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Published: January 30th 2013
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When I visited a Kampala bookshop recently I was almost bowled over by the number of books on aid, nearly all were negative – ‘Dead Aid’, ‘The Trouble with Aid’. What I find more remarkable is that these books are not really aimed at Ugandans, only the richest would spend the amount of money required to buy a book published in the West, but international aid or development workers. As I now work for a bigger ‘development agency’ (charity is a dirty word) I have come across this criticism of aid and development more firsthand.
I can understand why those from outside the industry would be critical; it is quite easy to find evidence of the damage caused by billions of dollars of Western aid. I just find it strange that the very people who dedicate their lives to development work seem to be the first to criticise. Come to think of it, is probably true of most professions that those inside often become the most cynical.
Very similar to criticisms of the welfare state in the UK people are quick to condemn the ‘poverty commodity’, ‘culture of dependency’ and whatever else anyone chooses to call it. Up close it is easy to see why. It’s clear there are incentives for categorising yourself in a certain way: put crassly, if you are an orphan, affected by HIV/AIDS, a ‘street child’ then you are more likely to benefit from charity. Handouts create a culture of begging, people are constantly asking for money, school fees and clothes because that, for them, is what white people do.
Confronted with this situation, especially for a short time, it is easy to lose track of why anyone would think simply ‘giving’ was a good idea. About a month in, I remember think that anyone who sponsored a child’s education must have come from some kind of devil-worshipping cult. As I look back now, for every time I have found it difficult to watch as one child from a community of 10,000 is ‘chosen’ to be educated I have seen the grown-up results of that child’s education and the knock-on effect it can have on their family and even community. I also realise some of what first took as ‘begging’ is simply an extension of a community culture whereby if your neighbour has more than you then they share or lend; it is difficult to understand why they would not.
I feel many of the issues with aid of people, perversely, not looking at the smaller picture. Development aid and NGO work will never shape a country in the same way a Government will. It can, however, change the life of a person, family or even community. Many of the people that end up working in developing countries do so to ‘make a difference’ but unfortunately often find making a difference to one person or a few people is not enough.
Another criticism of development is that help inevitably ends up with some people that don’t deserve it. Most often, in my experience, this will be money people working in development themselves or Government officials. It is probably the hardest thing to justify in development, ‘foreigners’ being paid £30,000 a year in a country where the average wage is around £1,000 to help develop ‘poverty alleviation’ programmes for Ugandans. No, I won’t even try to argue against that.
One of the most difficult things I find to deal with is the payment of Government officials. It one of the few things I have failed to understand or accept from my Ugandan colleagues. Team meetings will often come with a complaint that we are failing to influence ‘decision makers’ as we won’t offer them enough to attend our training/workshops. The difficulty is that we offer enough for generous travel and food expenses whilst other non-governmental organisations (NGOs) offer five times that amount. I argue that we should continue not to pay and make them realise that they should be grateful for free training (given how expensive education is in Uganda I don’t understand why the cost is suddenly reversed if it is anything to do with your job i.e. actually relevant) and am seen as impractical and not really understanding how things work.
Going back to the ‘deserving’ it is interesting to watch as we work with people from very different background within Ugandan society. Our ‘national volunteers’ have often come from university and the big city of Kampala, volunteering in a rural village is a bigger shock for some of them than international volunteers. Our ‘community volunteers’ come from the community that they are working but are at least O-Level educated. The young people that they are training and supporting will usually be less well of. The volunteers are comparatively privileged in a national or local context and hence maybe ‘undeserving’ of aid (training). If you were to ask me where I thought our work does most good though, I would say the young volunteers who gain a different perspective or are trained and given the opportunity to lead their community. These 'leaders of tomorrow' often go onto big things locally or nationally and have some valuable experience of practical community work.
I may not really have justified the world of development in my jumble of thoughts but I do feel that the general principle is sound, that the argument that ‘nothing is being done because you are papering over the cracks’ is fundamentally flawed. More time and less money would solve many of the problems that the development world causes but I don’t think that is a problem confined to development.
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