tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/development-aid-14763/articlesDevelopment aid – The Conversation2023-11-16T14:47:22Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2159142023-11-16T14:47:22Z2023-11-16T14:47:22ZDevelopment aid cuts will hit fragile countries hard, could fuel violent conflict<p>Fragile and least developed countries have had <a href="https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=TABLE2A">their development assistance</a> cut drastically, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. For instance, net official development assistance to sub-Saharan African countries has shrunk by <a href="https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=TABLE2A">7.8% compared to 2021</a>. And <a href="https://www.oecd.org/dac/peace-official-development-assistance.pdf">development aid for peace and conflict prevention</a> has declined to its lowest in 15 years. </p>
<p>These cuts will hit <a href="https://www.oecd.org/dac/states-of-fragility-fa5a6770-en.htm">fragile countries</a> hard. Fragile countries make up 24% of the world’s population and account for <a href="https://www.oecd.org/dac/states-of-fragility-fa5a6770-en.htm">73% of the world’s extreme poor</a>. The list includes Mali, Lebanon, Somalia, Syria and Iraq.</p>
<p>Budget cuts are already having far-reaching effects and fuelling humanitarian crises. The World Food Programme estimates that “<a href="https://www.wfp.org/news/new-wfp-analysis-shows-every-1-cut-food-assistance-pushes-400000-people-emergency-hunger">every one percent cut in food assistance risks pushing more than 400,000 people towards the brink of starvation</a>”.</p>
<p>UN secretary-general António Guterres has <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/05/1118182">warned</a> that aid cuts threaten to undo gains in development. Keeping in mind that <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/global-economic-prospects">poverty has increased in conflict-affected countries despite a global downward trend</a>, we anticipate that such a reversal could contribute to global instability. </p>
<p>Violent conflict has already been on the rise among countries that rely heavily on <a href="https://www.crisisgroup.org/crisiswatch">foreign financial assistance</a>. Decades of research (including ours) show that marginalised populations are <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/25654408">most vulnerable to be (re-)mobilised into fighting</a> and are typically also <a href="https://repository.essex.ac.uk/31090/">most affected by armed conflict</a> (even after violence ends).</p>
<p>It is true that political and societal context matters and needs to be taken into account. But the reduction in aid allocation to least developed countries and <a href="https://repository.essex.ac.uk/31090/">especially those recovering from violent conflict</a> could put fragile countries on a trajectory of (renewed) political instability and underdevelopment. Already vulnerable populations will have to yet again carry the brunt of new cycles of violence and impoverishment.</p>
<p>We have been researching links between development and violent conflict for decades and close to a decade, respectively. Our latest research project is on the <a href="https://www.wider.unu.edu/project/institutional-legacies-violent-conflict">institutional legacies of violent conflict</a>. It shows how and why violent conflicts persist, how and why their legacies endure, and what can be done to reduce the risk and impact of violence. We recommend that development aid needs to correspond more closely with mounting peacebuilding and humanitarian needs in fragile settings.</p>
<h2>The impact</h2>
<p>Not all development aid <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00220388.2018.1487053?casa_token=QZ0K9qzIAHcAAAAA:RW6S9v2lP_EbHca4KngMwbO_lPPqdoULXTi9CBe06Vehr-1X3rk6FGw_kERh4QoSJ9R_PAqyOJvt%22%22">is effective</a> in bringing stability or building peace. Nevertheless, based on our analysis, development aid plays a crucial role in six key areas.</p>
<p>Firstly, development aid is effective when linked to the delivery of public services. These in turn <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00220388.2018.1487053?casa_token=QZ0K9qzIAHcAAAAA:RW6S9v2lP_EbHca4KngMwbO_lPPqdoULXTi9CBe06Vehr-1X3rk6FGw_kERh4QoSJ9R_PAqyOJvt">strengthen the social contract</a> and mitigate the risk of violence.</p>
<p>Secondly, financial assistance can help governments absorb the effects of <a href="https://www.nasdaq.com/glossary/e/economic-shock">economic shocks</a>. Economies across the global south are already stifled by the aftermath of the COVID pandemic, climate risks and the economic consequences of the war in Ukraine. Fragile countries often rely on assistance to meet some of their population’s most basic needs such as food or water. </p>
<p>Without additional financial assistance many governments will not be able to manage their way through these shocks. That may <a href="https://www.economist.com/international/2023/04/17/the-worlds-deadliest-war-last-year-wasnt-in-ukraine">embolden violent non-state actors to gain power</a>. </p>
<p>Two examples stand out. In west Africa <a href="https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/west-africa-sahel/could-jihadists-seize-parts-coastal-west-africa">violent non-state actors operating in the Sahel region</a> are set to expand their influence into new areas considered stable thus far, such as the <a href="https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/west-africa/cote-divoire/b192-keeping-jihadists-out-northern-cote-divoire">north of Côte d’Ivoire</a>. </p>
<p>Similarly, the current <a href="https://www.crisisgroup.org/middle-east-north-africa/east-mediterranean-mena/israelpalestine">Israel-Palestine conflict</a> risks spreading instability into neighbouring countries amid longstanding tensions and <a href="https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2023/09/debt-clouds-over-the-middle-east-adnan-mazarei">economic fragility</a>. </p>
<p>Thirdly, cuts in development aid may reduce the limited leverage western countries still have to prevent the rise of opportunistic armed groups such as the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/08/world/europe/prigozhin-wagner-russia-africa.html">Wagner Group</a>, the spread of extremism and the risk of civil conflicts. </p>
<p>The Sahel region is also emblematic for this dynamic. <a href="https://www.crisisgroup.org/global/watch-list-2023-spring-update">Mali and Burkina Faso</a> have seen the deadliest year on record as their military transitional governments struggle to contain jihadist insurgencies. Since the <a href="https://carnegieendowment.org/2023/08/31/niger-coup-s-outsized-global-impact-pub-90463">recent military coup in Niger</a>, which prompted withdrawal of both <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-10-07/niger-expects-2023-budget-to-shrink-40-after-coup-suspends-aid#xj4y7vzkg">aid</a> and <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2023/10/10/french-troops-begin-withdrawal-from-niger_6161327_4.html">international troops</a>, the country has also experienced <a href="https://apnews.com/article/niger-coup-extremists-be2573981d463e0b4498e32a3f8ba75e">a surge in militant violence</a>. </p>
<p>Fourth, worsening economic and security conditions in fragile and least developed countries are already reverberating into Europe. There have been <a href="https://dtm.iom.int/europe/arrivals">spikes in irregular border crossings into European Union countries in 2023</a>. </p>
<p>Fifth, rising discrepancy in development aid allocation could amplify <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/03/08/russia-ukraine-war-west-global-south-diplomacy-un-putin-g20/">mistrust in international institutions and western actors</a>. That could contribute to worsening security situations. Some governments in fragile countries are already reluctant to continue to engage with the UN and especially western actors to combat violent non-state actors. </p>
<p>An example of this is the Democratic Republic of Congo’s recent request to the UN for an <a href="https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/great-lakes/democratic-republic-congo/massacre-goma-clouds-dr-congos-elections-and-un">“accelerated” withdrawal of troops</a>. It comes 24 years after the start of Monusco, the UN’s peacekeeping mission in DRC, one of the largest in the world. <a href="https://acleddata.com/2023/09/21/fact-sheet-attacks-on-civilians-spike-in-mali-as-security-deteriorates-across-the-sahel/">Violence may increase in the absence of such international intervention</a>, as has happened since <a href="https://reliefweb.int/report/mali/minusma-closes-its-camp-kidal-marking-end-its-presence-region#:%7E:text=Mali-,MINUSMA%20closes%20its%20camp%20in%20Kidal%2C%20marking%20the%20end,its%20presence%20in%20the%20region&text=Bamako%2C%20October%2031%2C%202023%20%2D,by%20air%20and%20land%20convoy.">the withdrawal of Minusma</a>, the UN mission that was in Mali for ten years.</p>
<p>Sixth, the reduction in aid allocation to least developed countries and <a href="https://repository.essex.ac.uk/31090/">especially those recovering from violent conflict</a> could result in continued political <a href="https://www.wider.unu.edu/project/institutional-legacies-violent-conflict">instability and underdevelopment</a>. </p>
<h2>Next steps</h2>
<p>Development funding should be allocated in a way that corresponds more closely with peacebuilding and humanitarian needs. This is also made clear in the <a href="https://dppa.un.org/en/a-new-agenda-for-peace">UN’s New Agenda for Peace</a>. It calls for action now to </p>
<blockquote>
<p>reinforce the cooperative frameworks that are necessary to move us from the path to destruction to the path to prosperity … based on a reforged commitment to multilateral solutions, grounded on trust, solidarity and universality.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Correcting course in aid allocation could address some of the growing mistrust among developing countries and support prospects for peace.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/215914/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Patricia Justino receives funding from the UK Economic and Social Research Council. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Laura Saavedra-Lux does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Cuts in development aid could contribute to global instability; violent conflict is already on the rise in countries that rely heavily on foreign assistancePatricia Justino, Professor and Deputy Director, World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER), United Nations UniversityLaura Saavedra-Lux, Research Associate at UNU-WIDER, United Nations UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2031452023-04-18T04:22:21Z2023-04-18T04:22:21ZPenny Wong said this week national power comes from ‘our people’. Are we ignoring this most vital resource?<p>During her <a href="https://www.foreignminister.gov.au/minister/penny-wong/speech/national-press-club-address-australian-interests-regional-balance-power">speech at the National Press Club this week</a>, Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong argued that the “unprecedented” circumstances our region faces “require a response of unprecedented coordination and ambition in our statecraft”. </p>
<p>Wong identified many key tools of Australia’s statecraft: </p>
<ul>
<li>development assistance</li>
<li>infrastructure investment</li>
<li>security cooperation</li>
<li>multilateral diplomacy, and </li>
<li>military capability.</li>
</ul>
<p>She also singled out Australia’s much-debated plan to spend <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/14/aukus-nuclear-submarines-australia-commits-substantial-funds-into-expanding-us-shipbuilding-capacity">A$368 billion</a> to acquire and develop nuclear-powered submarines under the AUKUS security partnership as a key way Australia will “play our part in collective deterrence of aggression”.</p>
<p>Importantly, Wong also also observed that “our national power, more than anything else, comes from our people”. Yet, she noted, the number of Australian diplomats working in the Pacific had actually shrunk under the previous government.</p>
<p>It’s worth reflecting on this in light of the government’s massive spending on submarines – will it have enough left to invest in the people it entrusts to practice its statecraft?</p>
<h2>What is statecraft?</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.adelaide.edu.au/stretton/ua/media/665/statecraftiness.pdf">Statecraft</a> is a word increasingly used by <a href="https://ministers.dfat.gov.au/minister/pat-conroy/speech/csis-global-development-forum-washington-dc">leaders</a>, officials and commentators to describe the actions that states take to try to influence: </p>
<ul>
<li>the global political or economic environment</li>
<li>the policies or behaviours of other countries, or</li>
<li>the beliefs, attitudes or opinions of other countries. </li>
</ul>
<p>The concept of statecraft is <a href="https://asiapacific4d.com/idea/all-tools-of-statecraft/">having its moment</a> as the Australian foreign and strategic policy community contemplates how to counter <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/09/chinas-rising-power-and-influence-in-the-pacific-explained-in-30-seconds">China’s increasingly activist role in the Indo-Pacific region</a>.</p>
<p>Many believe that, to earn the most influence, Australia’s tools of statecraft should come with big price tags and flashy announcements. <a href="https://www.dfat.gov.au/geo/pacific">In the Pacific</a>, for instance, the government is fond of announcing big pledges of developmental aid, infrastructure projects and military assistance. There’s a reason Australian officials spruik fervently on social media every time dollars are promised or spent.</p>
<p>But who are these Australian officials on the coalface of implementing Australia’s statecraft?</p>
<h2>Diplomats are not all the same</h2>
<p>If you look at their <a href="https://twitter.com/AusAmbDili">social media</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/AusHCSols">accounts</a>, Australian officials are treated as interchangeable: an incoming ambassador or high commissioner takes over the account of their predecessor and assumes their persona. </p>
<p>The old pronouncements of their predecessor become their pronouncements. The past openings of Australian-funded facilities become their announcements, even though the person in the social media thumbnail is not same as the one in the commemorative photos.</p>
<p>Officially, foreign policy is as emotionless and cut-and-paste as these official Twitter accounts. Heads of mission should simply take the baton from their predecessor and run with the responsibility of implementing the government of the day’s foreign policy for a while before handing it over to someone else.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1643055122321395712"}"></div></p>
<p>There is no mention of the differences between these individuals. It is as if Australian foreign policy officials are grown from pods in the basement of the R.G. Casey Building, the home of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in Canberra.</p>
<p>This is of course nonsense. Australian officials are – just like the rest of us – human beings. Each has their own <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13600826.2021.1942798">foibles, habits, strengths and weaknesses</a>. Their individual personalities are adjudicated and assessed intensely in the capital cities where they work, as are those of the Australian police officers, military officials and assorted contractors implementing their programs.</p>
<p>But this reality attracts surprisingly little attention in much of the analysis that is done on the effectiveness of Australia’s statecraft.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/can-australia-recapture-the-spirit-of-middle-power-diplomacy-187990">Can Australia recapture the spirit of middle power diplomacy?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Why kindness and empathy matter</h2>
<p>This is why <a href="https://www.adelaide.edu.au/stretton/our-research/security-in-the-pacific-islands/statecraftiness">we’re studying</a> the role individuals play in implementing Australian statecraft in the Pacific Islands and Timor-Leste. </p>
<p>Through our work on the first season of our <a href="https://omny.fm/shows/statecraftiness/playlists/podcast">Statecraftiness podcast</a>, we’ve found it is individuals, not policies, that are the most important determinants of whether Australia’s statecraft succeeds.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1635593508336615428"}"></div></p>
<p>Two examples from our <a href="https://omny.fm/shows/statecraftiness/statecraftiness-episode-1?in_playlist=podcast">first episode</a> illustrate our point. One senior minister in the Timor-Leste government, <a href="http://timor-leste.gov.tl/?p=13&lang=en">Fidelis Leite Magalhães</a>, told us that when a Timor-Leste minister comes back from a meeting with their partners, the first thing they say is not what line the officials peddled or how much money was pledged, but instead what they were like.</p>
<p>It’s the same story in Papua New Guinea. <a href="https://www.devintelligencelab.com/about-us-bios">Bridi Rice</a>, the CEO of the Development Intelligence Lab in Canberra, reflected on research that analysed the style and approach of expatriate advisers in PNG. For PNG officials, it wasn’t the technical acumen of the advisers that stuck in their memory. It was the emotional intelligence (or otherwise) these individuals brought to the job.</p>
<p>We’ve heard again and again during our project that the diplomats, aid workers, governance advisers, defence officials and police officers who implement Australia’s programs overseas are not clones that can be so easily substituted. It matters if they are kind, thoughtful and empathetic. </p>
<p>The converse is also true. It is the kiss of death to a project if an individual is arrogant or patronising or somehow offends their hosts.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/despite-its-pacific-step-up-australia-is-still-not-listening-to-the-region-new-research-shows-130539">Despite its Pacific 'step-up', Australia is still not listening to the region, new research shows</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Roads and mobile networks only go so far</h2>
<p>This points to an uncomfortable truth. Australia can <a href="https://www.dfat.gov.au/development/performance-assessment/aid-evaluation/strategic-evaluations/road-management-in-papua-new-guinea">build roads</a>, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-11-08/afp-recieves-budget-funding-for-solomon-islands-police-training-/101630918">train police</a>, <a href="https://www.foreignminister.gov.au/minister/penny-wong/media-release/telstra-finalises-acquisition-digicel-pacific">buy telcos</a> and build submarines, but if the people representing the country and implementing its policies aren’t polite, respectful and trustworthy, then it might as well not bother.</p>
<p>As Angus Campbell, the chief of the Australian Defence Force, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OejG2HeBAVI&t=1278s">observed</a> last month in India, “If we find ourselves in a setting in which more and more of national wealth is expended more narrowly in the military space […] statecraft is weakened.”</p>
<p>Our project is a reminder that Australia’s security depends on how well the people implementing its statecraft perform. Whether or not the government’s investments in submarines and other expensive tools of statecraft are wise, they shouldn’t come at the expense of investments in people power.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/203145/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joanne Wallis receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Australian Department of Defence.
