The problems with focusing on vulnerability rather than capacity

Also known as "the problems of a culturally-biased approach", or "thinking that 'we' know what 'they' need"!

In a post titled "Why do we keep failing Africa?", Dave asks, "so what's going on? Our country and others in the developed world are swimming in cash and resources. Why can't we share it with people who really need it?"

I loved this response (bold is by me...the bit about traffic lights reminded me of the underpass and overpass opposite the market in Honiara, apparently funded by AusAid - I've never seen anyone use the overpass, the underpass is full of rotting vegetables and other rubbish, and despite thousands being spent on these two "amenities", you still see women tearing across the highway with a sack of rice on their heads...)

Dear Dave and fellow-bloggers,

I do not write this from my comfortable, eastern suburbs armchair. I write instead, from a lopsided office chair in rural West Africa. I don’t for a moment suggest this makes me a great expert, but I live here and I have my eyes open. This is what I’ve seen:

I’ve seen the homes that government officials build for themselves in the rural villages from which they came. Multiple stories high, beautifully tiled, landscape and with satellite dishes sprouting from the roofs. In a paddock on the outskirts of a village where every other construction is single story, mud brick, maybe three rooms and home to a large family.

I’ve seen, and am daily frustrated by, traffic lights erected in the middle of my rural town with overseas aid money that was earmarked for road safety. Road safety is a wonderful thing, I regularly make long cross-country trips that involve frequently fearing for my life, I would like to be safer on the roads here. Traffic lights, however, are doing nothing to improve my safety on the road. Not only are they spectacularly ineffective in a town struggling to maintain reliable electric supply; they are off more often than on, but they clog up intersections that function quite effectively when they don’t function. But this money was earmarked for such measure, and so it is traffic lights that we get.

This, I think, is one of the problems with aid, at least in the part of Africa that I know well. It is earmarked, set aside, prescribed by foreign governments and organizations for what they deem to be worthy issues without a real understanding of what is needed here. Road safety is needed, but my safety, and the safety of those whose country I live in, would be much better improved if the only major highway was not so heavily pothole that driving on it is like a slalom course and if even the major roads were wide enough for two vehicles to safely pass each other. When money is earmarked like this it clearly demonstrates that those foreigners responsible for it made no effort to leave the capital city, where traffic management is a major problem, and discover what is needed in the rural areas where a lot of their money will end up. Showed no actual interest in Africa, but decided that the right thing to do was to send money and to decide we needed traffic lights.

Governments remain the bodies most able to collect and distribute aid money, whether they do so or not. The vast majority of well funded aid that I see comes from governments. It is good money that could be used to do good things. It is left, however, in the hands of government officials. There are some leaders and officials who are more than capable of distributing this money effectively, on important issues, and improving the lives of their countrymen. There are others, however, who, faced with temptation, choose to funnel it into multistory houses in their home towns or, as others have mentioned, into Swiss bank accounts, building up arms caches and even conducting ethnic cleansing. They are left, by there brother governments, with spectacular amounts of money and arms-length, phony accountability. How many of you can be certain that, if given large quantities of foreign money, our own leaders would use it wisely and not spend it on campaign ads to get themselves back into to power next time? I don’t believe that is a particularly African problem.

What is necessary, then, as far as I can see it, is for aid to continue, but to be accompanied by genuine interest and involvement into the countries it is given to. For those giving and administering those funds to be people who are dedicated to the improvement of the country it is going to. To be people who are willing to invest there time, as well as their money. To spend the time discovering what is really needed, to spend the time to understand how to create genuine accountability and partnerships with leaders who have genuine integrity, to spend time working out how to help without creating dependency.

Many of you have reference the situation with out own indigenous community, and Mr. Pearson’s idea that “hound-outs kill”, others have suggested that Africans don’t know how to maintain what is begun by aid money, or what was left by colonial administrations. I don’t believe that this is the case. I do believe, however, that poorly managed aid, and welfare, leads to a cycle of dependency, both in Africa and the indigenous community. If money spent on beginning a project in Africa, whether it be good and appropriate or otherwise, if that project is begun and managed without any true involvement and partnership with locals involved, it will be depended upon and when it is left, it will be abandoned. Indeed, neither African, nor the indigenous community want or need handouts, but partnership with people, so they can improve their own lives in a way that is appropriate, necessary and sustainable, not condescending and disinterested.

I believe that the answer is neither to throw our arms up in disgust, nor to continue wantonly throwing money at the situation, but to move from a point of arrogance and guilt and give our genuine interest and involvement along with our money, being willing to invest our time and our lives in order that we are actually investing our money, and not wasting it.

Posted by: voyageur on July 6, 2007 8:05 PM