Re: How do you track foreign aid?

Description: The answer isn't in regulation, Armitage says.

Transcript: Well you don’t regulate it. If it’s going into a state, the states have to make their own regulations, and many of them do . . . some of them more than others. South Africa is a pretty good regulatory . . . Ghana is pretty good. Mozambique is working on it. So you have to depend on them to regulate it, and their own regulations concerning telecom, concerning mineral development . . . development of mineral rights, gas and oil rights, these are not insignificant or . . . peoples, nor are they unsophisticated peoples. So they’ll regulate it.

The instability in Nigeria is very much a North-South instability and a tribal instability. And I must say that looking at the city of Lagos, it’s a huge, sprawling city. I’m frightened almost every morning that I’m gonna wake up and see it just exploding. In terms of U.S. money going in, it’s primarily been ___________ money. There are regulations concerning it. There are always funds that when we send funds overseas through our banks, etc., there is a look by our government of who the end user is. So I’m not as worried about U.S. money going to bad people as I am the governments of those various states not making the right use or making the right choices with the monies they have.

Recorded on: 9/14/07