Aid:
What's really plaguing Africa
It wasn't as
if domination was their manifest purpose. They claimed they were
there to help. And some of them believed it. The objects of their
assistance were underprivileged and backwards, nobly trying to
grasp the concepts of a new era but disastrously unable to do
so. What they needed was the golden touch - the magnanimous muscle
of giants born into privilege.
I speak, of course, of foreign aid. Or maybe old world colonialism.
The similarity between the two is a theme woven throughout a groundbreaking
narrative by experienced aid worker Michael Maren entitled, The
Road to Hell: The Ravaging Effects of Foreign Aid and International
Charity. Maren's experience in Somalia with development giants
USAID and Save the Children revealed to him a profit-driven industry
rife with corruption and largely unconcerned with the humanitarian
ideals it trumpets.
THE IMAGE OF AFRICA
Private donations - and public policy, to a large extent - are
heavily influenced by a shared conception of Africa. A pitiful
child with a protruding ribcage and flies on his face stares longingly
into the television, while soothing voices offer a solution at
the low price of 35 cents per day. As Maren puts it, "The
goal [of aid programs] is not to make us think about hunger and
poverty. It is to relieve us of the burden of having to think
about it."
The image of the "starving child" was actually conjured
by marketing wings of aid organizations. Such imagery makes a
blatant appeal to the paternalism of Western culture. It is natural
for westerners to view Africans as helpless victims in need of
our benevolence. Media portrayals confirm this image. Few question
whether those portrayals are accurate. Even those who are able
to look past Sally Struthers' pleading voice and the emotional
resonance of a picture of an emaciated child accept the veracity
of regional newswire accounts. But as reports of famine grow,
public alarm gains momentum and compels reporters to forsake journalistic
integrity for the purpose of their own story's inertia. The size
and condition of vulnerable populations is rarely clear or verifiable.
As Maren points out, estimates of refugee numbers in Somalia were
largely overblown, perhaps tripled. Refugees in Somalia were not
the helpless, starving pictures of pity they were portrayed to
be, but often lived higher quality lives than the general population.
In fact, the call to moral action made by the media leading up
to U.N. and U.S. intervention in Somalia was made at a time when
overall conditions in the region were actually improving.
Aid workers tell of being driven to remote pockets of the countryside
to take pictures of the proverbial starving children for marketing
purposes. Preparation for leadership roles in development corporations
involve education on how to "sell the children." Those
marketing campaigns ignore the simple truth that many afflictions
plaguing refugees result from their prolonged presence in the
camp rather than famine. In Somalia, it was in the interests of
all parties involved to perpetuate the refugee crisis in order
to continue to draw aid money.
Famine is not a new phenomenon to Africa. Timeworn systems had
been in place to cope in such times, such as contingent agreements
between nomadic and agricultural peoples to assist each other
during their respective successful and difficult periods. Although
attempts to portray pre-UN Africa as a utopia are misguided, African
states resided much closer to self-sufficiency before the deluge
of foreign aid. Why, then, do aid nonprofits persist?
BIG BUSINESS
Aid organizations would have their donors believe that 90 cents
out of every donated dollar is used to feed those adorable emaciated
children. The exact claim is that 90 percent of donations go to
"programs." Their dirty little secret is that "programs"
can include marketing, machinery, stipends, SUV's for aid workers,
and $300,000 salaries for development company CEO's. The aid industry
is plagued with too little oversight domestically and too much
bureaucracy and corruption abroad. Favor trading at the source
and destination taints fair distribution of resources. Massive
amounts of aid are funneled into giant funds with little regulation
as to its dissemination. NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations)
know what to say to secure funding; they are experts on buzzwords
of the day. The latest buzzword is "sustainable development,"
a term that is vaguely redundant and almost never clearly defined.
Rarely do development projects fit into a long-term plan, nor
take into account sensitive social and economic factors of a given
region. Agriculture and irrigation projects are carried out without
regard to greater environmental concerns. Free-market practices
are forced upon formerly socialist societies like square pegs
jammed into round holes.
Maren describes how development workers flooded Somalia in the
years preceding the U.S. intervention. They were mostly young
and inexperienced. Some were given responsibilities far beyond
their means to carry out. Few aid workers connected with the populace
on any meaningful level. Their access to good housing and food
made them objects of resentment among Somalis. Amazingly, little
thought was given to the conceptions that natives might form about
development workers, nor any other aspects of the program.
Sometimes the misallocation of aid funds is unintentional, as
when lucrative black market deals divert food and cash. Other
instances are less innocent, however, as when the United States,
under the pretense of humanitarianism, knowingly supplied food
and money to the forces of Somali dictator Siyaad Barre. The transgression
was later explained away as a cold war gambit.
The introduction of money and other resources alters the dynamic
of a region. Some honorable members of the Somali government noted
that, in their country's case, aid created dependency and decreased
motivation to return to a normal lifestyle. Authoritarian regimes
capitalized on that dependency: as long as aid passed through
their networks, they maintained a stranglehold on the country.
Meanwhile, development companies, their suppliers, and their distributors
grew rich buying cheap and selling at prices far above fair market
values. What resulted was an incentive to perpetuate and overstate
the refugee situation for as long as possible. Everyone benefited.
Everyone except U.S. taxpayers and the Somali people.
SIMPLE SOLUTIONS TO COMPLEX PROBLEMS
Reporters are too quick to dramatize "tragedies" in
Africa, crises that have always manifested in the ebb and flow
of climate change and social movements. Aid organizations bring
these perceived atrocities into our own living rooms, implicitly
promising relief from any emotional nuisance the images cause.
Officials in those organizations reap most of the benefits of
their massive fundraising efforts. Opportunists in Africa climb
out of the woodwork to take advantage of the incoming funds. Idealistic
college students flock to the exotic tropical climates of Africa
in search of a moral high.
For the paper-thin logic of foreign aid and development to be
so eagerly bought and sold, and at such high prices, requires
an overly simplistic worldview shared by all unknowing parties
involved. That worldview includes the arrogant belief that well-meaning
but inexperienced college kids can somehow provide salvation to
cultures and societies mired in social, racial, and economic crisis.
The belief that food and cash alone will solve a region's problems
is even more ridiculous.
Maren asserts that food shortages were not an issue in Somalia-that
famine, at least in that instance, resulted from both intentional
and unintentional misallocation of resources. Little consideration
is given to the deep, complicated, and interwoven factors embedded
in the fabric of struggling societies. As long as poorly regulated
food aid and development programs continue to comprise the normal
response to social problems in the third world, suffering and
artificial famine will endure. Of course, there is no reason to
believe that the powers that be will have a problem with that.
Written
By Les Beldo |
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