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By Sir Ronald Sanders, Thursday, February 18, 2010

At last a French President visited Haiti – a country that contributed greatly to France’s accumulation of wealth in the 18^th Century and which France impoverished for a century after that.

Nicolas Sarkozy arrived in devastated Haiti on February 17, a month and five days after a massive earthquake ravaged the Capital, Port-au-Prince killing more than 200,000 people; maiming tens of thousands of others, and wreaking billions of dollars in damage.

The extent of the damage and loss of life in Haiti were undoubtedly due to the country’s lack of physical infrastructure and its poor building standards, neither of which could be accomplished in a situation where 70 percent of its gross domestic product was paid over to France for over a century.

This is not to ignore the excesses of Haitian governments, particularly under the Duvaliers, which also deprived the country of monies that should have been pumped into constructing infrastructure, providing education and health facilities, and establishing regulatory bodies to ensure higher standards across a range of activity including the construction of buildings.

The harsh imposition by France of a levy of 90 million gold francs, which Haiti did not finish repaying until 1947, also does not excuse recent Haitian governments and political parties for failing to spend aid funds on an agreed and country-wide development programme instead of on narrow political interests.

Indeed, on any programme for constructing a new Haiti – both in a physical and societal sense – Haitian governments should be mindful that not only the Haitian people but the entire international community will want guaranteed machinery to ensure that aid money is spent on sustainable development.

The challenge is huge.

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