Why can't projects like this get funding?

Question

Hello! Malawi and Mozambique two of the poorest African nations have identified and agreed to try to obtain assistance and funding to develop the Shire-Zambezi Waterway and the Milange District agricultural development project. This fertile land could not only provide food security for both countries, but could provide training centers to train the local farmers in organic, sustainable farming and using the Waterway to transport the surplus to the delta for export. ([e-mail])

Answer 1

wow what an answer cigar gave. I can't compete w/ that answer.

Answer 2

There have been many recent (past 50 years) examples that show that investments in Africa are economic disasters.
For instance:
1) 30% of the funding finds its way into secret Swiss (and other) bank accounts.
2) New, extravagant, palaces are built. New private armies are funded.
3) The political elites (and thousands of their relatives) find the need to visit LasVegas, Paris, Monaco, Hawaii, London, etc.
4) You get the gist: it's corruption and uneconomical.

Answer 3

Because or poor structuring, perhaps? Major projects like this cannot be aiming at "food security" (i.e., serving the tiny domestic market) and aid to local farmers. They have to be aimed at building export capacity of large-scale enterprises. Right under your nose, you've got South Africa, tenth-largest importer of rice in the world (and most of its rice imports are expensive high-quality varieties from India and Thailand). Senegal imports about as much, but lower quality; Nigeria imports almost twice as much. People in Malawi and Mozambique need to be thinking about industrial-scale export-oriented production, not about tiny family farms serving the tiny local market...

Answer 4

You could try funding it.

Obviously the people who have the money dont want to do it for some reason, Yahoo searching could probably tell you what that reason is.

Impressario Raiddinn the Beatdropper

Answer 5

Profit models do not warrant the risk to capital deployed to the project.