerly, we spoke of “Afro-pessimism”. Now that has morphed into despair. At the time that Ghana received its independence in 1957, the world was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed about the marvellous prospects African nations had of strutting the world stage as self-assured and autonomous members of the planet’s states.

Instead, most African countries have not, to put it lightly, lived up to that potential and have seen formerly down-trodden states in other parts of the world overtake them economically, financially and innovatively – and, particularly, in human rights. It is an old, but true cliché, that Ghana, at independence in 1957, had a per capita income four times higher than Malaya and now, I don’t know, it is something like one tenth of Malaysia’s.

Nowhere has there been an animus against Africa. Quite the contrary: right from African independence a constant stream of idealistic youth from the developed world set out to help sustain Africa, one of whom was the famed travel writer Paul Theroux, who worked as a teacher in Malawi and Kenya, and who now repents in his book Dark Star Safari.

The UN decided that 0,7% of industrialised states’ gross national income should go to development aid and co-operation, whole national Ministries have been dedicated to aid, and, diplomatically, Western states tiptoe round African leader’s sensitivities. They turn a blind eye to human rights’ abuses, even of the most egregious kinds, to such an extent that France gave funds and shelter to the Hutu perpetrators of genocide (génocidaires) fleeing Rwanda.

Great kleptocrats like Mobutu Sese Seko stood unashamedly on the White House South lawn with Ronald Reagan and George Bush snr. (who was CIA director), French president Giscard d’Estaing attended the coronation as emperor of Jean-Bedel Bokassa, the British under Harold Wilson sent enormous quantities of arms and provided RAF planes to Col. Gowon of Nigeria to attack Col Ojukwu in Biafra and the Russians, Chinese and Cubans did the same for Haile Mariam Mengistu of Ethiopia.

Not even a Western eyebrow was lifted when Idi Amin or Robert Mugabe received standing ovations at the OAU and the UN General Assembly – which they always did, I assure you. No, no animus. Patience, rather, was exercised in the hand-wringing hope that things would improve.

The “socialist” policies of most of the leaders, which actually came down to taking over the levers of all elements of the economy – Boards, Commissions, Market Councils and so forth – were widely applauded by the Left. Darlings of the blue stockings of the Bloomsbury Group like Nkrumah, Nyerere and Kaunda continued to count on these praise-singers even when nobody could deny that their politics had failed miserably and were a sham.

That is why Nelson Mandela was greeted with such awe and admiration. It was relief, really. At last, an African leader who one could look up to, an unblemished African individual the whole of world, and in particular, Africa, could admire. But even he led to despair – why does he let the chance of putting Mugabe in his place slip by? Why does he not take AIDS seriously? Why does he not attend Cabinet meetings?

This brief interlude of hope inevitably moved to Afro-pessimism to despair. No, there is no animus against Africa in the developed world. The West is anxious to give the leg up to African states.

Once on the horse, though, what happens? The African élites prone to predation don’t set off at a gallop. They complain about the neo-colonial saddle. The USA spends $121 million to help South Africa against the AIDS pandemic, but, the Consul General tells me, the relevant staff of the University of Cape Town, through which most is channelled, were totally unaware of where their funding comes from.

No, do not expect gratitude: the industrialised states take it on the chin when they are told that the reason for Africa’s penury is colonialism and the West must pay forever more.

Pay! When my firm wrote the study The Future of the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of Countries for the EU, we calculated that at that time (2006) the equivalent of some 57 Marshall Plans had been spent on Africa since independence in development aid by Western states alone – who knows what it is equivalent to now?

In that study, a raft of recommendations were made to make ex-colonial countries, under the aegis of the Secretariat of the ACP (which the UN recognised as an observer), independent, progressive and beneficiaries of the natural bounty they dispose over – some were innovative, some already obvious and some good sense – all aimed at seeking a common purpose. Not one has been put into effect.

Certainly, African leaders do not take the bull by the horns despite all the encouragement from the well-meaning. The British have decided to place the Co-operation Department back into the Foreign Office. Why? Because the Co-operation Departments of almost all Western countries go blindly on with their “projects” with no conditions (except sometimes economic and administrative) attached.

Thus, in Kenya, the Foreign Office had no say over British aid going blithely on while elections were rigged and the political systems were distorted – not that most African leaders care a fig whether the projects stop or not – a project cut is usually greeted with a shrug of the political shoulder since it provides more ammunition to fire at neo-colonialism.

The British now hope to use aid as a lever – little chance of that. Definitely no animus. The West almost encourages the atmosphere depicted in It’s Our Turn to Eat (Michela Wrong 2010) in which the successors to Moi in Kenya simply took over the corruption pipeline with new beneficiairies – “our time to eat” – the next corrupt lot can have a turn to loot: a lutta continua.