This activity was supported by the Australian Government through a grant by the Australian Department of Defence. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Australian Government or the Australian Department of Defence.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gordon Peake receives funding from the Department of Defence</span></em></p>New research on Australia’s statecraft shows the individuals behind official programs and policies are as important as the work itself.Joanne Wallis, Professor of International Security, University of AdelaideGordon Peake, Affiliate in the Center for Australia, New Zealand and Pacific Studies, Georgetown UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2022082023-03-28T16:38:11Z2023-03-28T16:38:11ZFour global problems that will be aggravated by the UK’s recent cuts to international aid<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517273/original/file-20230323-22-bajdav.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3837%2C2590&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Flags fly outside the UN building in New York.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/flags-all-nations-outside-un-new-545605258">Andrew F. Kazmierski/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>UK economic forecasts have improved markedly since the September 2022 mini-budget. The economic recession may now be more shallow and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/mar/21/uk-government-borrowing-energy-bills-interest-payments#:%7E:text=Borrowing%20in%20the%20financial%20year,expected%20decline%20in%20energy%20prices.%E2%80%9D">public borrowing lower than previously expected</a>. </p>
<p>However, faced with <a href="https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9428/#:%7E:text=The%20cost%20of%20living%20increased,goods%20and%20services%20for%20households.%22%22">persistently high</a> inflation and continued uncertainty caused by Russia’s war in Ukraine, financial cuts remained the order of the day in <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/spring-budget-2023/spring-budget-2023-html">the UK government’s spring 2023 budget</a> announcement.</p>
<p>While Chancellor Jeremy Hunt introduced a £5 billion increase to military spending over the next two years, the international aid budget was <a href="https://www.devex.com/news/uk-aid-faces-third-major-cut-in-3-years-with-1-7b-to-be-cut-104513">cut for the third time in three years</a>. This is part of an increasingly concerning international trend.</p>
<p>UK aid has been <a href="https://lordslibrary.parliament.uk/uk-aid-spending-statistics-and-recent-developments/">deceasing since 2019</a>. And the country is not alone in cutting its aid commitments. Sweden – one of the world’s leading donors in this area – is also set to <a href="https://www.devex.com/news/un-eu-push-back-as-sweden-drops-1-percent-aid-target-104228">abolish its target</a> of spending 1% of GDP on aid. Across several European countries, recent cuts have largely been driven by the <a href="https://www.wider.unu.edu/publication/what-would-be-economic-consequences-military-stalemate-ukraine">Ukraine war</a>, as well as national pressures caused by the COVID pandemic. </p>
<p>And yet aid is sorely needed if the world is to meet the <a href="https://sdgs.un.org/2030agenda?_gl=1*11b9zzk*_ga*Mzc5OTM3Mzc4LjE2NzMwMTAzNTU.*_ga_TK9BQL5X7Z*MTY3ODY5NjEwMy41LjAuMTY3ODY5NjEwMy4wLjAuMA..">2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development</a>, a plan to end world poverty agreed by UN members in 2015. The “<a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/02/1133637">great finance divide</a>” – which sees some countries struggle to access resources and affordable finance for economic investment – continues to grow, according to the UN, leaving developing countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America more susceptible to shocks.</p>
<p>The UK and Europe’s support for Ukraine is admirable and much-needed. But when countries are faced with important domestic political and financial challenges, governments tend to look inwards – often in an attempt to rally their electorate. </p>
<p>Cuts to aid budgets are one example of this. For the UK in particular, neglecting multilateral solutions to important global challenges could actually exacerbate what are thought of as “domestic issues”. Our research highlights four such issues that could be affected by the UK’s budget cuts.</p>
<h2>1. Increasing poverty could affect global stability</h2>
<p>While the exact direction of the relationship remains up for <a href="https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/359271468739530199/pdf/multi-page.pdf">debate</a>, poverty is an important <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0022002702046001001">cause and effect of war</a>. We know that up to <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/fragilityconflictviolence/publication/world-bank-group-strategy-for-fragility-conflict-and-violence-2020-2025">two-thirds of the world’s extreme poor</a> (defined as people earning less than $1.90 a day) will be concentrated in fragile and conflict-affected countries by 2030.</p>
<p>Research shows that aid promotes <a href="https://www.wider.unu.edu/publication/aid-impact-and-effectiveness-0">economic growth</a>. So, reducing <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/fragilityconflictviolence/publication/world-bank-group-strategy-for-fragility-conflict-and-violence-2020-2025">international aid</a> will only exacerbate these recent negative trends. According to the <a href="https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/governments-us-them-attitude-aid-29454405">chief executive of Oxfam GB</a>, aid is an investment in a more stable world – something that is in all of our interests.</p>
<h2>2. Extremism could spread as western influence falls</h2>
<p><a href="https://africacenter.org/in-focus/countering-violent-extremism-in-africa/">Violent extremism</a> is on the rise in Africa. It reduces international investment and undermines the rights of minority groups, women and girls. This goes against important UN <a href="https://sdgs.un.org/goals">sustainable development goals</a> aimed at building peace and prosperity for the planet and its people.</p>
<p>Reducing international aid will create opportunities for new political actors to emerge and influence the direction of countries with weak government institutions. Cutting back western influence in international architecture (especially while these countries support a conflict in their own continent) may also be resented by <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/03/08/russia-ukraine-war-west-global-south-diplomacy-un-putin-g20/">countries in other parts of the world</a> that would like more support.</p>
<h2>3. Democracy could be threatened in some countries</h2>
<p>When aid is provided in the right way, it can <a href="https://www.wider.unu.edu/publication/foreign-aid-can-help-stem-decline-democracy-if-used-right-way">give a boost</a> to democratic outcomes. Again, if western, democratic and liberal states don’t support countries struggling to tackle poverty and extremism, other actors could step in. </p>
<p>Russia’s increasing involvement in the Central African Republic and Burkina Faso are recent examples. Equally, China’s <a href="https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/chinas-massive-belt-and-road-initiative">Belt and Road Initiative</a> (through which it lends money to other countries to build infrastructure) has significantly broadened its economic and political influence in many parts of the world. But some experts fear that China is laying a <a href="https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/chinas-massive-belt-and-road-initiative">debt trap for borrowing governments</a>, whereby <a href="https://docs.aiddata.org/ad4/pdfs/How_China_Lends__A_Rare_Look_into_100_Debt_Contracts_with_Foreign_Governments.pdf">the contracts</a> agreed allow it to seize strategic assets when debtor countries run into financial problems.</p>
<p>The growing influence of both states may explain global trends towards <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13510347.2019.1582029">democratic backsliding</a> because research shows <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13510347.2020.1799194">democratic stability</a> is often undermined in waves. In recent UN votes, Russia and China’s <a href="https://www.wider.unu.edu/publication/do-countries-use-foreign-aid-buy-geopolitical-influence-0">growing influence</a> via such aid has been seen to bear fruit. For example, in October 2022 Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan –- both temporary members of the UN Human Rights council –- <a href="https://eurasianet.org/china-gets-central-asias-votes-russia-gets-its-silence">voted against a decision</a> to discuss human rights concerns in China’s Muslim-majority Xinjiang region.</p>
<h2>4. More countries could struggle to welcome refugees</h2>
<p>People flee their homes for many reasons but mostly due to conflict, violent extremism and poverty. Most refugees do not travel to western countries such as the UK, although the number of people arriving in small boats across the English Channel has <a href="https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn01403/">risen substantially</a> recently.</p>
<p>But there are <a href="https://civil-protection-humanitarian-aid.ec.europa.eu/what/humanitarian-aid/forced-displacement-refugees-asylum-seekers-and-internally-displaced-persons-idps_en#:%7E:text=08%2F07%2F2022-,Facts%20%26%20figures,53.2%20million%20internally%20displaced">more “internationally displaced people” than refugees</a>. That is, most people fleeing war remain in their country, while refugees tend to <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/refugee-statistics/">remain in neighbouring states</a>. </p>
<p>Turkey receives the highest numbers of refugees due to its proximity to the ongoing war in Syria, and <a href="https://data.unhcr.org/en/situations/ukraine">Poland</a> welcomed the highest number of refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine.</p>
<p>This, combined with the fact that countries most <a href="https://acleddata.com/conflict-watchlist-2023/">likely to experience conflict</a> are geographically distant from the UK, indicates that numbers seeking asylum in the UK will remain relatively low. But reducing aid will impose further pressures on poor countries that are already struggling to accommodate refugee flows, as well as increasing push factors for migration from fragile regions.</p>
<h2>International aid should be one of many solutions</h2>
<p>Failure to tackle global problems like poverty, extremism, and democratic backsliding could further destabilise fragile regions. This will have <a href="https://reliefweb.int/report/world/how-many-lives-will-uks-aid-budget-reduction-really-cost">human costs</a> including increased numbers of desperate people attempting to cross the channel. </p>
<p>Aid is an investment in a more stable world. <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/b8e8d712-8e19-4935-b4cf-d6c4e30f0dd3">Deals with France</a> or the risk of <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/explainers-61782866">deportation to Rwanda</a> will have limited impact on reducing the number of people arriving on small boats if the root causes of their migration are not tackled.</p>
<p>In our globalised world, looking inwards can only exacerbate these problems. It is crucial that states adopt multilateral solutions – including funding international aid programmes – to tackle global problems.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202208/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Patricia Justino receives funding from the UK Economic and Social Research Council. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kit Rickard does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The UK is among countries cutting international aid payments, which could affect the world in four key areas: poverty, extremism, democracy and refugees.Patricia Justino, Professor and Senior Research Fellow, World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER), United Nations UniversityKit Rickard, Research Associate at UNU-WIDER, UCLLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1815702022-05-05T12:42:15Z2022-05-05T12:42:15ZGiving people money with no strings attached is good for their health, dozens of studies indicate<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460148/original/file-20220427-24-qs59go.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3544%2C2403&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A growing number of assistance programs give recipients money.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/hands-holding-liberian-money-royalty-free-image/182187228">himarkley/E+ via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/research-brief-83231">Research Brief</a> is a short take about interesting academic work.</em></p>
<h2>The big idea</h2>
<p>When people living in poverty in countries like Malawi, Indonesia and Ecuador <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD011135.pub3">receive cash payments</a> without having to do anything in return, they have better health, according to a scientific review of a large body of research.</p>
<p>To reach that finding, our interdisciplinary team of <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=3UUi7kYAAAAJ&hl=de">public health</a> <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=fbx56lIAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">experts</a>, <a href="https://scholar.google.ca/citations?user=NSPrC7EAAAAJ&hl=en">economists</a> <a href="https://scholar.google.co.nz/citations?user=LC-yqMkAAAAJ&hl=en">and</a> <a href="https://scholar.google.ca/citations?hl=en&user=UWK8-DUAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate">epidemiologists</a> from Canada, Germany, New Zealand and the U.S. pooled data from 34 studies that involved 1,140,385 participants in 50,095 households across Africa, the Americas and Southeast Asia.</p>
<p>Our systematic review and <a href="https://himmelfarb.gwu.edu/tutorials/studydesign101/metaanalyses.cfm">meta-analysis</a> also determined that <a href="https://www.opml.co.uk/blog/unconditional-cash-transfers-reducing-poverty-vulnerabilities">unconditional cash payments</a> in low- and middle-income countries not only reduce poverty, but they also lead to greater <a href="https://theconversation.com/world-hunger-surged-in-2020-with-1-in-10-people-on-earth-undernourished-164379">food security</a>, improved nutrition and more consistent school attendance.</p>
<p>Follow-up surveys with individuals who received this money earlier found that they were less likely to have been sick in the previous two weeks to three months compared to individuals who did not received this money. In addition, there is some evidence that people who got cash payments spent more money on health care.</p>
<p>The studies we examined involved 24 different cash payment programs in 13 countries that were run either by governments, nonprofits or researchers. The value of the money given to people in need varied widely, equaling anywhere from <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD">1.3% to 81.9% of gross domestic product per capita</a>. </p>
<h2>Why it matters</h2>
<p>Governments, nonprofits and researchers around the world are increasingly experimenting with a simple approach to reduce poverty: <a href="https://money.usnews.com/money/personal-finance/articles/what-is-universal-basic-income">giving people money</a> to spend on whatever they need.</p>
<p>Many of these cash-transfer pilots and experiments – often called <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/2/19/21112570/universal-basic-income-ubi-map">basic income programs</a> – have <a href="https://blogs.worldbank.org/developmenttalk/how-should-we-design-cash-transfer-programs">required people to do something</a> to receive the money, such as making sure their children regularly attend school. Sometimes the condition involves completing a specific health-related task, such as attending a health education workshop or going to a preventive care medical appointment.</p>
<p>Researchers are debating <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/19439342.2014.890362">whether these conditions improve</a> or <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.euroecorev.2021.103755">hinder the effectiveness of these programs</a>. </p>
<p>Other programs, like those we studied, have no such requirements.</p>
<p>One advantage of the no-strings-attached approach, argue the <a href="https://www.givedirectly.org/about/">GiveDirectly nonprofit</a> and other supporters, is that it eliminates the need to monitor compliance and <a href="https://www.povertyactionlab.org/case-study/giving-directly-support-poor-households">slashes administrative costs</a>. Unconditional cash payments may empower recipients more since they can <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/dpr.12255">decide how to use the money</a> to meet some of their immediate needs. </p>
<p>Making payments contingent on people meeting requirements may also unintentionally harm people in need who <a href="https://doi.org/10.1136/medethics-2017-104194">can’t comply with conditions</a> due to physical, social and economic barriers. For example, requiring a clinic visit to “earn” a cash payment does not help anyone unable to make the trip. </p>
<h2>What still isn’t known</h2>
<p>We still don’t have enough information to determine if this pattern holds true in the United States and other wealthier nations. </p>
<p>The long-term health benefits of unconditional cash payments is also not clear. </p>
<p>Finally, more research is needed to understand whether the impetus for these programs, such as when they follow a hurricane or other major disaster, <a href="https://gh.bmj.com/content/7/1/e007902.abstract">makes any difference</a>.</p>
<h2>What’s next</h2>
<p>Our team plans to study whether cash-payment programs that require compliance with conditions lead to better health too. We also want to update a previous review we conducted of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD011247.pub2">payments given to people who had experienced humanitarian disasters</a> to include evaluations of similar efforts carried out during the COVID-19 pandemic.</p>
<p>[<em>Like what you’ve read? Want more?</em> <a href="https://memberservices.theconversation.com/newsletters/?source=inline-likethis">Sign up for The Conversation’s daily newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/181570/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sze Yan Liu does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A global team of researchers analyzed 34 studies of unconditional cash-transfer programs administered in low- and middle-income countries.Sze Yan Liu, Assistant Professor of Public Health, Montclair State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1547522021-04-18T07:37:37Z2021-04-18T07:37:37ZNew business skills can improve livelihoods among poor people. How to avoid the pitfalls<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387765/original/file-20210304-21-12wokhs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A woman sorts through some maize kernels received as part of a food donation amid a devastating drought in Marsabit County, Kenya.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Gideon Mendel/Corbis via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Traditionally, there is no word for business among the pastoralist communities of the arid Marsabit County, in northern Kenya. Nor do they have words for any of its most common terms, such as profit. Instead, they have a lexicon associated with a different set of principles: mutual aid, generosity, sharing. </p>
<p>These deeply rooted values have shaped their sense of self and community for generations, determining both individual and collective behaviour.</p>
<p>But this is changing. In recent years, the people in this region, which borders Ethiopia, have started to grapple with a new reality –- that of becoming business people. Aid agencies have started to work with them and help them build more sustainable livelihoods through business. Pastoralists are now increasingly engaging in businesses such as livestock trade and retail trade of small items such as sugar, tea leaves, and washing powder. </p>
<p>Building business skills to improve livelihoods is increasingly being <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259133167_Entrepreneurship_as_a_solution_to_poverty">recognised and promoted as a mechanism to lift communities out of extreme poverty.</a> The logic goes that if you give people the tools they need to understand the basics of business, they can become more self-confident, autonomous, resilient, and skilled at turning a profit. In short, to move from survival to success.</p>
