I want to believe, you do not need a research to uncover the mess that is Aid to Africa. You only need to open your eyes and see for yourself.

I really appreciate the research that was undertaken to come to these conclusions. It shows that Africa is beginning to wake up, 50 years in the inner circle of the Aid circus. We are beginning to see that Aid will never make Africa move an inch forward.

Aid is a tool that has been carefully crafted to retain Africa in the iron grip of the Western Powers. And I would have wanted us to think with Dambisa Moyo in her book ‘Dead Aid’, and help move Africa from this circle of deliberately sustained poverty.

Look at Japan. A very tiny country, but it rules the world in electronics. Japan is the worlds centre on motor manufacturing. With Aid, Japan would not have achieved this. But, they realized that they had potentials which they could best exploit themselves, under their own visionary leadership.

And I agree with you that Aid comes in with the use of words that would make you think you are misplaced in your own country. The people who give Aid have coined words that sound real intelligent, but whose actually meaning is nil.

If you attend any donor conference, the technocrats hide their intentions in the use of words. They drone empty slogans that make no sense to the needs of Africa. They make you feel challenged intellectually yet, the intention is to retain you in the iron grip of poverty.

They have realized that it is easy to manipulate a poor man. They will hence make it difficult for you to grow. They will come up with such useless concepts as the Structural Adjustment Programmes, a concept whose ramification is still being felt all across Africa.

And because our leaders do not want to question these concepts, lest they be taken as intellectually inferior, they swallowed the lie. The end result is under development and poverty that is perpetual in Africa and the 3rd World.

You have given a very nice case study; fish plant being built in Lake Turkana region, a region that is purely pastoralic. Yet, we have the Lake and Oceanic regions that are predominated by fishermen, people who will benefit from such a plant.

But because the bureaucrats did not want to be slighted on account of intellectual inferiority, they did not give the correct prescription. They could not tell the donor that having a fish processing plant in Turkana Region was a kin to having an Ice Plant in a Desert; The price of poor leadership and inept involvement by the technocrats.

I am a firm believer that Africa needs to shift its focus. We have all we need to take Africa to the next level. We have the Human Resource, we have the minerals and we have the will. All that we need is focused leadership; a leadership that will not condone impunity, corruption and tribalism.

We need a leadership that will not glorify corruption and its sidekicks. We need a leadership that will uphold the rule of law and ensure that Justice is served hot and coldly. We need a leadership that will not use the powers of presidential clemency to liberate colleagues caught in the intricate web of corruption.

The other major impediment to changing Africa is Africans ourselves. We have accepted the Western concept of Democracy, but we have adapted it to suit the interest of those in power and thieves.

Every five years, we vote back to power those who have raped Africa since the 1960s. We vote in to power thieves who have stolen from Mother Africa. Those who steal our oil, maize, state corporations, those who kill our sons are the people we vote in to office, and we avoid honest men and women who could take Africa out of this circle of Western deception.

We glorify the blood money that we are given during the times of political campaigns and forget that these people will rape our economy for the next 5 years. They will be recovering the money they spent on us, they will not be engaging in Nation Building.

But not all Aid is deceptive. We have some donors who are doing Africa proud, and Africa must be proud of them. I salute this kind and your resolve on behalf of Africa.

Can Africans stand firm and vote for a peasant whose ideas can move Africa to the top index?

Odhiambo T Oketch
CEO KCDN Nairobi,
PO Box 47890-00100,
Nairobi, Kenya.
Tel; 0724 365 557,
Email; komarockswatch@yahoo.com
blog; http://kcdnkomarockswatch.blogspot.com
blog; http://nairobieastba.blogspot.com
Group mail; friendsofkcdn@yahoogroups.com

Odhiambo T Oketch is the Chairman of the Stakeholders Evaluation team at the City Council of Nairobi; the preferred destiny of choice for many..

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— chifu_wa_malindi wrote:

When donors get it wrong in Africa

GOOD MOVE: Whereas some aid projects like road construction benefit many people, others are not beneficial. REUTERS PHOTO

By SAMANTHA SPOONER

Posted Sunday, June 20 2010 at 00:00

Every year billions of well-intentioned dollars are doled out to Africa but sometimes there is little to show for it. Researcher SAMANTHA SPOONER looks at the pitfalls of charity on the continent:-

In 2007, the International Finance Corporation discovered that only half of its aid-funded projects in Africa succeeded. When we consider that in 2009 the net bilateral Overseas Development Aid (ODA) to Africa was $27 billion and that pledges stood at $130 billion in 2010, you realise just how much money can be wasted.
Last week the British Government told the UN, World Bank and other international bodies who are recipients of its aid that they must have a proven impact on the ground or face cuts.

The critics of the aid industry have focused heavily on aid accountability on both the part of the donors and the beneficiaries, and on concerns over whether aid breeds poverty and is therefore not conducive to long-term sustainable growth.
While these analyses are both valid and widely recognised there is another insight into the potential inefficiency of the aid business which sheds light on an anthropological, more localised critique: Sometimes aid attempts to solve problems which are either created or misunderstood.

Improper diction
There has been a great push on the part of donors to have buzz-words such as `participatory’, `empowerment’ or `indigenous knowledge’ included in funding proposals. The reason for this is the assumption that involving people in projects ensures effective results because it only seems right that those affected by aid should be involved in the decision-making process.