Almost everyone is sceptical about the way that China exploits this fecklessness and devil-take-the-hindmost characteristic of those predatory African élites.

In contrast to the West, which continues to be confused about the inertia in its Africa colleagues, the Chinese CP sees an ideal opportunity to exploit the easy pickings that go along with the inertia. During the writing of the ACP report, we came across the cynicism with which China operates: according to the Ghanaian diplomats we interviewed, a Chinese provincial contractor was contracted to build a 500km road from Accra.

The contractor did this within budget and on time and left. But the camps of workers (all Chinese, my Ghanaian colleagues said) remained. On inquiry, the Ghanaians found that the Chinese workers were convicts who had worked gratis having been promised freedom once the road-building was ended, and there they sat, ready to disappear into the local economy. China saw two advantages – commercial and social, profit and ridding itself of anti-social elements.

In the Africa Division of the Department of Foreign Affairs (as it then was), I, too, was an enthusiastic promoter of aid and co-operation in Africa. With great inventivemess, the South African Agricultural Technical Services bred cattle from bos africanus which were resistant to the tsetse fly and we began cattle farms in Gabon and Equatorial Guinea – the latter herd growing to 200 head, so successful was it. (The breed was also provided to other African cattle-breeding countries to improve their stock).

The farm managers trained locals in cattle-breeding but were under constant pressure to cough up the odd beast to a Cabinet Minister which they, bless them, resisted.

Inventive schemes were scattered over Africa, so we had a tropical fish project in Malawi which could have earned Malawi a good foreign income, and Agricultural Technical Services were able to grow mielies in the Comoros in 2m. of rainfall and innumerable other projects ranging from CSIR-designed innovative housing to the protection of coconut trees from rat predation.

We might have thought of these as inventive and uplifting, but, for many beneficiaries, personal gain trumped all. We continued to believe that these élites wanted to uplift their people and that there were no hidden agendas. That was the ideal, but then the liaison officer for the cattle project in Equatorial Guines asked me to bring him a set of furniture with the next C130 aircraft load!

Did anyone care when control was handed over to the locals as was always the intention? The unique housing projects were transferred to the National Guards, the farms collapsed, no more tropical fish went to the international pet market. There is no shame among such élites.

It’s a gift that keeps on giving. In 2006, when we were writing our report, The Future of the ACP, there was much EU debate as to whether the European Development Fund should be “budgetised” – or brought under the control of the European Commission rather than be a separate entity.

In the end, the EDF remained separate for politically correct reasons so it would not be “recolonised”. The budgeted amount of EU aid for the ex-colonies continued to rise. The amount for the 2014-2020 years was fixed at €30,5 billion (11th EDF Contribution), granted as budget contributions for education, infrastructure, health and for whatever is the flavour of the month like climate change, and, as long as the ACP country signs a National Indicative Programme undertaking, the money flows into the countries’ coffers which frees up self-generated funds some leaders shamelessly use to get new weapons and other gee-gaws.

This unending Western free-flow is taken as a moral imperative and any critique of its destructive continuity is ignored as though this is an immutable religious doctrine.

The reasoned exposé penned by Zambian-born Dambisa Moyo in her book Dead Aid which showed in a crystal-clear fashion that official development aid made some African élites addicted to it and made much of the continent’s dependency on it a permanent feature, is ignored or attacked by writers like the aid guru, Jeffrey Sachs in “The Case for Aid” Foreign Policy, 24 January 2014 (in which he fails to distinguish betweeen humanitarian aid and official development aid).

When she wrote her book in 2009, Dambisa calculated that official aid to Africa since independence had passed US$1 trillion. (Martin Meredith calculated it, till 2012, as $3 trillion in his book The State of Africa.)

À qui la faute? Whose fault is this? The Western world, with a post-colonial guilt complex, made it all too easy from the beginning for much of Africa to rely on the readily provided official funding. The funding, with its perverse unintended consequences, does not stop.

Not only is it enshrined in the Psalter of moral obligation, it is backed by international law through the UN’s resolution of 24 October 1970 requiring 0,7% of industrialised countries’ gross domestic product progressively to go to aid. Unravelling this Gordian knot is now too difficult, complicated and host to diplomatic opprobrium.

The permanency of the process is written in stone and no country wishes to be the first to say: Whoah! Enough is enough! The National Indicative Programmes instituted by the European Development Fund represented a rebuke to the delinquents, but they are easily bypassed.

While minds are not being changed in the West, many African leaders can avoid their true responsibility to their people’s welfare. Don’t expect this convenient, repetitive merry-go-round to end soon, but don’t blame Africa:

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in ourselves

But in our stars, that we are underlings.”