<p>So far so good. But the difficulty is that in many survivalist communities the principles of business can clash with the existing values of the community, as I found in my <a href="https://fsdkenya.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/aws/Archive%20data%20FSD/2_Marsabit_Graduation-report_Becoming_Businesspeople_FIN.pdf?_t=1610970324">recently published research</a>. My study followed 51 participants of a <a href="https://www.fsdkenya.org/publications/graduation-pilot-market-assessment-and-iga-modeling/">livelihood improvement programme</a> in Marsabit County from May 2016 to February 2019.</p>
<p>For people with a strong collectivist identity founded on generosity and caring, the idea of selling goods for profit or of saving money for oneself for instance can be hard to implement. The friction between these two identities can generate both individual frustration and conflict in the community as people struggle to simultaneously fulfil the demands associated with both identities.</p>
<p>For many, becoming a business person is more than a personal journey towards prosperity. It is a complex process of individual and social identity change. And while this has immense potential to help lift people out of extreme poverty, such a transition has inherent difficulties.</p>
<p>There’s greater potential to make it work if prevailing identities are honoured and care is taken to ensure that the entire community is respectfully included.</p>
<h2>Helping people forge new identities</h2>
<p>Building business skills to improve livelihoods is increasingly recognised as bringing value to the fight against poverty. But it can also set up identity conflict and community-level tension, unless care is taken to address prevailing ways of being and behaving.</p>
<p>Fortunately, identity is not a unitary construct, nor is it static. Part of identity formation is dealing with conflicting ideas and the continued integration of new roles. What’s more, this process is critical. <a href="https://s3-eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/fsd-circle/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/12193650/2_Marsabit_Graduation-report_Becoming_Businesspeople_FIN.pdf">My research</a> has shown that the way people respond to this identity conflict will shape what type of business person they become – and, by extension, what kind of community they co-construct.</p>
<p>Typically, when the collectivist identity collides with the business people identity, participants choose one of three scenarios. </p>
<ul>
<li><p>Those for whom helping neighbours in need is most important prioritise collectivist identity demands and become a collectivist business person. They are more likely, for example, to provide handouts of business goods.</p></li>
<li><p>Those for whom the collectivist identity is less important could go to the other end of the spectrum and become an individualist business person. They may refuse to help others through their business or offer help with strict terms and conditions. </p></li>
<li><p>Or they could become more of a hybrid kind of business person who tries to find ways to meet both sets of identity demands. They could, for example, give some handouts of business items on one hand, but charge interest on goods on credit to increase profit on the other.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Understanding this dynamic is essential for helping participants progress without severing connection to their core values or alienating fellow community members. A greater appreciation of existing identities and the identity conflict that arises with the introduction of new ideas will equip aid agencies to help people and communities transition more smoothly.</p>
<h2>Four ingredients of success</h2>
<p>To ensure greater success in such initiatives, development practitioners need to focus on four elements, which emerged from my research. First, it is important to incorporate the notion of identity into the programme model. Whether intentionally or not, practitioners are helping participants construct new identities through training, mentorship, examples of success, and even through the questions they ask. </p>
<p>Therefore, it is important to think about the types of identities they are helping participants construct (such as the business person identity) or reconstruct (such as the prevailing community member identity).</p>
<p>Second, take time to understand what identities potential participants already have before you start. And how these may shape behaviour on an individual and collective level. What does it mean to be a member of the community, woman or man, mother or father, in that context? What are the important religious or other related beliefs? Is there a strong collectivist or individualist culture at play? </p>
<p>In addition, think about what tensions may arise with the introduction or reinforcement of certain identities.</p>
<p>Third, tailor programmes to address existing identities and potential identity dynamics. This can include building on existing identities. Or it could help participants navigate identity tensions and community resistance to new behaviours and expectations.</p>
<p>Finally, think about how to bring communities up together. Resistance to new behaviours and expectations can be exacerbated when some members of a community receive training and others do not. Community-level learning and enterprises will limit the likelihood of collective resistance to new behaviours and expectations. It also discourages in-group and out-group formation, and community stratification.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/154752/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dr Jody Delichte served as a consultant for FSD Kenya following completion of the research upon which this article is based. The research focused on FSD Kenya's Building Livelihoods programme.</span></em></p>Building business skills to improve livelihoods is increasingly recognised as bringing value to the fight against poverty. But it can also set up identity conflict and community-level tension.Jody Delichte, Graduate School of Business, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1577942021-04-07T13:34:57Z2021-04-07T13:34:57ZForeign aid can help stem the decline of democracy, if used in the right way<p>Democracy is having a hard time. In India, once the world’s largest democracy, the pandemic has hastened the country’s <a href="https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/covid-vs-democracy-indias-illiberal-remedy/">slide toward authoritarianism</a>. In the US, the Trump administration’s attacks on democratic norms reached new lows when the former president, backed by the Republican party, <a href="https://theconversation.com/us-election-why-democratic-legitimacy-remains-at-stake-148572">refused to accept his loss</a> in the November 2020 elections. </p>
<iframe id="noa-web-audio-player" style="border: none" src="https://embed-player.newsoveraudio.com/v4?key=x84olp&id=https://theconversation.com/foreign-aid-can-help-stem-the-decline-of-democracy-if-used-in-the-right-way-157794&bgColor=F5F5F5&color=D8352A&playColor=D8352A" width="100%" height="110px"></iframe>
<p>In fact studies show democratic norms are in decline worldwide. Freedom House recently argued that <a href="https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2021/democracy-under-siege">democracy has been declining since 2005</a>, while the <a href="https://www.v-dem.net/en/">latest report</a> from the Varieties of Democracy Institute reveals that 68% the world’s population now live in autocracies.</p>
<p>More countries have slid down the democracy ladder in the last decade than have moved up. States such as Hungary, Turkey and Venezuela that enjoyed a period of growing democratic norms now see a dramatic freefall in political freedoms. Several countries in south Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East are moving towards authoritarianism, while Brazil, Mexico and South Africa have recently experienced deterioration of democratic institutions.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Graph showing gradual increase in democratic institutions in different world regions." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391933/original/file-20210326-15-10qd5sg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391933/original/file-20210326-15-10qd5sg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391933/original/file-20210326-15-10qd5sg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391933/original/file-20210326-15-10qd5sg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391933/original/file-20210326-15-10qd5sg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391933/original/file-20210326-15-10qd5sg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391933/original/file-20210326-15-10qd5sg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Regions are assigned a score based on the political systems within them, from zero for closed autocracies to values closer to one for liberal democracies.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rachel M Gisselquist and Miguel Niño-Zarazúa, based on V-Dem's electoral democracy index.</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This entails not just loss of civil liberties and political rights for those in “backsliding” countries, but also a <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/09/liberal-international-order-free-world-trump-authoritarianism/569881/">major shift in the international liberal order</a>, with potentially far-reaching consequences for economic progress, prosperity and peace worldwide.</p>
<h2>Champions and sceptics of foreign aid</h2>
<p>These trends alone could make the case for investing in <a href="https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/rejuvenating-democracy-promotion/">promoting democracy</a>, through democracy aid: foreign aid specifically to support core democratic processes and institutions including elections, political parties, civil society groups, the media and human rights.</p>
<p>The use of <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/11/13/trump-fraud-republicans-iri-ndi-osce-americas-democracy-demotion/,">diplomatic carrots and sticks</a> also plays a role. For example, in 2019 Sweden launched its <a href="http://www.swemfa.se/drive-for-democracy/">Drive for Democracy</a>, which made democracy central to its foreign policy including security, development and trade. Germany’s foreign minister, Heiko Maas, recently advocated for a “<a href="https://www.dw.com/en/germany-wants-us-eu-to-forge-marshall-plan-for-democracy/a-56181438">Marshall Plan for democracy</a>”, while US President Joe Biden has called for a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/31/us/politics/biden-democracy-summit.html">Global Democracy Summit</a>. </p>
<p>But we should not paint too rosy a picture of democracy aid. Since its origins in the US Marshall Plan of 1948, foreign aid has been closely linked to the strategic political considerations and interests of the donor country. The implications and potential impact this has on local needs deserves careful attention. </p>
<p>In fact, a number of researchers have long claimed that foreign aid is actually bad for democracy. US economist William Easterly argues that <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/03/10/the-new-tyranny/">foreign aid empowers dictators</a>. Other research lays out the ways in which aid can <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/10/13/why-trying-to-help-poor-countries-might-actually-hurt-them/">weaken local accountability</a>, <a href="https://deborahbrautigam.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/2004-foreign-aid-institutions-and-governance-in-subsaharan-africa.pdf">governance processes</a> and state institutions. </p>
<p>Equally, there is research that <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030438781500111X">challenges these positions</a>, showing <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/democratic-trajectories-in-africa-9780199686285?cc=fi&lang=en&">how effective democracy aid specifically</a> can be. For instance, support that facilitated <a href="https://www.wider.unu.edu/publication/changing-dynamics-foreign-aid-and-democracy-mozambique-0">Mozambique’s transition from war to peace</a> and multiparty politics in the early 1990s, or symbolic and financial assistance in support of multiple <a href="https://www.wider.unu.edu/publication/beyond-electoral-democracy-0">free and fair elections in Benin</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393580/original/file-20210406-13-1umuc5t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Globe showing countries colour-coded by government type" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393580/original/file-20210406-13-1umuc5t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393580/original/file-20210406-13-1umuc5t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=304&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393580/original/file-20210406-13-1umuc5t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=304&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393580/original/file-20210406-13-1umuc5t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=304&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393580/original/file-20210406-13-1umuc5t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393580/original/file-20210406-13-1umuc5t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393580/original/file-20210406-13-1umuc5t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Democracy Index 2020, from the Economist Intelligence Unit.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Democracy_Index_2020.svg">The Economist/Jackinthebox</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<h2>New insight into aid’s effectiveness</h2>
<p>Our new <a href="https://www.wider.unu.edu/publication/effects-swedish-and-international-democracy-aid">study</a> built on existing evidence to create a new analysis of the impact of democracy aid in 148 countries between 1995–2018. Our approach married quantitative analysis to the <a href="https://www.wider.unu.edu/publication/does-aid-support-democracy">large amount of research on democratisation</a> to present a framework that addresses how aid should, in theory, support democracy.</p>
<p>We had three main findings: first, aid specifically aimed at improving democratic infrastructure and institutions has a modest but positive impact overall. This impact is clearer than for the impact of development aid generally, but there is no evidence that either has a negative impact on democracy on average. </p>
<p>Second, aid aimed at supporting civil society, media freedom, and human rights seems to be the most effective in terms of its impact on democracy. Third, democracy aid is more effective at supporting ongoing democratisation than at halting democratic backsliding. </p>
<p>In short, democracy aid works, but it’s not magic. The sums invested are usually pretty modest in comparison to the funds available to domestic opponents of democracy, such as in electoral autocracies like Russia, Nicaragua and Turkey. And democratisation of a country tends to be a long, hard road – demonstrating that something has a specific impact along the way is a challenge.</p>
<h2>A three-point plan for supporting democracies</h2>
<p>The international community needs to staunch democracy’s global decline, and our analysis identifies some clear recommendations.</p>
<p>First, maintain and consider increasing democracy aid. It surely will not work everywhere, but the evidence shows it can be effective. At the same time, domestic expectations need to be managed.</p>
<p>Second, recognise that prematurely cutting democracy aid can increase a country’s risk of democratic backsliding into authoritarianism, at which point it is harder for aid to help. This means we should reconsider the role of aid in middle-income countries. It is many of these countries in Latin America, eastern and central Europe that have seen sharp cuts in development and democracy assistance over the past decades, where there is now a pronounced slip into authoritarianism.</p>
<p>Third, direct aid toward the core elements of democracy: human rights, democratic participation and civil society, and a free media. A <a href="https://www.pressgazette.co.uk/press-gazette-media-freedom-health-check-70-world-no-free-press/">recent analysis</a>, for example, reveals 70% of the world lives in countries with limited media freedom. Assistance to other areas can support democracy as well, but this is where the best democratic returns on investment can be made.</p>
<p>Which nations among the international community can we expect to act? Embroiled in its own domestic politics, the role of the US in promoting democracy <a href="https://carnegieendowment.org/2018/10/01/can-u.s.-democracy-policy-survive-trump-pub-77381">remains in question</a>, although the new Biden administration <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/02/04/remarks-by-president-biden-on-americas-place-in-the-world/">has signalled</a> a more active position to push back the advance of authoritarianism. Against this backdrop, support for democracy from the heart of Europe is now more important than ever.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/157794/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>This study was supported by the Swedish Expert Group for Aid Studies (EBA). Findings and conclusions are those of the authors, not EBA. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>This study was supported by the Swedish Expert Group for Aid Studies (EBA). Findings and conclusions are those of the authors, not EBA.</span></em></p>How can democratic nations help fledgling democracies and others struggling against the tide of autocrats?Rachel M Gisselquist, Senior Research Fellow, World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER), United Nations UniversityMiguel Niño-Zarazúa, Senior Lecturer, Department of Economics, SOAS University of London, and Non-Resident Senior Research Fellow, World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER), SOAS, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1530482021-03-10T13:32:49Z2021-03-10T13:32:49ZChina’s ‘mask diplomacy’ wins influence across Africa, during and after the pandemic<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386239/original/file-20210224-13-187tfge.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=239%2C35%2C3532%2C2568&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Zimbabwe leaders welcome Chinese COVID-19 experts at the Robert Mugabe International Airport in Harare on May 11, 2020.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/zimbabwe-minister-of-local-government-and-social-welfare-news-photo/1212652388?adppopup=true&uiloc=thumbnail_more_search_results_adp">Jekesai Njikizana/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Being Chinese in Africa was the worst possible <a href="https://chinaafricaproject.com/2020/03/03/chinese-in-kenya-face-stigmatization-and-discrimination-due-to-covid-19/">stigma for much of 2020</a>. </p>
<p>Africans vilified the Chinese, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-51770856">blaming them for the COVID-19 pandemic</a>. At the same time, China was blaming Africans for the pandemic, too. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-svwKWBkys">Viral videos</a> in March and April 2020 showed Chinese authorities forcibly evicting Africans from their homes in Guangzhou, China, for allegedly spreading COVID-19. </p>
<p>These actions sparked an <a href="https://thediplomat.com/2020/04/african-countries-respond-to-guangzhous-anti-epidemic-measures/">uproar on the continent</a>. On social media, there were calls for deporting Chinese residents in Africa. The Twitter hashtag <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/DeportRacistChinese?src=hashtag_click">#DeportRacistChinese</a> trended throughout the continent.</p>
<p>Beijing sought to improve its pandemic-era image in Africa with “<a href="https://fsi.stanford.edu/news/covid-mask-diplomacy">mask diplomacy</a>,” an effort to supply the continent with <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-04/china-to-donate-coronavirus-vaccines-to-three-african-countries">vaccines</a>, <a href="http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-04/06/c_138951984.htm">medical equipment and personnel</a> – and it worked.</p>
<p>As a <a href="http://portfolio.du.edu/Hanaan.Dinko.Dinko/page/83655">doctoral student in geography</a> who has written <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0016718520303043">extensively about Africa</a>, I recognize this “mask diplomacy” by China as part of its broader incursion into Africa that arose from <a href="https://newlinesinstitute.org/regional-politics/americas-global-retreat-and-the-ensuing-strategic-vacuum/">the United States’ global retreat</a>.</p>
