February 25, 2006
The white man's burden
Here's one book that I will be getting my sticky little mitts on as soon as it hits the display stands.
William Easterly wrote the first book I ever read about development - The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists' Adventures and Misadventure in the Tropics. Next month, he'll be coming out with the even more ambitiously titled: The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good.
There were two things that made the first book such a good read.
First, it was jargon-free, written for people like you and me who have not got their Masters in Advanced Development Acronyms (MADA) from Tufts.
The second was that it came up with a passionately argued answer to a tough, tough question. The question was - why is so much of the world still so dramatically screwed up after more than 30 years of aid and development work largely funded by the west? It's a question I've been thinking about a lot after last week's trip to Ethiopia's drought-hit Oromiya region - an area which has been caught up in droughts many times in the past and looks likely to repeat its experience many times in the future.
The answer to why western aid had apparently made so little impact, according to Easterly, was all to do with big, dumb, imposed development schemes and a failure to understand the simple mantra "people respond to incentives".
There have been lots of bad schemes creating bad incentives, he said - "rewarding" corrupt governments who misuse aid by offering them debt forgiveness etc etc. And there have been very few schemes creating good incentives or removing bad disincentives - slashing red tape to make it easier to start new businesses in developing countries etc etc.
The book was pretty invigorating stuff, helped along by Mr Easterly's gift for a crushing phrase. A good example of that came in his opinion piece in last week's Washington Post titled The West Can't Save Africa, in which he reflected on Tony Blair, Bob Geldof and Jeffrey Sachs' big Africa push in 2005:
Everyone, it seems, was invited to the "Save Africa" campaign of 2005 except for Africans. They starred only as victims: genocide casualties, child soldiers, AIDS patients and famine deaths on our 43-inch plasma screens.Yes, these tragedies deserve attention, but the obsessive and almost exclusive Western focus on them is less relevant to the vast majority of Africans -- the hundreds of millions not fleeing from homicidal minors, not HIV-positive, not starving to death, and not helpless wards waiting for actors and rock stars to rescue them. Angelina, the continent has problems but it is not being destroyed.
By all accounts, he gets even feistier in 'White Man's Burden'. According to a mixed review of the book by the greatest development writer of them all Amartya Sen "[The book] is a critique of all grand plans to save the world hatched in Washington or London or Paris".
All great stuff. Nothing like a bit of west-bashing to get you going in the morning.
So why exactly do aid workers, many of them western, continue to get up in the morning, amid all this apparent failure?
My best guess is that, despite all the colourful cynicism of people like Mr Easterly, there are lots of development projects that do actually work. It is easy to come up with a list of bizarre development failures over the past 30 years or so.
As The Economist said last July:
The aid sceptics-some of them veterans of the industry, their palms calloused from many previous bouts of hand-wringing over Africa-have all the best lines in the debate. Everything has been seen before, they say, nothing has worked.
But those same sceptics overlook the obvious successes.
One of those is good, old fashioned short-term emergency aid - as opposed to schemes that try and introduce long term change. Therapeutic feeding centres, for example, can transform a tiny human skeleton into a chuckling, healthy child in a matter of weeks with miraculous supplementary foods like Plumpy'Nut. I saw it happen in East Haraghe late last year. (I have also heard development sceptics - not including Easterly I hasten to add - huff and puff about this kind of "short-term fix" and ask what is the point of saving a child's life and then returning them to their original state of grinding poverty. They then go on to make ominous noises about the perils of fuelling Ethiopia's spiralling population growth. But have these people really thought through the implications of what they are saying?)
Another set of often-forgotten successes are the large scale campaigns against disease. Back in the 1960s, Smallpox was an unbeatable scourge, killing millions a year. Today, thanks to large scale coordinated public health campaigns, it has ceased to exist. In a few years time, we could be watch Polio suffer the same fate - thanks largely to global development oganisations like the World Health Organisation (WHO) and Rotary International. In a few decades time, we may thanking Bill Gates and other development kingpins for doing the same to Malaria and HIV/AIDS.
So there are some significant successes to set against all the ills inflicted by the west through its development efforts. Successes, however, are not nearly as much fun to write about as a string of colourful failures. So I will quite understand if Mr Easterly chooses to leave them out of what should still be a real rip-roaring development page-turner.
Posted by aheavens at February 25, 2006 6:41 AM
Comments
Like anything else, international development policy has evolved over time, partly in order to adjust to changing circumstances, and partly to correct previous mistakes and assumptions. Mostly the latter, I would say.
The explanation for whatever inefficiency there exists in Western aid policy is quite simple. In any Western country, the most unaccountable federal government department is the one in charge of foreign aid. The public in Western countries has little immediate stake in aid policy, so they pay no attention to it. Whereas the folks at the Department of Health or Finance must be somewhat on their toes, those devising and implementing aid policy are relatively unscrutinised by the public.
The real constituents of aid policy are the people in developing countries, and they don't get to vote for the Western governments who implement aid!
So there, you have little accountability and transparency, ergo inefficiency.
And often, Departments of Foreign Affairs are nearly just as bad.
