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Aid to Rwanda

 

　　援助卢旺达

 

　　The pain of suspension

 

　　停止资助的阵痛

 

　　Will Rwanda’s widely praised development plans now be stymied?

 

　　广泛称赞的卢旺达发展计划是否就此受阻?

 

　　Jan 12th 2013| KIGALI |From the print edition

 

　　A NEWCOMER has arrived on Lake Kivu, the deep and dangerous body of water that divides Rwanda on the east from the Democratic Republic of Congo to the west. A high-tech barge weighed down with gleaming steel tanks sits in the bay at Kibuye, on the Rwandan shore. Nearby, a corridor of red buoys marking the path of a new pipeline stretches into a waterway criss-crossed by fishermen in wooden boats.

 

　　基伍湖来了个新朋友，这片深邃危险的水域,把湖东部的卢旺达和湖西边的刚果民主共和国分隔开。一艘高科技的船驳，闪闪发光的钢制钢坦克，停在卢旺达海岸的Kibuye海湾上。附近,一条用红色浮标标志着的通道里，一根新管道一路延伸到一个被渔民的木船所纵横交错的航道。

 

　　Soaked in carbon dioxide and methane from surrounding volcanoes, Kivu is one of the world’s most explosive lakes. If its gases were suddenly released, the explosion (a “turnover”, in geology-speak) could be “the biggest catastrophe humankind has experienced,” perhaps suffocating or incinerating the 2m people who live on the shore, says Jarmo Gummerus, a Finnish engineer. He is working on the barge, built by ContourGlobal, an American energy company, which is seeking to extract the methane and convert it into electricity.

 

　　因为基伍湖周围弥漫着从环绕的火山中喷发出的二氧化碳和沼气，所以是世界上最爆炸性的湖泊。如果它的气体被突然释放所引起的爆炸(“反牵引”,地质学术语)可能会是人类迄今经历过的最大的灾难。,来自芬兰的工程师Gummerus Jarmo认为，如此之大的爆炸也许会让住在岸边的2千万人窒息而死或烧成灰烬。Gummerus Jarmo就在那艘驳船上工作。那艘船舶由ContourGlobal公司建造即一个美国的能源公司，他们正在寻求提取甲烷并把它转变成电的方法。

 

　　This KivuWatt project, costing $140m in its first phase, may be the most ambitious of many in Rwanda. Once up and running early this year, it is expected to increase the mountainous country’s power generation by a third. For Rwanda’s government, which still harks back to the genocide of 1994, when some 800,000 of its people were murdered in the course of three months, it is a symbol of revival, turning a potential disaster into an engine of growth and reinvigoration.

 

　　KivuWatt项目的第一阶段耗资140千万美元，可能是许多在卢旺达的项目中最具野心的一个。一旦在今年早些时候建成运营，它预计将使这个多山国家的发电量增加三分之一。卢旺政府，追溯到1994年的大屠杀,大约80万人在三个月的过程中惨遭杀害。因此，这个项目象征着复兴,把基伍湖这个潜在的灾难变成驱动这个国家进步发展，重整旗鼓的动力引擎。

 

　　Yet such progress is being threatened by the chaos a short swim away in eastern Congo, where Western governments have put much of the blame for a spreading rebellion on Rwanda’s government and its dynamic, authoritarian leader, Paul Kagame. Several of them have withheld aid, on which much of the country’s development depends, accounting for more than 40% of Rwanda’s budget.

 

然而,这个项目的进展受到了仅一个短泳距离的，刚果东部混乱问题的威胁。刚果西部的政府把大部分责任归结到卢旺达政府的叛乱和叛乱的核心人物，独裁领袖,保罗·卡加梅身上。他们在好几个方面对占超过卢旺达预算40%的援助进行保留。而这对大部分国家的发展都至关重要。

Landlocked, tiny in area, and more densely populated than any other country in sub-Saharan Africa, Rwanda has achieved what a leading British development expert, Paul Collier, calls the “hat-trick” of rapid growth, sharp poverty reduction and reduced inequality. Many donors have been deeply reluctant to stop or reduce aid, whatever the arguments over eastern Congo.