<h2>China building Africa</h2>
<p>China’s rising economic influence in Africa has been in the works for two decades.</p>
<p>In North Africa, China has spent US$11 billion since 2015 on the <a href="https://www.au-pida.org/news/trans-maghreb-highway-facilitating-the-movement-of-people-vehicles-and-goods/">Trans-Maghreb highway</a> – from the Western Sahara to Libya – that will connect 60 million of the region’s 100 million people. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388547/original/file-20210309-13-r3occz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A section of the Maghreb highway in Algeria." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388547/original/file-20210309-13-r3occz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/388547/original/file-20210309-13-r3occz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388547/original/file-20210309-13-r3occz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388547/original/file-20210309-13-r3occz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388547/original/file-20210309-13-r3occz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388547/original/file-20210309-13-r3occz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/388547/original/file-20210309-13-r3occz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Algeria East-West Highway, a section of the Maghreb highway, built in part by a Chinese consortium.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/east-west-highway-wilaya-de-ain-defla-a-controversial-news-photo/601131320?adppopup=true">Andia/Universal Images Group via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In East Africa, China built a network of roads and <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/ethiopia-china-loan-idUSL5N1VS4IW">a rail line linking Ethiopia and Djibouti</a> that has facilitated trade.</p>
<p>In southern Africa, Namibia partnered with China and the African Development Bank in 2013 on a <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/20190803-namibia-inaugurates-chinese-built-port-terminal">$300 billion port expansion</a>. And Angola will be benefiting from a <a href="https://www.globalconstructionreview.com/news/chinese-contractor-starts-45bn-angolan-hydropower-/">$4.5 billion Chinese-funded hydroelectric power plant</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.globalconstructionreview.com/news/chinese-contractor-starts-45bn-angolan-hydropower-/">Similar infrastructure projects</a> are in the works in <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2017/09/14/africa/nigeria-china-hydropower/index.html">west</a> and <a href="https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3115249/chinese-companies-are-betting-heavily-democratic-republic">central Africa</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-china-africa/pompeo-says-chinas-africa-lending-creates-unsustainable-debt-burdens-idINKBN23V2S3">Some Western leaders</a> have described Chinese financing mechanisms as <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/04/25/chinas-debt-diplomacy/">debt traps</a>, suggesting they saddle African countries with high debts while increasing China’s power in the region. </p>
<p>But China’s willingness to fund Africa’s infrastructure has been viewed favorably by <a href="https://apnews.com/article/904c9563409542ab93c37694aced0872">African leaders</a> – especially as U.S. trade with Africa has <a href="http://country.eiu.com/article.aspx?articleid=1846522568&Country=Gabon&topic=Politics">steadily declined for a decade</a>.</p>
<p>“They say China has lent too much to Africa,” <a href="http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-09/03/c_137439506.htm">Rwandan President Paul Kagame said in 2018</a>, “but another perspective of the issue is that those criticizing China on debt give too little, and Africa needs the funding to build capacity for development.”</p>
<p>In 2002, U.S.-Africa trade was <a href="http://www.sais-cari.org/data-china-africa-trade">nearly double</a> China’s trade with the continent: $21 billion, compared to $12 billion. By 2008, U.S.-Africa trade had surged to <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/africa-in-focus/2018/04/16/competing-in-africa-china-the-european-union-and-the-united-states/">$100 billion</a>. </p>
<p>By 2019, however, it had dropped to $56 billion. Meanwhile, China-Africa trade rose from <a href="http://www.sais-cari.org/data-china-africa-trade">$102 billion to $192 billion</a> within the same 11-year period. Today, no other single country <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/1122389/leading-countries-for-fdi-in-africa-by-investor-country/#:%7E:text=Leading%20countries%20for%20FDI%20in%20Africa%202014%2D2018%2C%20by%20investor%20country&text=Between%202014%20and%202018%2C%2016,of%20the%20total%20FDI%2C%20respectively.">comes close to matching China’s investments</a> across Africa. </p>
<p>The Trump administration ignored Africa as China exerted its influence. Trump never set foot on the continent as president – the first <a href="https://www.politico.com/gallery/2015/07/8-us-presidents-plus-a-retired-one-who-traveled-to-africa-002058?slide=0">U.S. president in 27 years</a> to avoid Africa. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386240/original/file-20210224-21-1bwnh1r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Medical donations from China at Algiers International Airport" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386240/original/file-20210224-21-1bwnh1r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386240/original/file-20210224-21-1bwnh1r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386240/original/file-20210224-21-1bwnh1r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386240/original/file-20210224-21-1bwnh1r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386240/original/file-20210224-21-1bwnh1r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386240/original/file-20210224-21-1bwnh1r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386240/original/file-20210224-21-1bwnh1r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Staff members unload medical donations from China at Algiers International Airport, Algeria, April 21, 2020.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/april-21-2020-staff-members-unload-medical-donations-from-news-photo/1210699240?adppopup=true">Xinhua/via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>China first in Africa</h2>
<p>Already Africa’s <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/africa-in-focus/2019/10/09/figure-of-the-week-foreign-direct-investment-in-africa/">largest economic partner</a>, China was able to pivot quickly after the coronavirus hit to offer the region aid, attention and expertise.</p>
<p>The results were immediate. </p>
<p>Some African leaders who criticized China’s treatment of Africans in China during the early days of the pandemic have changed their tone. Nigeria’s president, Muhammadu Buhari, for example, recently proclaimed that he was <a href="https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/zxxx_662805/t1844913.shtml">“satisfied with the progress of” Nigeria’s relationship with China</a>.</p>
<p>Additionally, Beijing is assuming powerful leadership positions within <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/05/china-global-influence-who-united-states/611227/">international institutions</a> that play important roles in Africa. Out of 15 United Nations agencies, China heads four of them, including the <a href="http://www.fao.org/director-general/en/">Food and Agriculture Organization, or FAO,</a> and the <a href="https://www.unido.org/who-we-are-structure-director-general/biography#:%7E:text=LI%20Yong%2C%20Director%20General%20of,economic%20and%20financial%20policy%2Dmaker.">United Nations Industrial Development Organization</a>. No country rivals China in this sense. </p>
<p>China is also establishing international organizations that compete with the functions of the Western-dominated U.N., including the <a href="https://www.aiib.org/en/index.html">Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank</a> and the <a href="http://www.cdb.com.cn/English/">China Development Bank</a>. As of 2018, the China Development Bank had funded <a href="http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-09/22/c_137486141.htm">500 projects in 43 different African countries worth $50 billion</a>.</p>
<p>Beijing is also courting influence and favor in ways beyond lending. </p>
<p>China <a href="https://africa.cgtn.com/2019/01/23/china-writes-off-nearly-78-million-of-cameroons-debt/">canceled $78 million</a> in debt owed by Cameroon in 2019 – money borrowed for infrastructural development – <a href="https://www.africanews.com/2019/07/10/view-for-africa-there-s-more-than-just-money-to-repaying-chinese-debt/">allegedly in exchange for Cameroon’s support</a> for its candidacy as director-general of the FAO. Cameroon, an influential central Africa country, stands out with its <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/international-partnerships/where-we-work/cameroon_en">diversified economy</a> and strong private sector.</p>
<h2>The importance of a new US-Africa relationship</h2>
<p>For the U.S., China’s surging influence in Africa has global implications. American companies are increasingly facing <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/13/world/africa/china-loans-africa-usa.html">tough competition from state-backed Chinese</a> corporations as they bid for contracts in Africa. If left unmatched, Chinese companies could increasingly outcompete U.S. companies.</p>
<p>The Biden administration has vowed to <a href="https://www.voanews.com/africa/biden-signals-new-tone-us-africa-relations">engage more with Africa</a>, likely signaling a long-term U.S. strategy to counter China in Africa.</p>
<p>But China’s strategic <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-04/china-to-donate-coronavirus-vaccines-to-three-african-countries">vaccine</a> distribution and <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-covid-vaccine-africa-developing-nations-11613598170">PPE donations</a> to African countries have built a lot of goodwill and embellished its reputation as a responsible global power acting to protect vulnerable populations in Africa – which the U.S. and Europe have largely overlooked during the pandemic. </p>
<p>The U.S. may be ready to recommit to Africa, but by the time it starts to reengage, it could be too late to outpace China. </p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/153048/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dinko Hanaan Dinko is affiliated with Global Research Network as a Junior Fellow.</span></em></p>China is providing masks, vaccines, medical equipment and personnel to African countries ignored by the U.S. in recent years, positioning itself as an essential partner to the region.Dinko Hanaan Dinko, Ph.D. Student, University of DenverLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1535442021-01-25T14:59:41Z2021-01-25T14:59:41ZWhy the West is morally bound to offer reparations for slavery<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380201/original/file-20210122-15-jlotmy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=40%2C40%2C6639%2C4184&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Kwame Akoto-Bamfo's sculpture dedicated to the memory of the victims of the Transatlantic slave trade on display in Montgomery, Alabama. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Raymond Boyd/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The 20th anniversary of the UN World Conference on Racism, held in Durban, South Africa, in 2001, will be celebrated <a href="https://www.un.org/WCAR/durban.pdf">this August</a>. There was much discussion at the conference about reparations to Africa for the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/atlantic-slave-trade">trans-Atlantic slave trade</a>, in which millions of Africans were captured to provide free labour in North and South America and the Caribbean for <a href="https://books.google.ca/books/about/Transformations_in_Slavery.html?id=iWUXNEM-62QC&redir_esc=y">over four and a half centuries</a>. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, the conference was overshadowed by the <a href="https://www.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/66286904-0e0b-4b5f-8e91-5212ee941d6c/september-11th/">9/11 attacks</a> on the US several days after it ended. The question of whether reparations should be paid to the continent of Africa for the trans-Atlantic slave trade is <a href="https://qz.com/africa/1915182/what-reparations-are-owed-to-africa/">still being debated</a>.</p>
<p>It is unlikely that former Western slave-trading countries will engage in reparative measures in the near future. The turn toward authoritarianism, xenophobia and racism in Western democracies makes it unlikely that even well-intentioned governments <a href="https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B082ZNF9JY/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1">will propose reparations to Africa</a>.</p>
<p>But, despite these political changes in slave-trading nations, there remains a strong case for why the fight for reparations shouldn’t be abandoned.</p>
<h2>Apology for the slave trade</h2>
<p>A <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/remedyandreparation.aspx">2005 United Nations document</a> discusses different aspects of reparations, including apologies for past harms, the right to know the truth, and financial compensation. </p>
<p>Over the past 15 years (following the 2005 UN report) there has been no progress on these issues, not even over the issuing of an apology. </p>
<p>At the 2001 conference a Dutch representative spoke of his government’s <a href="https://www.un.org/press/en/2001/rd942.doc.htm">“deep remorse”</a> for the slave trade and enslavement. In 2006, British Prime Minister Tony Blair issued a statement expressing “sorrow” for the slave trade, <a href="https://www.business-humanrights.org/fr/derni%C3%A8res-actualit%C3%A9s/blair-sorrow-over-slave-trade-uk/">but not apologising</a>.</p>
<p>None of these amounted to an apology. Nor has the US issued one. President Bill Clinton acknowledged the horrors of the slave trade in 1998 during a visit to Uganda. <a href="https://clintonwhitehouse4.archives.gov/Africa/19980324-3374.html">But he didn’t apologise</a>. On a visit to Senegal in 2003, President George W. Bush said that the trans-Atlantic slave trade had been <a href="https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2003/07/20030708-1.html">one of the greatest crimes in history</a>. Again, there was no apology.</p>
<p>Some people might object to their government apologising for the slave trade on the grounds that neither they nor their ancestors were <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-923X.2008.00928.x">involved</a>. But as the late Kenyan-American scholar Ali Mazrui <a href="https://books.google.ca/books/about/Black_Reparations_in_the_Era_of_Globaliz.html?id=GkCCqchCegIC&redir_esc=y">argued</a>, if you are a citizen of a country, you must take on <a href="https://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/14448.html">its responsibilities as well as its benefits</a>.</p>
<p>Western slave-trading countries have a moral, if not a legal, obligation to apologise. </p>
<h2>A truth commission on the slave trade</h2>
<p>One way to identify the responsibilities of former slave-trading Western states might be through a truth commission on the slave trade.</p>
<p>Critics might argue that such a truth commission should discuss all actors in African enslavement. About 14 million people were taken from Africa in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, but another 10 million were taken <a href="https://books.google.ca/books/about/Transformations_in_Slavery.html?id=iWUXNEM-62QC&redir_esc=y">in the Arab trade</a>.</p>
<p>Africans also participated in the trans-Atlantic trade and held their own slaves. The Nigerian writer Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani was shocked to learn that her great-grandfather was a slave trader, selling slaves to Cuba and Brazil after the trade was abolished by the US and Great Britain. When her great-grandfather died, <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/personal-history/my-great-grandfather-the-nigerian-slave-trader">six slaves were buried alive with him</a>.</p>
<p>Acknowledging both Arab and African participation in enslavement, a truth commission on the slave trade could explain that internal African slavery was generally much more benign than American slavery. Enslaved people within Africa were frequently incorporated into the families of their owners. Similarly, Arab slave-owners were more likely to free enslaved children <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674986909">than were Western enslavers</a>.</p>
<p>This type of information would counter arguments that the trans-Atlantic slave trade was no worse than internal African slavery or Arab slavery. </p>
<p>In any event, the fact that other entities committed similar wrongs is not an excuse for a perpetrator state not to apologise.</p>
<h2>Financial reparations</h2>
<p>One problem in the discussion of financial reparations for the trans-Atlantic slave trade is which former slave trading and slave-holding nations might owe financial reparations to Africa. About a quarter million enslaved Africans disembarked in the US between 1626 and 1875, whereas 5.1 million disembarked in Brazil <a href="https://www.slavevoyages.org/assessment/estimates">between 1401 and 1875</a>. Does Brazil owe reparations to Africa? Or does Portugal, a slave-trading nation, owe reparations to Brazil, which was then its <a href="https://www.brazil.org.za/portuguese-colonisation-of-brazil.html">colony</a>?</p>
<p>Similarly, do Arab countries and African slave-traders owe reparations for their part in the slave trade? The case of philosopher Anthony Appiah is instructive. He is of mixed Ashanti (Ghanaian) and British ancestry. Both his British and Ashanti ancestors <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/PS8VM45VbjnCB7dVP5BN62/episode-transcript-episode-86-akan-drum#:%7E:text=Anthony%20Appiah%2C%20who%20teaches%20at,trade%2C%20or%20some%">traded in slaves</a>. Do the Ashanti owe reparations to other ethnic groups within Ghana from whom they took slaves? </p>
<p>As with apologies, however, these questions don’t absolve Western slave-trading powers of their particular responsibilities. The US, the UK, the Netherlands, France, Spain and Portugal still bear collective ethical responsibility for the wrongs their societies committed in the past.</p>
<p>Yet even if these countries are responsible to pay financial reparations, critics might ask who should be the recipients of reparations. Yet it is now possible through genetic research and research on slave-trading ships for Western slave-trading countries to determine where the bulk of their captives originated (for example Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal or Angola). Western states could then compensate those countries.</p>
<p>Western critics might still ask why they should pay reparations to Africa. The trans-Atlantic slave trade ended in the mid-19th century. </p>
<p>In reply, some scholars and activists argue that, without the slave trade, Africa would be <a href="https://www.amazon.ca/Europe-Underdeveloped-Africa-Walter-Rodney/dp/0882580965">much more developed today</a>. Moreover, the West could not have developed <a href="https://www.amazon.ca/Capitalism-Slavery-Eric-Williams/dp/0807844888">without the trans-Atlantic trade</a>. According to this argument, Western slave-trading states should compensate African states because the West developed while Africa was actively underdeveloped.</p>
<p>Western countries willing to pay reparations could finance specific projects connected to the slave trade. They could donate funds to maintain African museums and historic sites of the trade. They could also fund educational programmes to study the trans-Atlantic trade, or fund a truth commission on the slave trade.</p>
<p>The small amounts dedicated to this type of reparation would not satisfy advocates who argue for reparations in the billions, <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/etudesafricaines/4543">even trillions, of dollars</a>. But they would at least be a material acknowledgement of the harms the slave trade caused.</p>
<p>The question of whether aid should be part of the equation also raises a host of tricky issues. Have, as some might argue, Western countries not already compensated for the slave trade via foreign aid? And what of the misuse of aid which has been <a href="https://ssir.org/books/reviews/entry/dead_aid_dambisa_moyo">stolen by corrupt governments</a>?</p>
