Global Fund for Health: How seven African countries squandered millions of foreign aid
Africa’s foremost diplomat, Kofi Annan, was one of the biggest human export from the continent.
Mr Annan had a vision of creating a pool of funds to reach some of the world’s poorest with heavy disease burdens, especially, Africans. PREMIUM TIMES reviewed a Global Fund audit report that covered the period between January 7 and December 17. The report revealed how aid money disappeared in the hands of corrupt officials in some African countries.
Officials are alleged to have been involved in the purchase of the health products, provided by other donors, “stolen” from the warehouse of Medical Stores Limited , a government distributor of health products.The investigation identified significant unexplained stock losses of Global Fund-financed health products totaling $1.06 million. The losses, which were neither effectively investigated nor reported to Global Fund, comprised HIV test kits, and malaria drugs among others.
SIDALERTE was contracted in 2015 by Guinea’s National AIDS, the principal recipient, to conduct an Integrated Biological and Behavioral Surveillance survey. PREMIUM TIMES last September published a report on the OIG investigation revealing how the national coordinator allegedly colluded with the former finance manager and a programme internal auditor in running the fraudulent ‘scheme’.
The report made public last August found that FLAS Project Finance Officer fraudulently diverted $26,701 of Global Fund grant funds between 1 June 2016 and 30 April 2017. He did this by making improper transfers through FLAS’s mobile money account into his own personal account as well as to other unauthorised accounts.
Nigeria’s minister of health, Isaac Adewole, also did not return or respond to text messages to his phone. He said one of the measures taken was to appoint a member of the National Steering Committee to oversee the project of the Global Funds programmes of the network.The OIG in summary of its 2018 audit presented at the 40th board meeting of the Global Fund last November noted a reduction in large cases of fraud compared to previous reports.
Programmes are implemented by in-country partners such as ministries of health, while the Global Fund secretariat, which staff only have an office in Geneva, monitors the programmes. Previous reviews of grants, the report said, had shown substantial misconduct in some programmes, lack of adequate risk management, and operational inefficiency of the Global Fund.
In February 2011, the Financial Times reported that the Global Fund board failed to act previously on concerns over accountability, including on the conclusion of an external evaluation in 2009 that criticised the organisation’s weak procurement practices.African countries slammed in the 2018 audit had been exposed of abusing Global Fund aids in previous reports.
Nigeria’s Auditor-General, Anthony Ayine, in July reprimanded the National Agency for the Control AIDS managing the HIV fund for refusing to shed light on how the fund was used. Also in 2012, Kenya missed about $67 million supposed grant for fighting Aids, malaria and TB because of fraud and mismanagement of Global Fund’s money, according to Daily Nation.
“At Transparency International, we did a whole report on health and corruption and we have found a lot of public officials mismanaging this global health fund in Nigeria. Unfortunately, the government has not made any bold step to arrest and make those people account for the money they have actually embezzled. In Africa, we allow impunity to thrive.”
“These organisations in most cases are not the original owners of the money so it is important they maintain high level of accountability and transparency even before looking into the operations of the beneficiaries.”Mr Suraju, the chairman of Civil Society Network Against Corruption , described the effect of fragrant abuse and continuous reliance on aid money by African countries as dire.
Though significant progress were made, these goals were never met as Africa still bears the highest burden despite billions of aid money it received for intervention. “The fact that we have irreconcilable number of health burden such as HIV and malaria more than the rest of the world should challenge the governments. There is nothing like no money. The ones embezzled daily in these African regimes and sent overseas is far more than the foreign aid received.
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