The Failure of Aid...asinine philantropy

"Back in the early 1970s, in an effort to break the cycles of starvation in the Turkana region, Kenyan officials had delegated the Norwegian development agency Norad the task of retraining local herders to fish. The lake swarmed with tilapia and Nile perch. The idea was to wean the people off their boom-and-bust livestock economy, swap animal for fish protein, and make the nomads productive, sedentary citizens. The Scandinavians built a modern freezer plant near the lake. They taught people how to cast nets. And they distributed 20 large, modern fiberglass skiffs. The project was a colossal failure. As it turned out, freezing the catches cost more than the fish were worth. And, astoundingly, the foreigners hadn't bothered to ask whether the milk- and meat-addicted nomads even liked fish. (They didn't.) A decade after donors had sunk millions into the scheme, the Turkana pastoralists were as poor and hungry as ever. Many gave up and returned to the bush. A few of the more enterprising families found a novel use for their upturned fishing vessels as crude shelters. 

Lake Turkana's beached fishing fleet became an icon of asinine philanthropy in Africa."

-Paul Salopek, The Last Famine


We need to analyze what went wrong with this program, what were the structural deficits that created failure, not just for the project, but for the intended beneficiaries, as well as the Kenyan State, whose social contract with these nomadic tribes was thus eroded. A few superficial critiques of the program....

Program Design: participatory in nature? I think not...
Delegation of Program Responsibility: Is the Norweigan government better able to design and implement a program for nomads in Kenya than Kenyans in Nairobi are? Increased geographic distancing=increased chances for failure.
Focus on "Nomadic Productivity:" How can we learn/understanding that certain lifestyles are simply not conducive, in their traditional form, to integration into the wider, globalized economy? How can we understand/learn that pushing this integration will lead to greater failure, domination by power, and, if "successful," only succeeds in bringing people onto the lowest rungs of development while stripping their cultural identity and community bonds?
Modern Freezer Plant: A great symbol/metaphor for the imposition of inappropriate technology upon unwilling recipients; the vestiges of these projects dominate the landscape of so many LDC's....

and so much more....

More Dowden on African Aid

More from Richard Dowden, from his great work, "Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracles" :

"...when the 'right answers' are found by the Africans themselves, moderate amounts of external funding can help speed up the process of development. But when outsiders decree the solution and pour in money, most aid is wasted. In some places it has destroyed local initiative and held Africa back."

Richard Dowden on the role of Aid....

"Aid can speed up development that people have already decided to carry out for themselves and have the capacity to do...but aid from the outside cannot transform whole societies, who countries. That can only come about through producing things and trading them, or doing something that someone else wants to pay for."

"Real change must come from within. African countries will be better places to live and work in when Africans in positions of power and influence begin to invest their futures, energy, and money in the continent...If Africans move their own wealth out of the continent, how can Africa ask outsiders to invest there?"

Looking the Other Way

 Looking the Other Way
The Economist recently published a short article entitled "Looking the Other Way," following up on a theme that I had touched on awhile  back at the onset of the brutal Somali famine. The biggest question that I raised initially was why is the West and the African public bearing the brunt of the fund-raising and donation efforts being undertaken to help alleviate the suffering in the Horn of Africa, while the most obvious partners, the neighboring countries and the countries of the broader AU, are providing a pittance? Fundamentally, one would expect a country such as Kenya, which shares a long and porous border with Somalia, to be stumping up funds for humanitarian aid, as they are most subject to bearing the brunt of the cross-border ramifications; a nation such as Uganda, which has provided troops for the AU mission in Mogadishu (funded by the UN/West through its peacekeeping initiatives) will provide men, but not food aid (there are no reimbursements from the international community for food aid, I suppose). Thus, the famine continues, as many as 3/4 of a million people at risk of eminent starvation, and 4 heads of state from Africa actually showed up for the pledging conference in Addis Ababa; could Jacob Zuma not spare a day, and could his country, South Africa, which makes up 1/3 of the GDP of the continent, spare more than the measly $1million dollars pledged? Zuma, staunch advocate of "African Solutions to African Problems...." This figure is simply an affront to collective humanity, to the dreams of the Pan-African statesman of the past. Zuma sent $250million to diminutive, autocratic Swaziland to help them fend off default and the subsequent democratic reform demanded by the international community. African solutions to African problems? Is the famine in the Horn not an African problem? Is this not a dangerous game of lethal hypocrisy? Criticism alone cannot provoke action; the action must be collective and intrinsic. If the entire African Union cannot pledge more than the $50 million already committed for the calamity unfolding on the continent, one must question the basic governmental impetuses of the nations of this land, the shared bonds and collective humanity present, or so seemingly deficient. How can true development take place in states that show little interest in actual altruism towards neighbors, and thus, their own citizens? Have the leaders been simply more frugal than the international community because they understand the realities of aid on the ground more than those in the developed world? Is this, in itself, a wake up call? Or is it simply the reinforced understanding that the international community will share the brunt of the burden, as they have done since independence for many of the aid-reliant states on the continent. This entire humanitarian catastrophe has shown down like a magnifying glass on the motivations and predispositions of the governments of the region, and it has not been a pretty sight.