<p>Whether reparations or aid, the same problems of mismanagement, lack of transparency, and corruption emerge. </p>
<h2>Making amends</h2>
<p>Whatever celebrations the UN organises to mark the 20th anniversary of the Durban conference, former Western slave-trading states bear moral responsibility to offer reparations to Africa. </p>
<p>Apologies, a truth commission on the trans-Atlantic trade, and symbolic financial compensation will not solve the problems of Africa’s continued underdevelopment. But they would at last constitute an admission that the West should never have engaged in this trade. They would also be an acknowledgement of the West’s responsibility to try to remedy the continued legacy of the slave trade in Africa.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/153544/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for research for her book, Reparations to Africa (2008) from which some of this article is drawn.</span></em></p>The turn towards authoritarianism, xenophobia and racism in Western democracies makes it unlikely that former Western slave-trading nations will agree to reparations in the near future.Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann, Professor Emeritus, Department of Political Science, Wilfrid Laurier UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1525272021-01-19T13:09:57Z2021-01-19T13:09:57ZBiden can transform the US from a humanitarian laggard into a global leader – here’s how<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378115/original/file-20210111-17-11q86b3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=59%2C29%2C3934%2C2323&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Until now the U.S. hasn't coordinated its disaster aid and development spending.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/josephine-ganye-working-in-her-wilting-and-stunted-maize-news-photo/1200189387">Jekesai Njikizana/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Even after the <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/14/trump-billions-cut-covid-vaccine-distributor-459496">Trump administration’s repeated efforts</a> to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-budget-foreign-exclusive/exclusive-trump-proposes-21-cut-in-u-s-foreign-aid-in-budget-proposal-officials-idUSKBN2030Q5">slash foreign aid</a> and global partnerships, the <a href="https://public.tableau.com/profile/oecdondevelopment#!/vizhome/ODA-GNI_15868746590080/ODA2019">United States remains the world’s largest source</a> of <a href="https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news/2020/04/17/international-aid-record-level-2019">official development assistance</a> for low-income countries.</p>
<p>Still, based on what I’ve learned during a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=sk6R5OYAAAAJ&hl=en">career straddling academia</a> and government service in jobs that involved international development and climate change,
I believe that the United States lost prestige, influence and capacity during President Donald Trump’s time in office.</p>
<p>Nearly all my close former colleagues at the United States Agency for International Development – the development agency known as USAID – have left the agency out of frustration, and those still working there are reportedly suffering from generally <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/10/usaid-hit-with-low-morale-controversial-hires-under-trump.html">low morale</a>.</p>
<p>President Joe Biden will need to restore credibility at a time when critical challenges like climate change have gotten harder to meet. I believe that the Biden administration will need to rapidly transform international aid policies, rather than incrementally strengthening them, for the U.S. to manage these global challenges.</p>
<p><iframe id="57KhF" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/57KhF/3/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<h2>Rising challenges</h2>
<p>Biden plans to nominate <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-biden-usaid/biden-names-uss-former-un-ambassador-power-to-lead-usaid-idUSKBN29I1EC">Samantha Power</a> to head USAID. I think she should emphasize reducing the risks people in the world’s poorest countries face.</p>
<p>The problems to address go beyond the <a href="https://theconversation.com/buying-a-coronavirus-vaccine-for-everyone-on-earth-storing-and-shipping-it-and-giving-it-safely-will-all-be-hard-and-expensive-149221">COVID-19 pandemic</a>.</p>
<p>In June 2020, the World Health Organization announced a new <a href="https://www.who.int/csr/don/03-June-2020-ebola-drc/en/">outbreak of Ebola</a> in the Democratic Republic of the Congo that took <a href="https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/ebola-virus-disease-outbreak-democratic-republic-congo-ongoing">months to get under control</a>.</p>
<p>In November, after years of neglect of food security programs, Category 4 <a href="https://www.usaid.gov/crisis/hurricanes-iota-eta/fy21/fs1">Hurricanes Eta and Iota came ashore in Central America</a>, destroying crops throughout an area two-thirds of the size of Rhode Island.</p>
<p>As 2021 began, an estimated 20 million people in <a href="https://fews.net/east-africa/south-sudan/food-security-outlook/october-2020">South Sudan</a>, <a href="https://fews.net/east-africa/yemen/food-security-outlook-update/december-2020">Yemen</a>, <a href="https://www.wfp.org/fighting-famine">Somalia and parts of Nigeria</a> were on the brink of famine.</p>
<h2>What’s needed</h2>
<p>The Biden administration can start to address many of these challenges by properly funding and staffing initiatives such as the <a href="https://www.who.int/news/item/18-12-2020-covax-announces-additional-deals-to-access-promising-covid-19-vaccine-candidates-plans-global-rollout-starting-q1-2021">COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access Facility</a>. Known as COVAX, this joint effort by 190 countries is working with international organizations to make it possible for people everywhere to get <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)32585-X/fulltext">affordable COVID-19 vaccines</a> as they become available.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/16/former-obama-hhs-official-criticizes-trump-administrations-global-covid-approach.html">U.S. is one of very few countries not participating</a> in the initiative.</p>
<p>While COVAX is an important and worthy effort, simply signing up and rejoining other global initiatives won’t suffice. It will take more than that to address the challenges the world faces today, challenges that have only grown over four largely lost years.</p>
<p>Recent assessments by both the United Nations’ <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/">Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change</a> and the <a href="https://ipbes.net/global-assessment">Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services</a> indicate that deeper change is needed.</p>
<p>Both assessments make it clear that the whole <a href="https://theconversation.com/can-the-paris-agreement-on-climate-change-succeed-without-the-us-4-questions-answered-126477">world must swiftly address climate change</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/to-solve-climate-change-and-biodiversity-loss-we-need-a-global-deal-for-nature-115557">biodiversity loss</a> head-on. To do so requires phasing out the reliance on fossil fuels and other technologies that emit too much carbon and changing the way we use land.</p>
<p>Countries and local communities alike must adapt to current environmental impacts while planning for a substantially changed future. This will require new modes of transportation and new ways of generating energy, growing food and manufacturing goods, as well as new approaches to building homes and infrastructure.</p>
<p>Without transformational changes, the damage from <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/spm/">climate change will leave the planet less safe and sustainable</a>.</p>
<h2>A new aid approach</h2>
<p>Experts have learned from decades of development efforts that it’s hard to bring about transformational change. When <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Rural-Development-Putting-the-last-first/Chambers/p/book/9780582644434">governments and nongovernmental development organizations</a> have tried to make that happen in the past, it has rarely produced the desired results.</p>
<p>In some cases, these efforts have caused more harm than good.</p>
<p>For example, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-018-0070-8">many studies have found that</a> <a href="http://www.fao.org/3/j0902e/j0902e03.htm">agricultural intensification</a>, a common development strategy intended to sustainably boost food production, rarely benefits both the environment and local communities. Unfortunately, it can harm both the land and the people who depend on it for sustenance.</p>
<p>What I’ve found to work better are grassroots efforts to connect needed change with local conditions and norms. Foreign aid can catalyze such efforts when it <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2020.102155">focuses on reducing risks</a> now – through humanitarian assistance – and in the future – through development aid. </p>
<p>Adopting this approach is harder than it sounds because of the way humanitarian aid and development aid are allocated.</p>
<p>Humanitarian aid is usually disbursed after disasters. Traditionally, this assistance <a href="https://handbook.spherestandards.org/en/sphere/#ch001">aims to relieve immediate suffering</a>, rather than its causes.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.usaid.gov/sites/default/files/documents/1870/WEB_PF_Full_Report_FINAL_10Apr2019.pdf">Development aid is different</a>. In the U.S., as elsewhere, it’s used to address the root causes of poverty. However, governments usually tie this assistance to their foreign policy agendas, focusing on countries where outcomes are likely to be good. This is not always where the need is greatest.</p>
<p>In my view, closing the gap between humanitarian and development aid is critical for a safe, sustainable future, and it can work.</p>
<p>I have found, for example, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2019.05.011">evidence in Ghana</a> and <a href="https://ssrn.com/abstract=3736463">Mali</a> that when low-income people acquire access to reliable sources of income and food, women get new opportunities that can greatly improve their potential earnings. When this change initially happens through humanitarian aid, and then continues with the arrival of development assistance, these transformations can sometimes become permanent.</p>
<h2>Bridging the divide</h2>
<p>USAID has been learning how to bridge this sort of divide through the work of its Center for Resilience in the agency’s <a href="https://www.usaid.gov/who-we-are/organization/bureaus/bureau-resilience-and-food-security">Bureau for Resilience and Food Security</a> over the past eight years.</p>
<p>For example, this center has created contracting tools that make it easier for <a href="https://www.resiliencelinks.org/system/files/download-count/documents/2020-02/shock_responsive_programming_guidance_compliant.pdf">development programs to engage in humanitarian responses during emergencies</a> and to <a href="https://www.usaid.gov/sites/default/files/documents/1867/V4_Infographic.pdf">integrate humanitarian and development efforts</a> to help vulnerable people manage emergencies today while staving off future crises.</p>
<p>By emphasizing the reduction of risks from climate change and other urgent issues, I believe that under Biden’s leadership, U.S. development policy will do a better job of encouraging appropriate, effective and lasting innovations.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/152527/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Edward R Carr is the Climate Change Adaptation Panel Member of the Scientific and Technical Advisory Panel to the Global Environment Facility and a lead author of the upcoming Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. His research is funded by the United States Agency for International Development and the U.S. National Science Foundation.</span></em></p>The Trump White House questioned the value of foreign aid and neglected policies related to helping low-income countries. But US aid had already needed improvement.Edward R. Carr, Professor and Director, International Development, Community, and Environment, Clark UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1253662019-10-28T14:57:24Z2019-10-28T14:57:24ZAfrican countries are behind on progress towards poverty reduction goals<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298096/original/file-20191022-117981-ggwaej.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">African countries have an opportunity to reduce poverty with new policies</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In their annual meeting at the United Nations in 2005, world leaders agreed on a common economic <a href="http://mdgs.un.org/unsd/mdg/Host.aspx?Content=Indicators/OfficialList.htm">agenda</a>. This was to halve – between 1990 and 2015 – the proportion of the world’s population living on less than one dollar a day. It’s been nearly 15 years since this resolution. </p>
<p>The world has certainly seen economic progress but it is not even. And countries in Africa lag behind the global average.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.credit-suisse.com/corporate/en/research/research-institute/global-wealth-report.html">Global wealth</a> has more than doubled from US$170 trillion in 2000 to $360 trillion in 2019. Global wealth per adult is at a record high of $70,850. </p>
<p>Mean wealth per adult in Africa is $6,488. In Mozambique it is as low as $352.</p>
<p>The proportion of the world’s people living on less than two dollars a day (an updated measure of extreme poverty) has more than <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/poverty-decline-without-china?time=1981..2015">halved</a> from 35.9% in 1990 to 10% in 2015. But in sub-Saharan Africa the figure still stands at 41%, according to the <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2018/09/19/decline-of-global-extreme-poverty-continues-but-has-slowed-world-bank">World Bank</a>. The bank <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/poverty-and-shared-prosperity">estimates</a> that 87% of the world’s poorest people will live in the region by 2030 if the trends continue.</p>
<p>Life expectancy has been <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.IN">growing</a> by 16 weeks a year so that those born today are likely to live 20 years longer than a child born in 1960. In Africa, average life expectancy remained at a level that the rest of the world passed in 1974 and is <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.IN?locations=ZG">rising</a> at a snail’s pace. </p>
<p>The continent still <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-48674909">pays</a> up to 30 times more than the rest of the world for generic medicine, despite a world-wide <a href="https://www.marketwatch.com/story/prescription-drug-prices-arent-rising-theyre-falling-for-the-first-time-in-47-years-2019-03-12">decline</a> in drug prices. And energy prices in Africa are more than three times <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/18/perspectives/africa-affordable-electricity/index.html">higher</a> than in the United States. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/297634/original/file-20191018-56198-1ua5b0m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/297634/original/file-20191018-56198-1ua5b0m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/297634/original/file-20191018-56198-1ua5b0m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/297634/original/file-20191018-56198-1ua5b0m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/297634/original/file-20191018-56198-1ua5b0m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/297634/original/file-20191018-56198-1ua5b0m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/297634/original/file-20191018-56198-1ua5b0m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Graph global poverty rate, 1981 - 2015.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Our World in Data</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>African countries have missed important opportunities in the past two decades that could have ensured these graphs looked different.</p>
<h2>Interlocking problems: debt and aid</h2>
<p>In 2004 UK Prime Minister Tony Blair <a href="http://www.commissionforafrica.info/wp-content/uploads/2005-report/11-03-05_cr_report.pdf">initiated</a> the Commission for Africa, to “carefully study all the evidence available to find out what is working and what is not.” </p>
<p>The Commission’s main findings were:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The problems… are interlocking. They are vicious circles which reinforce one another. …Africa will never break out of the deadlock with piecemeal solutions and policy incoherence. They must be tackled together. To do that Africa requires a comprehensive ‘big push’ on many fronts at once; which requires a partnership between Africa and the developed world…. Africa is very unlikely to achieve the rapid growth in finance and human development necessary to halt or reverse its relative decline without a strong expansion in aid.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Blair then called for two simultaneous actions: <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/jun/07/hearafrica05.development">forgiving</a> the continent’s debt, and doubling development assistance. This call was partly heeded. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/october-2005/industrial-countries-write-africas-debt">Fourteen</a> African countries <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2005/jun/11/uk.g8">benefited</a> from the 2005 multilateral debt relief initiative. That relief <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2005/jul/01/uk.g8">saved</a> Nigeria – the region’s largest economy – $31 billion. A host of other countries benefited too, <a href="http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTDEBTDEPT/Resources/mdri_eng.pdf">ranging</a> from Benin ($690 million) to Ghana ($2.938 billion).</p>
<p>But these countries didn’t make the most of the relief they’d been given. <a href="https://www.cgdev.org/blog/chart-of-the-week-new-african-debt-crisis">Debt</a> in many African countries is on the rise again. What’s more concerning is that debt isn’t being incurred for useful purposes, such as plugging the infrastructure gap. Instead, according to an IMF <a href="https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/Policy-Papers/Issues/2018/03/22/pp021518macroeconomic-developments-and-prospects-in-lidcs">report</a>, the rise is being driven by corruption and mismanagement.</p>
<p>As for aid, since 2005 the flow to Africa has risen by 50%, reaching $49.27 billion in 2017. African countries <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/DT.ODA.ODAT.CD?locations=ZG">received</a> more than half a trillion dollars ($0.62 trillion) in aid in the decade and a half after Blair’s appeal.</p>
<p>However, the continent now <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/DT.ODA.ODAT.CD?locations=ZG">gets</a> less donor aid per recipient than most regions in the world: an average of 14 cents per person per day. This is because its rapidly <a href="https://www.prb.org/2018-world-population-data-sheet-with-focus-on-changing-age-structures/">rising</a> population size in recent decades is not being matched by the size of aid inflows.</p>
<p>Added to this is the fact that many African countries have failed to stem the flow of illicit money from the continent. An <a href="https://gfintegrity.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/gfi_afdb_iffs_and_the_problem_of_net_resource_transfers_from_africa_1980-2009-highres.pdf">estimated</a> $30.4 billion was transferred from African countries between 2000 to 2009.</p>
<p>Such outflows strip countries of desperately needed financial resources for investment in hospitals, schools and roads.</p>
<p>To stop this trend, Africa needs the help of advanced countries, because some of these countries have been and still serve as havens for illicit funds originating from repressive African regimes and despots. </p>