地处内陆,面积狭小,比其他任何撒哈拉以南的非洲国家的人口更稠密。卢旺达已经达到了这样一种状况，正如来自英国，研究发展的权威专家,Paul Collier所谓的“帽子戏法”。即人口快速增长,贫困大幅降低，减少贫富差距。无论有关刚果东部的争论多么激烈，很多捐助者都深深的不愿停止或减少对卢旺达的援助。

Britain, the second-largest bilateral contributor after the United States, has frozen, unfrozen and then refrozen its aid, worth ￡75m ($120m) a year. Other European governments have stopped or reduced their contributions. The Americans have suspended military aid, albeit worth a mere $200,000, and may cut development projects, depending on the views of Barack Obama’s new aid team. The World Bank, the IMF and the African Development Bank are shilly-shallying over the matter. “Rwanda’s relationship with the rest of the world has changed,” says a senior Western diplomat in Kigali, Rwanda’s capital.

英国，作为仅次于美国的第二大双边捐助者，已经先后冻结、解冻,再冻结其价值￡75 m($ 120 m)一年的援助款。其他欧洲国家政府也已经停止或减少他们的捐助。美国人已经暂停了军事援助(虽然仅为20万美元)同时也可能缩减开发项目,这取决于巴拉克?奥巴马的新一任辅助团队的看法。世界银行、国际货币基金组织和非洲发展银行正在对此事犹豫不决。“卢旺达与世界其他国家的关系已经改变”一位在卢旺达首都基加利的西方高级外交官如是说道。

As a result, Rwanda’s finance ministry expects GDP to grow by 6.3% this year rather than the 7.8% previously predicted. Inflation, which had crept up to nearly 7%, is expected to pick up. A shortage of foreign currency in Kigali has created a black market for the first time since 1994. Rwanda’s free health-care system, which is said to cover 90% of its citizens, is creaking. Bonuses to doctors and nurses that topped up their salaries by as much as 40% have already been cut. The dream of transforming a subsistence-farming economy into a middle-income services hub by 2020, based on annual growth of 11%, is fading.

因此,卢旺达的财政部预计今年的GDP将增长6.3%,而不是先前预测的7.8%。通货膨胀已经攀升至近7%,而且预计还会加速。外汇的短缺造成了在基加利催生了自1994年以来的第一个黑市。卢旺达的免费医疗保健系统,曾说是要覆盖90%的公民,现已岌岌可危。医生和护士曾经高达他们薪水40%的奖金也已被取消。基于每年经济增长11%，在2020年前，完成从保障最低生活的农耕经济到中等收入服务中心的转变这一梦想也在渐渐陨落。

Many of Rwanda’s leading lights, such as the Central Bank governor, Claver Gatete, say that the suspension of funds already promised is a gross betrayal. Rwanda’s model of development, elaborated closely with Britain, involving direct support for the budget, was widely hailed as an example for other poor countries to follow. Now that “aid is no longer a guarantee”, says Mr Gatete bitterly, the ability to make the best use of it has been lost. The Rwandan government, fretful over the aid suspension, is pondering how to use its recently acquired two-year seat on the UN Security Council as a lever for getting Western governments to relent.

许多卢旺达的领袖，如，中央银行行长,Claver Gatete说道，停止偿付已经承诺的资助很显然是种背叛。卢旺达的发展模式,保持与英国周密的合作，包括预算上的直接支持,被广泛誉为其他贫穷国家应效仿的例子。现在，“援助也不再是一个完全保证”Gatete先生苦涩地说道。能够充分利用援助的时机已经过去了。卢旺达政府,正在为停止偿付的援助而煎熬,正在考虑如何利用它最近取得的为期两年的联合国安理会席位来作为撬动西方政府，使其缓和停止偿付资助的一种杠杆手段。

It is not certain that a second phase of the KivuWatt project, which would have added another three barges and almost doubled the country’s output of electricity at an estimated cost of $250m, will now go ahead. “In future it’s going to be much harder to get a deal like this done,” says a senior Western aid man.

曾经悬而未决的KivuWatt项目的第二阶段,将估计花费250m美元，增加另外三艘驳船并且几乎能使该国产电量翻番，现已继续动工。“未来，像这样的交易将变得更难达成”，一位西方的高级援助员如是说道。