The U.S. Agency for International Development sent $1.3 billion in foreign assistance to the Democratic Republic of the Congo last year, the world’s fifth-poorest country by GDP per capita.
The spending would be easier to stomach if the Congo was devoting all of its own resources toward caring for its people and still coming up short.
But new reporting from the Swiss magazine Die Weltwoche revealed that the country’s officials are splurging on their travel expenses. The Congo spent the equivalent of $488,000 on a six-night hotel stay during this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.