<p>In “Overcoming the Shadow Economy,” Joseph Stiglitz and Mark Pieth forcefully <a href="https://www8.gsb.columbia.edu/faculty/jstiglitz/sites/jstiglitz/files/Overcoming%20the%20Shadow%20Economy.pdf">argue</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In a globalised world, if there is any pocket of secrecy, funds will flow through that pocket. That is why the system of transparency has to be global. The US and EU are key in tipping the balance toward transparency, but this will only be the starting point: each country must play its role as a global citizen in order to shut down the shadow economy—and it is especially important that there emerge from the current secrecy havens some leaders to demonstrate that there are alternative models for growth and development.</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/125366/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Zuhumnan Dapel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>If trends continue, 87% of the world’s poorest people will live in sub-Saharan Africa by 2030.Zuhumnan Dapel, Consultant @ODIdev. Priors: IDRC Fellow at the Center for Global Development; Public Policy Fellow, Woodrow Wilson Center Washington DC. Twitter: @dapelzg, Scottish Institute for Research in EconomicsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1150682019-05-07T13:21:55Z2019-05-07T13:21:55ZWhy NGOs in Africa must respect village headmen and hierarchies<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/268376/original/file-20190409-2927-1w0f56i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Malawian villages operate according to strict hierarchies. NGOs can unsettle these.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ismail Mia/Flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Almost every global development body, from the World Bank to small, single-issue NGOs, claims to listen to or work with “the community”. In many African countries, and particularly in rural villages, this community engagement involves meeting and consulting with chiefs.</p>
<p>Yet even practitioners who go to great lengths to engage with chiefs often treat “the chieftaincy” as homogeneous. In this view, chiefs are either dedicated developers with the exactly the same interests as the (equally homogenous) community, or they are barriers to development who must be educated.</p>
<p>But how do these chiefs or headmen view the NGOs? And how do the NGOs’ efforts hinder or help the chiefs in consolidating their own power? In <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17531055.2019.1599196">a recent study</a> I explored these questions. I examined how traditional leaders in several Malawian villages attempted to use NGOs’ presence to solidify or change their relationships with their constituents and how NGOs influenced what “development” meant to villagers. </p>
<p>These are important issues to consider in the context of Malawi. Small, foreign-funded NGOs dominate the country’s rural areas. The nation is <a href="https://www.oxfam.org/en/research/dangerous-divide-state-inequality-malawi">one of the world’s poorest</a> and <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5321384/">40%</a> of its recurrent spending is provided by donors, <a href="https://sfaajournals.net/doi/abs/10.17730/0018-7259.76.2.121">often distributed through small NGOs</a>.</p>
<p>These organisations maintain office in areas that are too remote for larger NGOs. They claim that their competitive advantage lies in their closeness to the community – and the village’s chieftaincy. This means liaising with the traditional authority: a leader who controls hundreds or even thousands of villages, each with their own village headmen. Traditional authorities are typically wealthy and urbane. Village headmen, on the other hand, are as poor as their constituents. </p>
<p>I found that the mere presence of NGOs, no matter their size or aims, inadvertently reduced the legitimacy of local village headmen, often through encouraging villagers to link development to wealth and westernisation.</p>
<h2>Headmens’ experiences</h2>
<p>I used the pseudonym “Vsawa” as a collective name for the villages I observed. There, two small NGOs maintained permanent offices and two others had full-time staff. These organisations were wealthy compared to the communities in which they operated and, through things like donor visits, these NGOs inadvertently implied that development was gifted into the community by (western) outsiders.</p>
<p>This was challenging for headmen, who often maintained their legitimacy by presenting development as occurring through communal cohesion under their leadership.</p>
<p>For instance, one village headman attempted to persuade his constituents that he had special influence over the NGOs. He attended every NGO meeting, told his villagers that the development projects he organised were inspired by the NGO and took trees from its forestry project to plant in front of his house. This tactic was initially successful. But then the NGO failed to extend a no-interest micro-credit programme into his village. This dented his authority among his constituents.</p>
<p>Another headmen took an entirely different tack. He did not participate in events with the staff of a similar small NGO that had a permanent office in his village and would not reward villagers who worked with the NGO to “develop” his village. This approach backfired when villagers attempted to abduct an NGO employee accused of witchcraft. The NGO manager publicly scolded the headman and used her superior connections with the government and police to have some of the alleged kidnappers arrested.</p>
<p>As one villager told me:</p>
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<p>The chief was angry at Katherine (the NGO manager) so he tried to stop her, but she shouted at him and he was afraid. Now the people are angry and we go to the chief but the chief is quiet, so we go to Katherine but then she shouts… she shouts to … to the MP and to the government … The NGO wanted to show us that the old ways were over and that Malawi is developing now …</p>
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<h2>Village life altered</h2>
<p>What is striking about these and other stories I gathered during my study is how unimportant the specific development projects’ stated goals were to their impact upon intra-village understandings and hierarchies. Simply put, it didn’t matter what work they were doing: their very presence affected village life by altering what development meant and implying that headmen could not provide it.</p>
<p>Equally important, each NGO had permission from what it understood to be “the chief” to operate in “the community”, but did not understand how power and authority was held and diffused through the chieftaincy.</p>
<p>These findings are important as small NGOs and private donors grow increasingly important to rural African development. Such organisations need to be aware of how they influence the values and understandings of the communities they operate within.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/115068/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Fieldwork for this project took place while Thomas McNamara was a PhD student at the University of Melbourne.</span></em></p>The mere presence of NGOs, no matter their size or aims, inadvertently reduced the legitimacy of local village headmen.Thomas McNamara, Lecturer, La Trobe University, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1071982018-11-21T02:14:16Z2018-11-21T02:14:16ZIf there’s one thing Pacific nations don’t need, it’s yet another infrastructure investment bank<p>If Scott Morrison was looking for a way to prove Australia is a good neighbour to Pacific nations, he could hardly have chosen a worse option. </p>
<p>Looking for a policy to combat both <a href="https://theconversation.com/soft-power-goes-hard-chinas-economic-interest-in-the-pacific-comes-with-strings-attached-103765">China</a> and his <a href="https://theconversation.com/labor-is-making-big-promises-for-a-pacific-development-bank-but-questions-remain-105853">domestic Opposition</a>, the Australian prime minister last week announced a plan involving billions of dollars for Pacific nations.</p>
<p>Billions of dollars in loans, that is. </p>
<p>He promised A$2 billion for an <a href="https://theconversation.com/morrison-to-unveil-broad-suite-of-measures-to-boost-australias-influence-in-the-pacific-106557">Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific</a> to invest in projects focusing on the telecommunications, energy, transport and water sector. And another A$1 billion to Efic, Australia’s government-backed Export Finance and Insurance Corporation, for concessional credit to Pacific projects. </p>
<p>The plan is driven in part by a desire to combat China’s economic diplomacy in the Pacific. There is concern that island nations will end up indebted to Chinese creditors. </p>
<p>So why would Morrison want to offer Pacific Island nations even more debt?</p>
<h2>Chinese cheques</h2>
<p>The AIFFP has rightly been called a response to Chinese development finance in the Pacific. This is mostly from the Chinese Development Bank, not the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), which China initiated in 2013. Fiji, Samoa and Vanuatu are the only Pacific island nations that have so far joined the AIIB, and they have not received any loans. However, the Cook Islands, Papua New Guinea and Tonga have expressed an intent to join.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/soft-power-goes-hard-chinas-economic-interest-in-the-pacific-comes-with-strings-attached-103765">Soft power goes hard: China's economic interest in the Pacific comes with strings attached</a>
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<p>As with many initiatives, the devil is in the detail of the Australian response.</p>
<p>Morrison has already indicated there will be no increase in Australia’s already <a href="http://www.devpolicy.org/will-scomos-pacific-step-up-be-an-aid-budget-step-back-20181109/">stingy aid budget</a>. Given his criticism of multilateral organisations as “<a href="https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/scott-morrison-to-shift-foreign-aid-focus-from-unlinked-bodies-to-australias-neighbours/news-story/9d93fe3308a2f038ec9a5f71a0348a94">useless</a>”, it seems likely the AIFFP’s A$2 billion will come from diverting contributions that would have gone to United Nations agencies or other programs for low-income countries not in the Pacific. </p>
<p>While a greater focus on the Pacific is welcome given the region’s needs, it should not come at the expense of other countries with equally pressing challenges. Further, the shift from grants to loans is not welcome news. </p>
<p>Apart from an interest-free loan to Indonesia following the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that killed about 170,000 Indonesians, Australian aid has long been fully grant-based. That has been one of its key strengths. </p>
<p>It has left debt-based development financing to the multilateral development banks it helps fund, in particular the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the new AIIB.</p>
<h2>Debt concerns</h2>
<p>The World Bank and International Monetary Fund’s joint Development Committee <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2018/10/13/world-bank-imf-annual-meetings-2018-development-committee-communique">warned</a> about debt concerns for developing nations last month. Debt vulnerabilities risked “reversing the benefits of earlier debt relief initiatives”, it said in a communique from the annual meetings of its parent organisations held in Bali last month.</p>
<p>At the meetings, it was clear the IMF was more concerned about debt than the World Bank. Indeed the World Bank and its affiliates were successful in gaining a very large capital increase – US$13 billion in paid-in capital from member states, with the aim that it increase lending to US$100 billion a year by 2030.</p>
<p>The World Bank also had a large capital increase after the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, as did other development banks. These increases were not just in response to the crisis but also underpinned by concerns about competition from China and other emerging powers.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/for-pacific-island-nations-rising-sea-levels-are-a-bigger-security-concern-than-rising-chinese-influence-102403">For Pacific Island nations, rising sea levels are a bigger security concern than rising Chinese influence</a>
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<p>With the AIIB and the New Development Bank (established by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa in 2015), there are now about 27 multilateral development banks. </p>
<p>Further, many countries have development finance institutions like Australia’s planned AIFFP, and export-import banks like Australia’s Efic. On top of that, private finance is at record highs. </p>
<p>The case for more debt-based development financing is just not there.</p>
<h2>Pacific situation</h2>
<p>Of 13 Pacific island countries, six are already considered at <a href="http://www.devpolicy.org/is-china-engaged-in-debt-trap-diplomacy-20181108/">high risk of debt distress</a>. In a couple of cases is that due to Chinese finance. In other cases the multilateral development banks are the biggest creditors. Four other countries are at moderate risk of debt distress. </p>
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<p>Adding to those debts is not a wise or decent thing for Australia to do. Even the government’s former minister for international development and the Pacific, Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/nov/17/concetta-fierravanti-wells-questions-morrisons-approach-in-pacific">warned</a> about debt. </p>
<p>Most Pacific island communities have limited potential to develop along standard capitalist lines. Debt-based development requires projects with substantial economic rates of return and strong cash flows, which is difficult in small island states. Large hard infrastructure projects are risky, as Australia has learned in <a href="https://www.vilatimes.com/2018/02/02/australian-funded-vanuatu-roads-project-rated-poor-with-millions-over-budget/">Vanuatu</a>, and need to be climate change proofed.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/for-pacific-island-nations-rising-sea-levels-are-a-bigger-security-concern-than-rising-chinese-influence-102403">For Pacific Island nations, rising sea levels are a bigger security concern than rising Chinese influence</a>
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<p>The AIFFP reflects a new global mantra focused on replacing aid with lending money for infrastructure. It is not responding any demand from the Pacific. Core parts of the Sustainable Development Goals like health, education and climate sustainability are being ignored. It remains to be seen if anyone in the region embraces it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/107198/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Susan Engel is a volunteer with indigo foundation, a development NGO that does not receive any government funding. </span></em></p>The strength of Australian aid is that it has been fully grant-based. Offering Pacific nations debt-based development financing instead is no way to win friends.Susan Engel, Senior Lecturer, Politics and International Studies, University of WollongongLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1009472018-08-17T10:19:28Z2018-08-17T10:19:28ZLost and found in upstate New York: ‘Lost Boys’ nonprofits latch onto a new objective closer to home<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/231374/original/file-20180809-30458-10idyn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Many people in South Sudan live in camps for the internally displaced after years of war.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/South-Sudan-Refugee-Chief/511ebc9a20f447b49c215cd7343d99bc/25/0">AP Photo/Sam Mednick</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Nonprofits help immigrants and refugees who settle in the U.S. in many ways. They encourage naturalized newcomers to become citizens, for example, and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-017-9895-4">advocate for more humane detention</a> conditions.</p>
<p>We are scholars who research <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=a8EwKzoAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">why people give their money</a> to, and volunteer for, what they believe to be <a href="https://hubertproject.org/hubert-material/433/">good causes</a>, including <a href="https://en-socialwork.tau.ac.il/profile/aoreg1_14">giving out of grief</a>. We became interested in what happens when refugees themselves start their own nonprofits.</p>
<p>The organizations we studied began as personal projects of the founders. Most of these groups support educational efforts in the childhood villages of the Sudanese exiles known as <a href="https://www.rescue.org/article/lost-boys-sudan">Lost Boys</a> in what now is South Sudan. As the <a href="https://www.npr.org/2018/07/24/630907144/u-s-refugee-program-in-danger-amid-steep-drop-in-refugee-arrivals-advocates-warn">political climate around immigration and refugees</a> intensifies, we find that these groups are beginning to play new roles as platforms that highlight the contributions refugees are making to their local communities here in the U.S.</p>
<h2>Lost Boys’ international nonprofits</h2>
<p>The Lost Boys of Sudan were traumatically separated from their families as children during the country’s second civil war which started in the late 1980s and went until 2005. They lived in refugee camps in neighboring Ethiopia and Kenya for a decade.</p>
<p><a href="https://uic.pure.elsevier.com/en/publications/the-lost-boys-of-sudan-functional-and-behavioral-health-of-unacco">In 2000, some 3,800 Lost Boys were resettled in the U.S.</a> through a program implemented by the U.S. government and United Nations Human Rights Commission. Lost Boys were <a href="https://www.rescue.org/article/lost-boys-sudan">resettled in dozens of U.S. cities</a>, including Seattle and Boston, as well as in cities in upstate New York like Syracuse and Rochester. </p>
<p>Many of these resettled refugees are now adult U.S. citizens who have returned to visit to their homeland in <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-14069082">South Sudan</a>. Their experiences on these trips sparked an interest in starting several small international nonprofits.</p>
<p>For example, <a href="http://www.byuradio.org/episode/7c757490-4f1c-43af-9464-e0697a8762e7?playhead=1213&autoplay=true">Sebastian Maroundit and Mathon Noi</a>, two cousins who fled Sudan as children and now live in upstate New York, founded the nonprofit <a href="http://www.bmiss.org/">Building Minds in South Sudan</a>.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/231368/original/file-20180809-30446-1j6ll1n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/231368/original/file-20180809-30446-1j6ll1n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/231368/original/file-20180809-30446-1j6ll1n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=774&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231368/original/file-20180809-30446-1j6ll1n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=774&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231368/original/file-20180809-30446-1j6ll1n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=774&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231368/original/file-20180809-30446-1j6ll1n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231368/original/file-20180809-30446-1j6ll1n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/231368/original/file-20180809-30446-1j6ll1n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=973&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Cousins Mathon Noi and Sebastian Maroundit arrived in the U.S. as Lost Boy refugees.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://sweetimagephotography.com/">Sweet Image Photography/Marisa Poselovich</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
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<p>Both were less than 10 years old when war came to their village and separated them from their families. They fled Sudan to refugee camps where they spent years before getting settled in Rochester.</p>
<p>After their first trip to South Sudan in 2007 to visit their surviving family members, they returned wanting to help their village and created Building Minds. </p>
<p>Its <a href="http://www.bmiss.org/mission/">mission</a> is “to provide educational opportunities for villagers in the Republic of South Sudan.” Like many small nonprofits, Building Minds raises money by tapping into donations from private individuals, as well as local Rotary clubs and churches.</p>
<p>The nonprofit built, at the cost of about US$304,000 fundraised over the course of several years, a <a href="http://www.bmiss.org/ajoung-primary-school/">new school in 2015</a> that serves over 900 boys and girls in their former village and works in conjunction with government to run it. It is currently the largest primary school in South Sudan.</p>
