This blog is one in a series around the theme of "Smarter Aid".
The original blog has now passed 50,000 viewings.
Just down the A1 road from me, in Morpeth Northumberland, lives magician David.
But for fate and circumstance, he might
have trodden the same path as Nate and myself, in to the equally mysterious
world of aid and development.
I can’t help thinking that there are many parallels between
his craft and ours.
There is one big difference.
I don’t think David has dropped his champagne unlike what happened -
captured on video with a loud crash - when Australia and Cambodia clinked glasses on one
more illusory aid and development deal.
David's attraction? “I was fascinated by the world of “Con
Artists, Swindlers and Pickpockets”.
I was aged around 10 when a predecessor of David visited our
village of Longhoughton. He performed in
the Women’s Institute (WI) Hall, in the days before TV.
He was sure of a good crowd. Beattie Baxter and I shared and suffered a
similar fate. He plucked the two us from
the audience, much to the amusement of everyone else glad not to have the dubious
honour. I got off quite lightly, but Beattie
was cut-in-half.
Around the same time, our story-telling teacher introduced
us to the Arabian Nights and images of a faraway desert. I recalled her stories
years later in Saudi Arabia. We were stranded, car broken down, watching the sun set over the dunes, as we
waited hours for a rescuing vehicle to come by. Who can forget too the image in
the 1962 classic film Lawrence of Arabia of Sherif Ali (Omar Sharif ) slowly emerging from the mirage on the far horizon.
So by the age of 11 I knew about mirages
and illusions, or I thought I did. Today I am not so sure. Maybe the truth rests
out there, like so much these days, on the internet, with a hotel group combining
the two words.
In my mind the two words do combine admirably when thinking
about the aid and development mega-industrial complex.
 |
| Sebastian's book |
Author Sebastian Strangio weaves the word “mirage” in to
every chapter of his book on the subject, as a recurring theme, in his
illusive search for truth. He returns to
the word “mirage” time and again, ending the detail he has just picked apart. His book is masterly in factual accuracy as
he unravels his narrative. It could be
my memoir of 18 years in Cambodia, as for many of my peers.
Stephen Solarz’s “Miracle on the Mekong” now reads
better as “Mirage on the Mekong”.
I personally witnessed many of the events Sebastian scrutinizes.
I certainly know or knew (sadly, those no longer with us) very
many of the characters. I have been an active participant too, if at times a reluctant one,
just like that first experience on the public stage.
Sebastian is right.
Far too many presentations of aid and development are no more than a
mirage, an illusion, and a misleading façade. All kinds of jargon and idioms mask realities. (For an in-depth study on the subject, take time out to read "Workplace Bullshit" by Ian P McCarthy and colleagues.)
Sebastian is not alone. He has an ally in fellow Antipodean
Nate Rabe who may never have set foot in Cambodia. Based on his forays elsewhere in the world,
he has called it a day, disillusioned, after 30 years in the aid and
development business. He’s posting a series of blogs on @devex as well his own “Lifeafter Aid” blog. It is well worth a
read and worthy of merit and constructive reaction.
The words of a song come to mind.
“Could it be that it's just an illusion
Putting me back in all this confusion?”
Putting me back in all this confusion?”
Sebastian, Nate and I agree on one thing. If there is no real true political will to
change things for the better – on the part of both recipients and donors – aid and
development will always fail.
For my own part, I learned this in Cambodia by 2001, after
four years of promoting “good governance”.
There is only one real lesson for good governance. You should consult someone before making a
decision that affects them, and take in to account what they say. I see no evidence of that in today’s Cambodia,
quite the opposite. All those officials I trained understood the lesson. But they would shake their heads, indicating “that’s not how we do things here!”
There is one area that stands out, much loved, much touted
and generously funded. “Decentralisation”
has been a “key” reform since the 1990s.
Today, not one ministry has delegated any major responsibility; function
or operation to local authorities. Commune
councils are supposed to be independent autonomous authorities. In practice they continue as a lower level of
government and of the ruling party.
One factor in the aid and development spectrum between reality
and illusion is “embellishment”. I
raised this in one
article that is still well-accessed.
This is the practice of talking up achievements, while talking down
failures, even to the point of disregarding them. As I described in another blog “failures
are finger-posts on the road to success”.
Unlike Nate I am not yet giving up the arguments, but my time too is
coming to an end after 30 years. Younger, brighter,
keener people must acquire the courage to emerge from the mirages. They must avoid the
trickery of somebody else’s illusions. It would be a nobler path even if imperilling
careers; rewards and awards.