Posted by: Gooch at February 25, 2006 4:17 PM
I once attended a meeting where a simple proposal was given on how to solve hunger in Ethiopia. This is the way I understood it and it kind of makes sense.
1) Give the farmers the land. Tell them it is their own.
2) Leave them alone... Don't bother them with taxes, loan repayment, meetings, recruitment for soldiering, central government affairs,...
3) Only help them when they ask for help. So be prepared to listen to them.
4) If you want to be proactive, come up with ideas on things that they cannot do or they are not experts at... weather report, transportation, communication, schools, hospitals, ... and then ask them if they want it. If they say "yes" go ahead do it. But if they say "no" leave them alone.
That is it. It is so simple but it is so hard to implement. I wonder why? Maybe, we cannot imagine an uneducated farmer from some God forsaken land cannot possibly be an expert of his destiny.
The above things are based on a fundamental principle of respect for individual human beings. They are free and intelligent beings. They know what they want in their life. They are also free to make their own mistakes and learn from them.
Anyone who tells me "I know what is good for you", is someone who is doomed to fail in alleviating my pain.
Posted by: TazzmaB at February 25, 2006 5:59 PM
I don't think the author overlooks the successes of aid in developing countries specially in Africa. He is trying to draw attention to the fact that these aid organisations need to be accountable to the people whom they are trying to bring about some change for. His last statement in his writing for Washington post goes like: "Dare one hope that in 2006, it will finally be understood that Africa's true saviors are the people of Africa, and that those who would help them in their task must also be accountable to them?" I think this says it all.
One last view that I would like to add for the effectivness of aid to Africa is that the governments have to have genuine commitment to the devlopment process. I think most of the leaders and the governing body is just busy trying to keep themselves in power. The development issue is secondary to them (if it's one at all!!). So, aid will remain to be unsuccessful so long as the ground where it is applied on is not fertile enough!!
Posted by: Ted at February 25, 2006 9:24 PM
Please check check out www.hornafrica.blogspot.com.
Posted by: kHALID aweis at February 26, 2006 4:23 AM
In the 60s when I was born, Ethiopia used to have the highest infant mortality rate (162 per 1000) IN THE WORLD. Now the infant mortality rate is down to almost 90, and we are #21 in the world.
People forget sometimes where we were and how far we have come.
Safiya
Posted by: Safiya at February 27, 2006 2:39 AM
I must say that I very much agree with TezzmaB and Ted that help to Africa must come from with in. Western countries can offer their aid and expertise but the people of Africa need to be the ones coming with the initiatives and also the ones doing the work. Corny but true: "Don't give them fish but rather teach them how to fish themselves". All this aid coming massively to Africa is very important and I am the last one to say that putting a smile on a hungry child's face is not worth the trouble. But as we try to save the individual we have to look at the big picture so this child can go on smiling and give his next generations to come a reason to smile too.
The help right here in Ethiopia is heart warming but because all initiatives are coming from outsiders it seem to create a culture of givers and takers and that what makes it a "burden" because this is a never ending storey. Unless foreign aid will take a step back and let the citizens of Ethiopia work their way out with financial help and training as they will require and as they will ask for.
By writing this I wish to say "The cow wants to milk more than the calf wants to drink" Also would like to emphasis the responsibility of the people of Africa to their own faith. Taking that from them is the biggest mistake.
To better times
Posted by: Enat at February 27, 2006 9:12 AM
Aid is an addiction. Like any other addiction it is bad. It helps development only if it is used to augment ongoing local activities. In the case of Ethiopia, international aid was a failure. We are still dependent on food aid. Aid is an industry for western NGOS. Look at the life of expats in Addis. A fresh graduate from Western countries quickly climbs to be an Ethiopian expert in any field without having the necessary skills and experience just because he is white. The sad thing is these fellows do not know their ignorance. Some of the “first world” aid workers are paid additional money for the hardship of living in Ethiopia in general. Aid distorts the political and economic environment of a given country. Why in Ethiopia minority regimes starting from Haile Selassie to Mr. Zenawi are in power, it is partly because of their western benefactors? That is why I agree with the idea that aid brings more harm than help.
Posted by: Zendi at February 27, 2006 11:37 AM
It seems to me that there is a very simple difference between, for instance, the successful vaccination campaigns and the unsuccessful dam-building projects (or whatever).
In the first case, eradicating smallpox really was the first priority. Not selling vaccines. Not supporting a government. Not providing business to home industries. Just eradicating smallpox.
In the second case, at the highest levels the actual project is often just an excuse. This isn't to say that dedicated people on the ground don't try to make it work. But the first priority of the big powers behind the project is to benefit themselves, not other people. Interestingly enough, as time goes by, benefit accrues to the big powers, and not to the other people.
Posted by: quixote at February 28, 2006 3:55 AM
Graham Hancock, formerly of The Economist and well known in Ethiopian circles, summed it up long ago in his book Lords of Poverty: The Power, Prestige, and Corruption of the International Aid Business.
Posted by: teddy at February 28, 2006 11:17 PM
Looks like a good book to read, thanks for putting me on to it.
I know I've been saying for quite some time, "only Africans can save/help Africa". It sounds like he has the same views.
Posted by: hash at March 12, 2006 8:30 PM