<p>It’s just one of several similar nonprofits based in upstate New York, all of which are volunteer-run and small-scale. Most rely on annual budgets of less than $250,000, which average around $50,000. Like Building Minds, these nonprofits tend to be fairly personal projects, often with only the founders and board members doing the work and no paid staff.</p>
<p>Other examples include <a href="http://hopeforariang.org/">HOPE for Ariang Foundation</a> and <a href="http://www.southsudaninitiatives.org/">South Sudan Initiatives</a>, which are both based in Syracuse. These international nonprofits started by Lost Boys are good examples of a tradition of giving sometimes called “<a href="https://www.migrationpolicy.org/research/diaspora-philanthropy-private-giving-and-public-policy">diaspora philanthropy</a>,” the transfer of private donations back to a country of origin for immigrants and their descendants. </p>
<p>This form of giving is growing <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/pad.1787">increasingly important</a> as <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11266-017-9846-0">governments spend less on development aid</a> and their assistance priorities change.</p>
<h2>An obligation to support education</h2>
<p>These organizations mostly serve Lost Boys’ childhood villages in what now is South Sudan through education projects, including building schools and teacher training. About a tenth of the 105 small international nonprofits active in upstate New York registered with the IRS were founded by Lost Boys. </p>
<p>We found that Lost Boys start these international nonprofits out of an obligation they feel to remember and commemorate their families in South Sudan through development projects in their home villages. Establishing a nonprofit to serve their homelands became a way in which they make meaning of their <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1741-3729.2008.00513.x">own losses and struggles</a>, and those of their families. </p>
<p>The transition from being a Lost Boy refugee to a U.S. citizen, who is educated and employed, includes emotional struggles such as depression or anxiety, and the stress of not knowing whether or not their families in Sudan survived. </p>
<p>The Lost Boy founders consider education as a key to their emotional survival. That’s reflected in the goals of many of the nonprofits these Lost Boys founded: The opportunity to gain an education is woven into all aspects of the nonprofits including their mission statements and development priorities. </p>
<h2>A new role?</h2>
<p>Amid the Trump administration’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-travel-ban-in-numbers-why-families-and-refugees-lose-big-99064">restrictions on immigration and refugee arrivals</a>, these nonprofits are beginning to embrace a broader objective: highlighting the contributions that the Lost Boys, and refugees more generally, make to their local communities.</p>
<p>In particular, through local speaking engagements Lost Boys not only are garnering support for their international projects, but are sharing their stories to audiences that need to witness how a refugee has made a good life for himself in their community.</p>
<p>This kind of message from refugees will show more Americans that refugees value the opportunities that they have had in the U.S. “What I have learned in my life in the U.S. is that education is life,” Maroundit explained. He believes that “education could lift the children in my village as my education in America has done for me.” </p>
<p>Through the work of these international nonprofits, the Lost Boys who founded them and their local supporters are poised to inform their communities about the contributions refugees are making in the U.S.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/100947/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>On top of boosting South Sudan’s development, these groups are showcasing what refugees can accomplish in the US.Susan Appe, Assistant Professor of Public Administration, University at Albany, State University of New YorkAyelet Oreg, Ph.D. Candidate, Binghamton University, State University of New YorkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1011452018-08-16T13:51:27Z2018-08-16T13:51:27ZBeating poverty needs partnerships and collaboration – not just money<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/231477/original/file-20180810-2906-1g3no32.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A community built tree nursery in Chikwawa District, Malawi is one example of sustainability in action.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Deepa Pullanikkatil</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Nigeria recently surpassed India to become the country with <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2018/06/26/africa/nigeria-overtakes-india-extreme-poverty-intl/index.html">the highest number</a> of people living in extreme poverty: 87 million. Nigeria is oil rich and boasts Africa’s fastest growing economy. Yet six of its people fall into extreme poverty <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2018/06/26/africa/nigeria-overtakes-india-extreme-poverty-intl/index.html">every minute</a>.</p>
<p>This story isn’t unique to Nigeria. It’s echoed in other resource-rich countries like the <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2016/04/18/africa/looting-machine-tom-burgis-africa/index.html">Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola</a> where an exploitative elite and multinational companies keep wealth from reaching the majority of citizens. By 2030, it’s estimated that <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2013/05/29/africas-challenge-to-end-extreme-poverty-by-2030-too-slow-or-too-far-behind">82% of the world’s poorest people</a> will live in Africa.</p>
<p>This is the continent’s paradox: vast natural resources and mineral reserves alongside extreme poverty.</p>
<p>Historically, poverty has been predominantly dealt with as a lack of material resources or an income deprivation issue. Development work has focused on pushing resources to poor communities. Many have criticised the availability of “free money” though international aid, which they say has created a “<a href="https://www.lejournalinternational.fr/Foreign-aid-is-hurting-not-helping-Sub-Saharan-Africa_a2085.html">dependency syndrome</a>”, dishonest procurement and white elephant projects. Aid work has also been accused of fostering <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/africa-in-focus/2017/04/20/making-africa-great-again-reducing-aid-dependency/">paternalism rather than partnership</a>.</p>
<p>The reality is that poverty is about <a href="http://amartya.nl/why-poverty/">more than just money</a>. If money alone were the solution, poverty would have ended: more than $50 billion was given <a href="https://www.oecd.org/dac/stats/documentupload/Africa-Development-Aid-at-a-Glance.pdf">as overseas development assistance to Africa in 2017 alone</a>.</p>
<p>Without contextual knowledge, education and adaptation, foreign or imposed practices or resources cause new sets of problems. This is seen again and again across countries that depend on aid. For example, where food poverty was causing under-nutrition in parts <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landia/article/PIIS2213-8587(17)30432-1/fulltext">of Malawi</a>, financial aid has alleviated it. But that problem is quickly being replaced by <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landia/article/PIIS2213-8587(17)30432-1/fulltext">diabetes and hypertension</a> – because of a narrow financial solution to a complex problem.</p>
<p>We argue that tackling poverty requires a different focus, rather than just money. It requires partnerships and practices that promote learning, particularly in relation to cultural and self knowledge. Having communities identify their own problems, then collaborate to find solutions, is also crucial. Money has a role to play in partnerships, but projects shouldn’t default to depending solely on it.</p>
<h2>Driven communities</h2>
<p>Many of the factors that are blamed for contributing to poverty are not measurable in dollar terms or connected to income. These include people’s lack of choices, restriction of freedom, lack of skills, gender castes and barriers. </p>
<p>Understanding these issues and their complexities requires looking at poverty through a <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/311943048_The_Theoretical_Impact_of_the_Sustainability_Lens">sustainability lens</a>. This is a perspective that focuses on ethical and innovative ways to look at and use resources, share knowledge, and build community to affect positive change. </p>
<p>Our work with the <a href="https://sustainablefuturesinafrica.com/">Sustainable Futures in Africa Network</a> has shown the importance of this lens. We’re an interdisciplinary collective of researchers, educators, and communities of practice that aims to build understanding, research, and practice in <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800915003158">socio-ecological sustainability</a> (which recognises the interconnection between social and ecological systems)
in Africa. </p>
<p>We work from the understanding that because poverty is multifaceted, solutions to alleviate it must <a href="https://theconversation.com/an-integrated-sustainable-fix-is-key-to-solving-africas-energy-woes-48256">be multifaceted</a>, too.</p>
<p>A number of the community projects we work with are engaged in poverty reduction practices but don’t focus solely on generating income. These projects are driven by communities on their own with existing resources; they rely on their own abilities and efforts that are not externally funded. </p>
<p>One example is <a href="https://sustainablefuturesinafrica.com/2018/07/11/a-short-and-sweet-visit-to-the-sfa-hub-kampala/">ECOaction</a>, which works in a slum community on the outskirts of Kampala in Uganda. Residents largely rely on collecting and selling discarded plastic bottles collected from across the city for small amounts of money.</p>
<p>With no resource other than time and vision, residents have built a community hall from <a href="https://sustainablefuturesinafrica.com/2018/07/11/a-short-and-sweet-visit-to-the-sfa-hub-kampala/">recycled water bottles</a> and an urban garden that grows food for residents and a chicken farm. Colourful murals and sculpture can be found around every corner. </p>
<p>In Botswana, the Sustainable Futures in Africa team is working with a community in Mmadinare to develop a project that will protect their farm land from wild elephants. This will not rely on, or generate, external funding. But it will protect the farmers’ and the wild animals’ interests.</p>
<p>There are other ways to build strong sustainable communities without external financial resources. In Taba Padang, a village in Indonesia, <a href="http://www.eco-business.com/news/in-rural-indonesia-a-village-learns-to-embrace-its-forest-through-sustainability/">sustainable community forestry</a> is helping improve human wellbeing. There’s also <a href="https://www.ugandaletsgotravel.com/uganda/top-experiences/responsible-tourism/boomu-african-village/">Boomu African Village</a> in Uganda, where a women’s group participates in eco-tourism and invests back into the community. They have built a nursery school and trained other residents in their village to get involved in eco-tourism. </p>
<p>Other self-reliance projects centre on health. For example <a href="https://journals.co.za/content/journal/10520/EJC-ee9eff20">in Lesotho</a>, volunteers participate in community home-based health care and fill the gap in the community health care chain.</p>
<h2>A new lens</h2>
<p>There is, of course, no one-size-fits-all solution that will end poverty. But aid in the form of donated money, from one place to another, is culturally, practically, and ethically problematic. </p>
<p>Money is not the currency of well-being, sustainability and community cohesion. More often, it’s a tool for influence and power dynamics that will favour the creditor. That’s why partnerships that rely on different types of resources and bring people together to design and act on context-relevant solutions can be such powerful drivers of change. That’s why for resource rich Africa, promoting self reliance would be key to eliminating poverty. </p>
<p><em>This article was co-authored by Dr Deepa Pullanikkatil, who recently completed a residency at the University of Glasgow funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, UK. She is the co-founder of Abundance (www.abundanceworldwide.org).</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/101145/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mia Perry receives funding from The UK Research and Innovation Council and the Scottish Funding Council. </span></em></p>Without contextual knowledge, education and adaptation, foreign or imposed practices or resources cause new sets of problems.Mia Perry, Senior Lecturer, Education, Arts, Literacies, University of GlasgowLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1008522018-08-08T14:48:29Z2018-08-08T14:48:29ZNorth-South research partnerships must break old patterns for real change<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230393/original/file-20180802-136661-1fc8x4j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Listening and learning during a Sustainable Futures in Action meeting in Kampala, Uganda.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Molly Gilmour </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Since <a href="https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/the-future-of-development">the 1940s</a> major world powers like the US, the UK and the United Nations have made moves to spread their scientific, economic, industrial, and human rights progress to countries and regions that are seen as less developed, vulnerable or deprived in one way or another.</p>
<p>This has taken the form of a substantial, varied – and largely well-intentioned – contribution of huge financial and human resources from the global north to the global south. Today the flow of aid money, resources, and increasing global morality and mobility is building ever broader pipelines between these different regions.</p>
<p>And yet from where we stand as individual researchers, with funding and
passion to share, we see an unsettling and consistent characteristic of this
development history. The global north has experienced a gradual increase of economic strength and environmental protection, through jobs, career development, cheap goods and services. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, the global south has undergone a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/mar/26/land-degradation-is-undermining-human-wellbeing-un-report-warns">sustained</a> <a href="http://imrc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Migration-Urbanisation-and-Food-Security-in-Cities-of-the-Global-South-Conference-Report.pdf">degradation</a> of autonomy, fertile land, food security and cultural literacies. All this has occurred through an imposition of foreign ideas, materials, ideologies and knowledge systems. </p>
<p>Despite all the good intentions, and the promises and provision of funding and expertise, global challenges persist and in some cases, have increased. As academics in social justice research, we are working in relation to a world of increasing social fragmentation and ecological vulnerability. This is happening “on our watch”; at the hands of our methods and practices and paradigms of research and professional practice. </p>
<p>That’s why we’re trying to do things differently. The <a href="http://www.sustainablefuturesinafrica.com/">Sustainable Futures in Africa Network</a>, funded by the Global Challenges Research Fund, was formed in 2016. Our aim is to resist becoming another project within this trajectory of north to south research and development. We’re working to resist “business-as-usual”. The network has hubs in Nigeria, Uganda, Botswana, Malawi and the UK. </p>
<p>What we’re doing is taking a completely different approach to research by ditching old techniques and approaches and breaking research moulds that have become entrenched over the past eight decades. For example, we’re pioneering ways of engaging with communities that allow them to contribute their traditional knowledge and co-design the research agenda.</p>
<p>Our practices allow us to genuinely and ethically communicate and collaborate with communities, colleagues, and stakeholders. This is especially crucial when it comes to different knowledge systems. For example, in Nigeria soil scientists are engaging with spiritual beliefs that inform communities of the meaning of gold found in their soil. These ideas conflict with what is known in terms of Western science, and yet they serve a real purpose, have real impacts, and are “true” and “factful” to the communities that live according to such beliefs.</p>
<p>Different approaches are imperative if development initiatives are to buck the worrying trends that have cemented inequality and lessened sustainability.</p>
<h2>How we work</h2>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/global-academic-collaboration-a-new-form-of-colonisation-61382">Collaboration</a> between the global north and global south too often follows a tick-box approach. A named global south partner ticks a box to indicate that a project is complying with Official Development Assistance criteria. A local translator ticks a box to indicate that local people are being consulted. A meeting in the country of a Southern partner indicates that the work must be collaborative in nature. </p>
<p>Typically the results will confirm the (Northern) “expert’s” hypothesis and support <a href="http://trumpeter.athabascau.ca/index.php/trumpet/article/viewFile/358/563">monocultures of the mind</a>. What should be true collaboration, then, results in everyone thinking the same way.</p>
<p>Much formal funded research conducted in the name of development and social justice begins with the great promise of expertise and resources. This merely serves the validation and purpose of the “expert”, a person who is typically from the global north or a university setting.</p>
<p>We do things differently. We begin by acknowledging our own implications in the issues we address: we ask how <em>our own</em> practices, assumptions and behaviours contribute to the very inequities and issues we seek to improve. We prioritise creating a safe and honest common ground where new knowledges can be shared and new solutions can be co-designed.</p>
<p>For example, <a href="http://web.monitor.co.ug/Supplement/2018/07/AWOC072020118.pdf">in Uganda</a> we engaged in fieldwork to study water and food security issues using a “no method” approach with no predetermined research design. This meant no questionnaire or sampling technique. Instead the team spent time with families in their homes, listened to them and allowed the communities to direct the research enquiry. </p>
<p>Our ideas and expectations were confounded. The extreme problems these communities faced were largely due to the misplaced aid and intervention of previous projects. By listening, and bringing our own knowledge to the table, we were able to understand these communities as complex spaces of social, cultural and ecological needs.</p>
<p>Another difference lies in the way the network shares insights with its stakeholders. There are no shiny reports crammed with tables and graphs, sent to external offices so that a box is ticked. Rather, policy makers, researchers, and community members are brought together in common spaces – such as a community hall constructed entirely from recycled plastic water bottles and a timber frame in an urban slum in Kampala – so they can engage differently with the factors, people and places at play in a given issue. </p>
<h2>Change is crucial</h2>
<p>These experiences have proved to us that decisive changes to the traditional methodologies of collaboration are necessary. Without change, the trajectory of growth and development in the world will remain consistent with what’s happened over the past 80 years: the north will keep getting richer and the south, poorer. It’s time to abandon well-trodden paths and forge new approaches.</p>
