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After my five years in the world of development assistance and aid policy, Ethiopia revealed to me the secret to increased aid effectiveness: creative reuse. Roughly 12 million Ethiopians depend on food aid. The countryside is dotted with huge canvas tent warehouses emblazoned with the World Food Program emblem. The roads are crowded with massive trucks loaded to the gills with USA grain sacks.
An even more common site -- shop windows filled with rows of shiny unopened cans of USA edible vegetable oil...clearly stamped "not for sale or exchange." But there they are, some enterprising hungry person having carried her can of oil to the shop owner to get some cold hard cash. As we were commenting on this to each other, one young fellow overheard us and commented, "Yes, that brand comes from the US."
But the moral of this story comes in after the USA grain and oil have been consumed. The bags and cans turn up in the most marvelous places. The bags are re-stuffed with coal or maize or cassava or used clothes, or they are simply restyled into lovely totes or woven together and strung up to make a shady refuge. The cans
are hammered flat and turned into buckets, barrels, roofing sheets, ducts, municipal trash cans, coffee roasters, hibachi ovens, scoops, and endless other creations. This may very well be the answer to getting the most bang for the aid buck . . .
A growing aside to this story seems to be the Ethiopian government's propaganda campaign for self-reliance and against dependence on food aid. Whether the government is dedicating itself to ensuring food security by investing in rural areas, increased agricultural productivity, job creation, etc. is a wide open question. But they are at least talking the talk, as evidenced by this soviet-style billboard we came across in northern Ethiopia. Viva Ethiopia!
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PG in DC
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the moral of the story
I think any third world traveler has seen this phenomena. But I wrestle with the moral of the story. We make good containers and they recycle well? These people have ingenuity? I wonder if we are we providing the right raw materials for them to build their own way of life. Clearly hunger continues to reign in that part of the world, even after the bazillions of cans of vegetable ghee and bags of wheat flour have been dumped into their economy. Is our aid properly leveraged?