If you have ten minutes this video clip is really worth a look. My sister sent me the link this morning and it certainly qualifies as "food for thought". Journalist Andrew Mwenda has spent his career fighting for free speech and economic empowerment throughout Africa and here delivers a poignant and provocative critique of Western Aid in Africa, in particular the effects of Aid on the development process.
Whilst the video clip may be slightly outdated (2007), the topic at hand is ever-relevant; which in itself is rather disturbing. Uganda continues to receive Aid, which in turn continues to be distributed in the most corrupt of means. In the last 50 years, Africa has received over 600bn dollars, where has it all gone?
Mwenda highlights the necessary challenge of shifting from a poverty reduction agenda to one of wealth creation i.e. by supporting both domestic/foreign investment in Africa as well as research institutions rather than charitable donations for temporary food relief and health care. "Rather than sitting with Ugandan entrepreneurs, Ghanaian businessmen and South African enterprising leaders, our governments find it more productive to talk to the IMF and the World Bank. (...) Aid tends to accentuate ethnic tensions as every single ethnic group now begins struggling to enter the state in order to get access to the Foreign Aid pie".
My favourite part of the speech was towards the end, broaching the subject of Bono and all his charitable work. Well this was a critique by all means. I understand the trend of celebrities promoting charitable organizations to raise awareness etc, but Mwenda certainly put these contributions into perspective:
"A recent government of Uganda study found that there are 3,000 four-wheel drive motor vehicles at the Ministry of Health headquarters. Uganda has 961 sub-counties, each of them with a dispensary, none of which has an ambulance. So the four-wheel drive vehicles at the headquarters drive the ministers, the permanent secretaries, the bureaucrats and the National Aid bureaucrats who work on the Aid projects, while the poor die without ambulances & medicine" (Andrew Mwenda 2007).
What do you think?
Charitable activities are so much more "attractive" when it's done discreetly. Fine line between publicity seeking and charity.
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