The problem is, doing community or local level research is never straight forward and the process can become affected by many factors which inhibit the ability to establish an objective truth.

The terms `empowerment’ and `participation’, for one, can be alluringly deceptive. There are situations where these words are included in proposals but actually do not challenge the top-down status quo established by the aid agency.

Also, at times `empowerment’ and `participation’ can even be used to conceal a means to achieve cost-effectiveness, such as using the local communities as free labourers. The result of this is aid initiatives which continue to be dictated by people who may not have a full understanding of the situation at hand.

An example of this is the Lake Turkana fish processing plant in Kenya which was designed to provide jobs to the Turkana people through fishing and fish processing. The project cost the Norwegian government $22 million and is now just a white elephant. One of the reasons for the failure is that the Turkana are nomadic pastoralists without a history of fishing.

`Empowerment’ and `participation’ in situations such as this have simply become a selective process in which the ability to participate is determined by the willingness to succumb to external interests. When true participation is not employed, a simple assumption on the part of those initiating the project can bring about its demise. Entire agricultural programmes in Africa are known to have been affected by Western sexual role stereotypes. This is because the typical farmer in Africa is a woman but the training and projects were aimed at the men.

Aid can also be misinformed by research when the people engaged in the `participatory’ processes are attempting to manipulate the system. This can occur when those providing the aid view the community as a homogeneous and obliging group in need of help.
When this happens, local power relations could be overlooked, creating a problem for international development since inaccurate information can lead to a wrong diagnosis and create projects that benefit specific interests, usually the most influential people within a society, meaning there is no real participation or empowerment.

Influence peddling
Manipulations of projects could also occur in situations where local notables are participating in programmes as a means to empower themselves, by obtaining resources or a voice in projects.

A clear example of this, on a national level, is the way in which the Kenyan government `mismanaged’ the funds intended for Kenya’s Free Primary Education Program. Both the British and the American governments suspended funding to the programme so that they could find alternative ways of channelling the funding to the schools without having to deal with the corrupt Ministry of Education.

Even when manipulations are not an issue, a factor which can be underestimated, and lead to the misunderstanding of research, is the concept of being `lost in translation’.

Assumptions
When participatory research is being conducted at the local level, in attempts to extract `indigenous knowledge,’ there is the assumption that the transfer of knowledge is easily or readily accessible through translation.

Even using the words `indigenous knowledge’ or `local knowledge’ immediately creates assumptions and sees knowledge as something bounded and static… ready for extraction, as opposed to something fluid and adaptable.

What can be overlooked is that, elements of `local knowledge’ may be something that is transferred simply through practical experience and sometimes communities may not want to share their experiences when the motives of an outsider are not clear.
These factors, coupled with the notion that eventually whatever knowledge being exchanged will ultimately be reduced to the language of the aid agency, can become problematic.

Consider Malawi. It has six main spoken languages and within each language group there are different and culturally appropriate ways of conveying HIV prevention messages.
Essentially what all these factors tell us is that small perceptions and assumptions which are made, and very hard not to make, can determine the outcome of an aid project at the local level.

Examples abound of mushrooming, well-intentioned, `sponsor a’ or `donate a’ something campaigns. These at times can be quite crude and show the large discrepancy between understanding what happens at the local level and the needs of individuals. Clitoraid and its slogan: Restoring a sense of Dignity and Pleasure, for instance. Donations made to this charity will go towards sponsoring any African woman who wants to have her clitoris rebuilt.

Conservatism
Even when you try not to be skeptical about the fact that the charity is run by the Raelian movement, a sect which believes humans were created by extra-terrestrial beings, it is hard to ignore the notion that they may have overlooked how conservative and traditional the communities that practise female genital mutilation are If the women are believed to be empowered enough as to contact the charity so that someone can sponsor the restoration of their organs, then it begs the question as to why they are not empowered enough to have not allowed the circumcision occur.

Whilst the good intentions are there, the reality of the situation is a different story.
There are also those aid agencies and charities which make assumptions and create problems that many Africans would not say are there, or at least, not a priority in their lives. `Knickers for Africa’ is an example of this. Members of the public are asked to donate money, underwear or bras so that the charity can transport them to places in Africa that “need” them most.

Whilst it is admirable that people are trying to help, it is hard to believe that if one went and asked people living in situations of hardship what they needed most they would say underwear. Furthermore, although the `Knickers 4 Africa’ charity asks for new underwear, there are other `Knickers for Africa’ campaigns which are falling into a condescending pattern of labelling individuals as the `grateful poor’.

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Tricky business
When it is not being criticised on the international level for the potential harm it has caused or the conditionalities it may attach to further foreign interests, it is apparent that even on the `local’ level there is so much that can go wrong.
This is certainly not to say that all aid projects are ineffective but that issues can easily arise because aid is being largely controlled by outsiders. Participation, and the act of getting `good’ participation, should be an end in itself.

The programmes would be served better if directed and controlled by those affected by them as opposed to the beneficiaries simply fitting in with a model directed by people who have lived very different lives.

If this is a situation that cannot happen, then perhaps those who are eager to `help’ should be constantly reminded to suspend their own values and assumptions in order to fully understand others and ensure that what they are doing will be done in the most effective way.

Africa Insight is an initiative of the Nation Media Group’s Africa Media Network Project.

http://www.monitor.co.ug/News/Insight/-/688338/942164/-/item/1/-/14ebfx8/-/index.html