Paul Coller and Dambisa Moyo on Aid

Paul Collier and Dambisa Moyo on Africa
Allan Gregg Conversations




Collier-The Plundered Planet –(notes/quotes)

“Natural resources can transform the developing world or tear it apart. They are potentially a huge opportunity to help, and also a huge possibility to destroy. Natural assets have no natural owners. The contest that can ensue in the scramble for these natural resources can tear a country apart, and it had. Because there are no owners, a contest for these assets controls the very poorest societies. This scramble turns crooked and violent. The normal business of government, to provide public goods, is abandoned for the patronage systems that are needed to maintain power in these countries, such as Nigeria under Sani Abacha. There are two types of plunder-the few stealing what should belong to all citizens, and the present generation burning up assets that should belong to the future. The ethical responsibility is to harness nature to reduce poverty.
There are two huge holes in governance; the first is huge amounts of natural resources facing weak governments, and the second being the natural resources that transcend governments, ie: migratory fish stocks.
What is to be done? First, the natural assets need to be priced, and the value needs to be captured by the government. Now, the typical way that an asset is sold by a government is under the table, or undervalued, or given away on an undervalued basis as a result of the lack of information. Auctions need to be run to combat this problem. The genius of auctions is that the market values the assets. It is vital that governments have geological information to be able to have an idea of the assets under their soils before these auctions, however.
The revenues that come out of natural resource depletion are not sustainable. As you run down these assets, you need to build up other assets, such as schools, roads, ports, etc, or you are cheating the future generations on a rate of return.

Dambisa Moyo
Dead Aid –notes/quotes

The premise: foreign aid has been a disaster for Africa, and must stop.
Why is aid part of the problem? There is a completely different model of growth and development for the industrializing nations such as China and African nations. Africa has become addicted to aid. In some countries, over 70% of the budget is aid sourced. From this, the incentives for alternative economic development are reduced. In addition, there is outright theft and corruption that is accepted. The real source of cash in these governments comes from controlling the state; when you control the state, you control the cash. This creates a destabilizing issue. The image that is perpetuated by the western aid agencies is self-perpetuating and negative. By giving free mosquito nets to the continent, we are breaking local manufacturers of mosquito nets. This is the example of the big problem in today’s aid business. What the Chinese have done in Africa is tremendous, in terms of infrastructure development. Their approach is an equal approach. They are coming to do business, unlike the auspices of pity of the aid industry. African governments need to act on behalf of the interests of the people.

Intelligence Squared: Aid to Africa Debate

AID TO AFRICA IS DOING MORE HARM THAN GOOD from Intelligence Squared U.S. on Vimeo.

AID TO AFRICA DEBATE NOTES

Intelligence Squared

 The Question fro Debate:

“Is aid to Africa doing more harm than good?”

David Reiff:  To paraphrase his statements: On balance, aid has done more harm than good…The problem, I think, is that the whole discussion of aid avoids the problem of politics. People are not saved from outside-people rescue themselves. They can be helped at the margins. If aid was less ambitious, I would support it, such as emergency relief.  If it does as its meant to do, to offer a bed for a night, but not to hope to transform society, then the value of aid is indisputable. What is not indisputable is the idea that foreign institutions and governments know how to fox other people’s difficulties. The problem with aid is that it sets itself as the be-all and end-all. “The man with the gold makes the rules”…What you have, by definition, is outsiders telling people how to behave satisfactorily, then the aid will be withdrawn.  By depriving people of their agents, aid does more harm than good. Moreover, the emphasis on aid is misdirected. We should be talking more about fair trade than about aid.  What is impossible is the notion of aid as the centerpiece of development.

Gayle Smith:  Aid is a very complex instrument that cannot be categorized together. There have been many successes, especially in health and education.  Wireless access in Africa has had a huge impact on the local markets-this has come in part from aid. Microfinance has changed many lives, and a lot has come from aid. There is no question that politics has affected aid and has often been driven by politics. Aid needs to be elevated so it is on par with other institutions and protected from politics, ring-fenced against use for reasons other than development. At the end of the day, development matters. Development is a moral, economic, and security interest. What is the alternative? The military as our primary means to contributing to development?

William Easterly: There are two tragedies in this debate. The first is the unnecessary suffering in Africa-lives can be saved by a 12 cent dose of malaria medicine which is not being done. The second tragedy that we hear a lot less about is that we have already spent 600$ billion in the last 45 years, and children are still not getting those 12cent medicines. Aid would be great if it worked, but the sad tragedy is that money meant for the most desperate people in the world is not reaching them. Over the 45 years of aid, there has basically been a zero rise in living standards in Africa. Every generation calls for an increase in aid to solve the issues of their generation. Everybody calls for the doubling of aid to Africa, but what good does it do to focus on amounts when most of the money is not being used correctly. Most of it goes to corrupt and autocratic rulers. 2/3 of aid today still goes to corrupt rulers (see: Meles in Ethiopia). A lot of aid went into countries that have collapsed into anarchy, such as Rwanda, Congo, Somalia. Thus, aid worsens corruption, blocks democracy, and is an obstacle to getting rid of corrupt rulers. We must condemn the sorry record of aid as simply unacceptable, as making things worse rather than better.

John McArthur:  If we think about what aid achieves and doesn’t achieve, we must caution against random correlations. When we look at statistical evidence, Africa grows on average 2% slower than other developing countries in the world, even with lower standards of governance and higher levels of corruption. Why do Ghana and Senegal, with higher Transparency International ratings, grow slower than China and India? This is because of disease, infrastructure, and lack of education that is a legacy of history. It is about much more than bad governance. Aid is about tackling the challenges of health, education, and infrastructure effectively.  There has been successes. The eradication of smallpox by the UN. The fight against AIDS has brought retroviral medications to more than a million people which was considered impossible. Primary school enrollment rates are up 20%. Measles has been cut 90% in Africa.  This has all been backed by aid. In Malawi aid has supported the national plan to get seed and fertilizer to farmers and the country has doubled its food production. Aid needs to build on success.

George Ayittey:  The record of aid has been a disaster. If you want to better help the African people, you need to ask them what they want.  Africans are interested in reform, not aid. Economic reform, political reform, and social reform. Corruption costs the continent over 140$billion per year.