In Bid for Self-Reliance, Eritrea Favors Aid Cuts : Africa: Tiny nation’s president acknowledges that foreign assistance cannot solve its problems.

American lawmakers intent on cutting foreign aid have unlikely allies in this small, poor nation that receives more of it per person than any other country in Africa.

“Aid is used and abused, so why not cut it?” President Issaias Afwerki said in an interview. “We favor the new American approach to reconsider aid.”

Eritrea is Africa’s newest country and it is determined to avoid the same trap that has mired so many African nations in debt and dependence on foreign handouts.

“We believe we need aid. But we don’t believe aid can solve our problems,” Issaias said.

The country desperately needs help as it emerges from 30 years of devastating war that finally brought independence from Ethiopia in 1993. But Issaias and other government leaders say they would like to see aid limited to projects that promote development and not rely on handouts.

“The effective use of aid is to free society from any dependence on outside sources,” Issaias said.

What sets Eritrea apart from its neighbors on the most impoverished continent is political unity wrought by the long war and a resolve to achieve economic independence.

Eritrea was the most industrialized country in Africa before war took its toll. Now the economy and the infrastructure are in shambles. Average life expectancy is 46 years. Annual per capita income is less than $150.

Two-thirds of the 3 million Eritreans rely on food aid. Although most citizens make their living from agriculture, only 25% of the land is arable, and only about 10% of that is under cultivation.

This year, the U.S. government has promised Eritrea $13.2 million in development aid and $6.2 million in direct food aid. Under expected reductions for next year, development assistance is to fall to $9.6 million and direct food aid to just over $4 million.

Saleh Meky, Eritrea’s American-educated minister of marine resources, said he does not believe Eritrea will suffer from the reduction.

But he said Americans should keep in mind that aid is a way to cement relations with recipient states and create partners for trade.

“For the United States to withdraw this aid would be a self-inflicted wound. This is not a charity,” he said.

He said the United States is giving his ministry computers and teaching his people how to use them to determine the sustainable yield from Eritrea’s bountiful fishing grounds in the Red Sea. They were virtually untouched during the three decades of war.

America provides up to 30% of Eritrea’s food aid and is spending $2.3 million helping analyze food security problems and develop strategies to defeat them.

Overall, American contributions amount to only about 5% of the total bilateral aid to Eritrea, officials said.

U.S. aid is improving the woefully inadequate primary health care system in an effort to make the work force healthier and more productive. Washington proposes to spend $3.7 million on that project next year and on support for family planning, in a country where the birthrate of 6.8 children per woman threatens to double the population in 23 years.

The United States also intends to spend $1.5 million helping the government transform the state-controlled economy into one dominated by private business.

U.S. support for developing a democratic constitution and strengthening local government will bring an additional $2.1 million.

Although U.S. lawmakers are still wrangling over which programs will be eliminated or reduced, reductions to all aid programs are expected to average more than 30%.

Eritrean officials have not said how they intend to make up the difference except that they want to become self-reliant.

A Horn of Africa country constantly threatened with drought and famine, Eritrea uses much of its aid on projects to increase land available for farming by terracing mountainsides and building dams for irrigation.

Every summer, tens of thousands of students, doing required government service, spend two months terracing the rugged mountainsides, planting trees and restoring roads.

They join thousands of adult workers on the projects. Rather than just distribute food aid, the government hires the laborers and pays them with food aid or with money that it earns from the sale of food, about a third of which is donated by the United States.

“We get lots of offers of technical aid. Experts of all sorts, many of which have no use,” said Nerayo Teklemichael, director of the Eritrean Relief and Rehabilitation Agency.

Nerayo said rejecting help angers some donors and relief agencies.

“Some people think this is arrogance; that it should not be tolerated. We should not be punished for our stand,” Nerayo said. “We need projects that eventually will make us self-reliant in food. We must have more food, and we must cultivate more land for food.”

He said the country must not depend on aid to survive.

“If we here have faith in foreign aid as the maker and breaker of Eritrea, then that is the end of Eritrea.”