At the end of the day, there is only one simple truth and it
is easily measurable. Any form of aid
and development intervention must demonstrate real lasting benefits to the
world’s poor, not just on paper, but on the ground 3 years, 5 years, many years
later.
August 2016 Update - Many a true word spoken in jest. Here is an amusing commentary about "foreign aid" that informs much about what goes on in so-called evaluation processes. I myself was in the dog-house for blowing the whistle on one where the "independent" analyst failed to mention that he founded one NGO and was still on its Board. He praised it three times in the executive summary.
July 2020 - a similar humorous, cutting but equally accurate description is given by Desmond T Bunjam in the British Medical Journal. "How [not} to write about Global Health". He's obviously well on his way, admirably-qualified, to head the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. (Please see my Twitter Moment.)
August 2021 - insightful article distinguishing between "donor-researchers" and "recipient-researchers".
Definitions
Mirage (Children's Encyclopedia (Ages 8-11))
A mirage is an image that looks real but is not really
there.
An illusion is something that is
not what it seems to be. Illusions happen when a person's eyes, ears, or sense
of touch are deceived, or tricked, in some way.
You may also want to try the Foreign Aid "jargon-buster" to see your way past obstacles to sensible understanding of the sector.
You may also want to try the Foreign Aid "jargon-buster" to see your way past obstacles to sensible understanding of the sector.
Explanations
For readers new to my blog or to me, here is a quick summary
of my 30 frustrating years in aid and development:
Saint Helena, a tiny island in the South Atlantic, is
where it started, where I first encountered “experts’ (“who just pass through”
according to Saints), who failed to pay attention to the locals. Recent events prove that this is still the
case there today. I found two UK
government departments operating at cross-purposes. One wanted to get Saints to drink fresh milk,
despite having no taste for it, by “giving” them a dairy and cows. Meanwhile the other continued to subsidize
imported canned milk that Saints had grown up on. The
dairy venture failed. The UK government has now decided to splash out on a new
airport but without the extra investment needed to make sure that air services
can be viable. Then in typical colonial
patron-dependency fashion, they arbitrarily chose Johannesburg as the base. They not only severed centuries of commercial
and cultural links with Cape Town – a far more attractive destination – but alienated
all the Saint Helenians based there and the Capetonians with strong ties.
Malawi, is definitely one of the poorest and most
challenging of African countries, My
project was not helped by an associated massive World Bank project for women in poor
fishing communities. It was meant to
help them diversify in to other incomes. The main “accomplishment” before a cent or
kwacha reached any of the women, was the loss of most of a fleet of brand new Mitsubishi
Pajero SUVs. One was given to each district
fishery officer only to be crashed or abandoned. In another project, a donor, in
its infinite wisdom, gave out under-sized
condoms.
Rwanda was next.
I have one abiding memory above all others from the midst of the crisis
and tragedy. The “Mille Colline” Hotel (of
the famed Hotal Rwanda film), and every other hotel in Kigali was jam-packed
full of the world’s media and every conceivable entity in the aid and
development industry. Meanwhile, I was leading
one of just 3 NGOs actually operating on the ground with the refugees. But the TV images told a different false
story. That was where I first met the “suitcase”
NGOs, dubious aid-mongers that have reappeared again of late in Cambodia an industry not needed of “orphanages”.
Cambodia? It
would be hard for me to select any one similar case of abuse in the aid and
development business. There have been so
many. You can read about them in this
blog or do a quick internet search.
So let me end on a positive note. Why do some of us “hang in there”? Well the answer is at times our efforts are
worthwhile. We can make a big difference
to people’s lives. I can say without any
shadow of doubt that investments in poor families do work. From my project in Malawi, via Rwanda, and in
almost every province of Cambodia, there are successes, if not enough of them
or consistently. In controlled
situations, community/family self-help group enterprises, have worked for 85% of the
time. That proportion allows them to
carry the 15% failure. However, if that
control reduces, so does the 85%. In my
view the only control that works comes from beneficiaries themselves, working
collectively. Unfortunately, almost all
projects are controlled by NGO and public officials, even after the books are
closed. So in Cambodia where wealth
percolates up, not trickle-down, there is only one ultimate outcome.
One exception is a young lad Kosal who
simply copied our model of providing English and Computer training to poor
children. He came my way, to go through
that process, after finding him begging.
Today, by dint of his own effort, without a development expert in site,
he is supporting four such centres. Quite
frankly, more good would come by money going there. Please see his Facebook.
My most popular blogs (so far):
2 http://anorthumbrianabroad.blogspot.com/2014/11/alnwickdotes-no-5-fish-and-chip.html (Saint Helena)
My most popular blogs about “Aid and Development”.
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