<p><em>This article was co-authored by Dr Deepa Pullanikkatil, who recently completed a residency at the University of Glasgow funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, UK. She is the co-founder of Abundance (www.abundanceworldwide.org).</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/100852/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mia Perry receives funding from the Global Challenges Research Fund within the UK Research and Innovation Institution and the Scottish Funding Council</span></em></p>Without change, the trajectory of growth and development in the world will remain consistent with that of the past 80 years.Mia Perry, Senior Lecturer, Education, Arts, Literacies, University of GlasgowLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/979422018-06-10T20:11:05Z2018-06-10T20:11:05ZWhy economic migrants are heroes<p>French President Emmanuel Macron likes heroes. Mamadou Gassama <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-44275776">saved a child’s life</a> by scaling four floors bare-handed. The president rewarded him by legalising his stay in France, inviting him to apply for naturalisation and offering him a role in a fire brigade.</p>
<p>That decision provoked unexpected reactions. The far right welcomed it, so as to emphasise that French nationality should be deserved, and that Gassama was deserving “unlike others”. On the left, some philosophers fear that heroism will become a condition for legalising migrants’ status.</p>
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<p>While motivated by opposite beliefs, both reactions assume that most migrants are not heroes.</p>
<p>But what is a hero? If Macron really likes heroes, shouldn’t he revise his view of what he calls “economic migrants”?</p>
<h2>What is a hero?</h2>
<p>Ethically, a heroic act is defined as an act of high moral value that is not morally obligatory. Such an act is also called “supererogatory” from the medieval Latin <em>super-erogatio</em>, which means “giving additionally” – more than is required.</p>
<p>Gassama’s act clearly meets both criteria. What he did – saving a life – is of high moral value but not morally obligatory. While in France, there is a legal obligation to assist persons in danger, in this instance it did not apply to passers-by who had no means of reaching the fourth floor from which the child was suspended.</p>
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<p>The question of means is essential. Once Gassama joins the fire brigade, his acts will still be of high moral value, but will not be heroic. Not only will saving lives be his duty, but also he will have swivel ladders and other equipment to do the job. The fact that he was able to save a child “bare-handed” is important for the moral qualification of his action.</p>
<p>We understand why President Macron likes heroes. Doing much good with a few resources is highly praiseworthy. If Gassama is a hero, are there other migrants who save lives “bare-handed”?</p>
<h2>Fighting poverty “bare-handed”</h2>
<p>Mamoudou Gassama is one of those migrants whom President Macron describes as “economic migrants”, as they come from a poor country. Yet, they are praiseworthy for a form of <em>collective heroism</em>.</p>
<p>Starting with very few resources from the outset, and facing numerous obstacles on the way, these migrants are contributing to development and poverty reduction. According to World Bank, migrant remittances to low and middle-income countries reached <a href="http://www.banquemondiale.org/fr/news/press-release/2018/04/23/record-high-remittances-to-low-and-middle-income-countries-in-2017">US$466 billion in 2017</a> and continues to rise.</p>
<p>This US$466 billion is of high value. It is as if the migrants had collected more money in a year than the five richest entrepreneurs in the world (Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Bernard Arnault and Mark Zuckerberg, according to <em>Forbes</em>) have amassed in their whole lives. Except that the migrants repeat this achievement every year and send these five big fortunes to low- and middle-income countries.</p>
<p>The moral value of remittances has long been discredited by neo-Marxist theories, the claim being that the money are simply for consumption. But we know today that migration and remittances are a powerful lever for development and poverty reduction. Economists Richard Adams and John Page, for example, have shown that a 10 percent increase in migration <a href="http://essays.ssrc.org/remittances_anthology/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/Topic_13_Adams_Page.pdf">reduces poverty by 2 percent</a>, i.e. the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day.</p>
<p>Regarding heroism, two simple figures can be kept in mind: <strong>less than 3 percent</strong> of the world’s population do <strong>three times better</strong> than all the powerful governments of the North put together.</p>
<p>Migrants are responsible for the largest monetary flows into low and middle-income countries, with the exception of direct foreign investment (FDI). As the figure below shows, migrants’ remittances have exceeded official development aid (ODA) since 1996. Migrants’ financial contributions are three times bigger than those of governments.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/221043/original/file-20180530-120487-j8ar7a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/221043/original/file-20180530-120487-j8ar7a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/221043/original/file-20180530-120487-j8ar7a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/221043/original/file-20180530-120487-j8ar7a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/221043/original/file-20180530-120487-j8ar7a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/221043/original/file-20180530-120487-j8ar7a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/221043/original/file-20180530-120487-j8ar7a.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p>Are migrants’ financial contributions made “bare-handed”? Perhaps not, but the money is earned in conditions where discrimination, exploitation and over-qualification in employment is higher than among non-migrants. Moreover, migrants born in countries of the South have migrated, in the case of more than half of them, to <a href="http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/migration/publications/populationfacts/docs/MigrationPopFacts20175.pdf">other countries of the South</a> where wages are lower than in the countries of the North.</p>
<h2>Treating heroes as “the world’s misery”?</h2>
<p>When their prowess are not being filmed, Emmanuel Macron calls poor migrants like Mamoudou Gassama “economic migrants” and says he cannot “welcome” them.</p>
<p>He echoes the words spoken 30 years ago by Michel Rocard (a former prime minister who served under President François Mitterrand from 1988 to 1991) who said, “We cannot welcome all the world’s misery”. Since then, the word <em>misery</em> is repeatedly used by political leaders, over and over, without blushing. Publicly. In all media. As if migrants from poor countries either could not hear or were too unsophisticated to feel offended. As if the world was obviously divided into those who “welcome” by birth and those who are unsophisticated by birth.</p>
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<p>The expression “economic migrant” is less brutal, but it is inaccurate.</p>
<p>Usually, “economic migration” refers to the kind of residence permit (related to work) not to the motivation of the permit holders. Whether those holding the permits came to work in France to be close to the Eiffel Tower or to feed their children is something that migration statistics don’t take into account. What should be taken into account is that in France, red tape makes work permits hard to obtain. Only 10 percent of stay permits are given for economic reasons.</p>
<p>President Macron does not seem interested in statistical data and migration studies. He would have learned, however, that migration is not a threat to world security, as he often say, but a way to double world GDP. Conversely, preventing economic migration is a way to leave <a href="https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.25.3.83">trillion-dollar bills on the sidewalk</a>, as the development economist Michael Clemens has put it. The gains from open borders would be about the same as the gains from a <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1094202512000415">“growth miracle”</a> to use John Kennan’s expression. Even the most pessimistic estimates confirm that if borders were to be opened, the worldwide average income per worker would rise <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10887-017-9153-z">by 12 percent in the short term and by 52 percent in the long term</a>.</p>
<p>Mamoudou Gassama’s prowess illustrates the gains from mobility. Without obstacles, he managed to climb up bare-handed to save a child. With our migration policies, we have chosen to create obstacles every step of the way. Those who in spite of all the obstacles still manage to save children are surely heroes.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This article was translated from French by Equal Times editors and <a href="https://www.equaltimes.org/why-economic-migrants-are-heroes">published on June 6</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/97942/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Speranta Dumitru ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>What is a hero? If President Macron really likes heroes, shouldn’t he revise his idea of what he calls “economic migrants”?Speranta Dumitru, Associate professor, Université Paris CitéLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/943712018-04-12T14:11:20Z2018-04-12T14:11:20ZWhy the world’s poorest countries don’t always get the foreign aid they need<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213227/original/file-20180404-189807-uyhuoi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A UN aid agency distributes free mosquito nets in Ethiopia.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA-EFE</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Foreign aid, or official development assistance, is controversial. The expectation is that it should benefit the most vulnerable countries but this is not always the case.</p>
<p>In 2016, only about <a href="http://www.oecd.org/dac/development-aid-rises-again-in-2016-but-flows-to-poorest-countries-dip.htm">19.8% of traditional aid</a> went to the world’s least developed countries. This was <a href="http://stats.oecd.org/qwids/#?x=2&y=6&f=3:51,4:1,1:26,5:3,7:2&q=3:51+4:1+1:2,26+5:3+7:1,2+2:1,240,242,252+6:2005,2006,2007,2008,2009,2010,2011,2012,2013,2014,2015,2016">down</a> from 23.7% in 2015 and a peak of 26.9% in 2010. <a href="http://stats.oecd.org/qwids/#?x=2&y=6&f=3:51,4:1,1:26,5:3,7:2&q=3:51+4:1+1:2,26+5:3+7:1,2+2:1,240,242,252,44,40,67,119,148+6:2005,2006,2007,2008,2009,2010,2011,2012,2013,2014,2015,2016">African countries</a> such as Côte d'Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ghana, Mozambique and Senegal are among those that now receive less aid than they did in 2010.</p>
<p>Traditional bilateral aid to Africa continues to decline despite the fact that 34 of the countries on the continent are classified as least developed countries - the so-called LDCs.</p>
<p>One reason for the decline in development assistance to poor countries is the rise in foreign aid peculiarities like the so-called “<a href="https://www.devex.com/news/debating-the-rules-what-in-house-refugee-costs-count-as-aid-90602">in-donor refugee costs</a>”. This refers to foreign aid meant for refugees that donors spend in their own countries. International conventions allow provider countries to <a href="https://www.oecd.org/dac/stats/RefugeeCostsMethodologicalNote.pdf">use development aid</a> to support refugees during the first twelve months of their stay.</p>
<p>Between 2010 and 2016, as foreign aid to many poor countries decreased, in-donor refugee costs rose from USD$3.3 billion to USD$15.4 billion. This is a USD$12.1 billion increase in six years. In contrast, aid that flowed to countries in need increased marginally <a href="http://www.oecd.org/dac/financing-sustainable-development/development-finance-data/ODA-2016-Tables-and-Charts.xls">from USD$103.4 to USD$113.4 billion</a> between 2005 and 2016. That amounts to a USD$10 billion increase over an 11-year period.</p>
<h2>Explaining the mismatch</h2>
<p>The mismatch between need and actual aid distribution shouldn’t be surprising. Why? Because countries typically allocate aid based on <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9361.2011.00605.x">three criteria</a>, the first being self-interest. The others are need and merit. Problems arise when decisions must be made on the weight of each criterion.</p>
<p>Self-interest is particularly complex. Different providers have <a href="http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/13960/1/World%20dev%20aid%20allocation%20final.pdf">different levels of self-interest</a>. Furthermore, levels of self-interest differ from administration to administration even <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ecpo.12053">within the same provider countries</a>. When it comes to <a href="https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/gdec10/15.html">non-state providers</a> different funders within the same country can also exhibit varying interpretations of self-interest.</p>
<p>One of the most enduring illustrations of the connection between self-interest and aid allocation can be seen in the <a href="https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/4553020/alesina_whogives.pdf?sequence=2">voting patterns</a> at the United Nations General Assembly where the interests of nation states outweigh need or merit.
Nation states are more likely to <a href="https://econpapers.repec.org/article/eeepoleco/v_3a24_3ay_3a2008_3ai_3a3_3ap_3a661-674.htm">give aid to their trade partners</a> over their non-trade partners. In addition, researchers have found indications that providers are prone to allocate disproportionate amounts of aid to recipients who <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0010836713482552">have the same allies and rivals</a>.</p>
<p>While self-interest has its issues, the merit and need criteria are also complex. <a href="https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:83563975-c05c-48f3-9526-709ac849db41">Studies</a> have found that in some countries aid actually decreased as the policy environment improved. Put differently, even as countries’ merit ratings improved (better policy environments), they started receiving less aid. Conversely, in some cases, perceived need trumps merit especially in instances of food aid. This continues to be the case in countries like <a href="https://www.ogaden.com/ethiopia-is-it-the-drought-that-causes-the-deaths-or-the-dictatorial-dynasties/">Ethiopia</a> and <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2018/03/1004702">South Sudan</a> where oppressive governance systems and ethnic conflict have prevailed for years.</p>
<h2>A fourth criterion</h2>
<p>All things considered, the most deserving and impoverished countries don’t often get the most foreign aid. This much is clear and can be explained with reference to the complexity of balancing self-interest, need and merit.</p>
<p>But this doesn’t answer some fundamental questions such as, what are the limits to self-interest? Shouldn’t need and merit be more important than self-interest? And finally, should need, merit and self-interest be the only criteria?</p>
<p>The Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation has provided some direction in this regard by emphasising a fourth criterion: <a href="https://www.oecd.org/dac/effectiveness/49650173.pdf">effectiveness</a>. Over the past few years I have had the opportunity to collaborate closely with the Global Partnership, which represents the vast majority of the world’s provider and recipient countries.</p>
<p>By emphasising effectiveness, it <a href="http://effectivecooperation.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/OutcomeDocumentEnglish.pdf">prioritises</a> country ownership, accountability, transparency, results orientation, and inclusive partnerships as the requirements for aid effectiveness. So far, aid effectiveness is receiving wide support from both developed and developing countries, including regional organisations like the <a href="http://www.nepad.org/download/file/fid/4205">African Union</a>.</p>
<p>Going forward, metrics that quantify the effectiveness of aid will be very helpful not only for understanding current aid distribution patterns, but also for influencing future aid allocation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/94371/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Willem Fourie does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Poor countries aren’t receiving the most foreign aid. Why? And what should be done?Willem Fourie, Associate Professor at the Albert Luthuli Centre for Responsible Leadership, Co-ordinator of the South African SDG Hub, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/940412018-04-10T09:52:49Z2018-04-10T09:52:49ZWhy Africans must be recognised as partners in fight against global poverty<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213860/original/file-20180409-114092-19sf4rb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ed Sheeran in the Liberian capital Monrovia for Red Nose day 2017.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Comic Relief</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>On the eve of Sport Relief 2018, Liz Warner – the head of the TV fundraiser – <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/mar/23/comic-relief-to-ditch-white-saviour-stereotype-appeals">announced a new approach</a> to its on-location films. The decision followed <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/dec/04/ed-sheeran-comic-relief-film-poverty-porn-aid-watchdog-tom-hardy-eddie-redmayne">accusations</a> of “poverty tourism” and “poverty porn” which were <a href="http://www.rustyradiator.com/radi-aid-awards-2017">made by a charity watchdog</a> against three films produced for Comic Relief and the Disasters Emergencies Committee in 2017.</p>
<p>Comic Relief also runs the Sport Relief appeal and will now move away from the well-known format in which celebrities appear centre stage to learn of the hardships of communities and to explain to viewers how their donations might ease the people’s suffering. These films have undoubtedly helped the charity to raise in excess of £1 billion over the last 30 years. The stars are often clearly moved by their experiences, and few would question their sincerity.</p>
<p>But, as the MP <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-politics-43387069/david-lammy-on-the-image-of-africa-shown-by-comic-relief">David Lammy recently reminded us</a>, these films are laden with imperialistic stereotypical notions of Africans as “victims to be pitied” rather than “as equals to be respected”. Lammy thinks that appeals should be based on people explaining their situation in their own terms. This would help dislodge stereotypes and enable discussion of the underlying structural problems of free trade and governance, both within African nations and in their relation to the rest of the world. </p>
<p>Choosing to reduce celebrity endorsements carries risks to financial gains – but, as Warner says, the charitable event ought to be about “raising awareness” as well as “raising money”. Short films broadcast for Sport Relief 2018 made steps in this direction, in particular with greater focus on the perspectives and actions of African healthcare workers.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/yzXnfeQTFgc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>White man’s burden</h2>
<p>This shift in focus is a potentially momentous change when viewed in the history of British charitable intervention in Africa. “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_savior">White saviour</a>” tendencies attributed to both Comic and Sport Relief trace back to British art and literature inspired by the anti-slavery movement in the early 1800s. </p>
<p>Josiah Wedgewood’s image of a chained, kneeling slave with outstretched arms, encircled by the caption: “Am I Not a Man and a Brother?”, was a famous insignia and motto in the fight against transatlantic slavery. But this picture attempted to claim the humanity of the enslaved by placing him on his knees, begging Britain for freedom. In his study of emancipation art, <a href="https://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.co.uk/&httpsredir=1&article=1912&context=adan">The Horrible Gift of Freedom</a> (2010), Marcus Wood observed that freedom – if granted from above, by the former enslaver – only bestows a new form of dependency upon the slave, who remains forever shackled in his or her debt of gratitude.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213843/original/file-20180409-114076-1nknd1j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213843/original/file-20180409-114076-1nknd1j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=719&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213843/original/file-20180409-114076-1nknd1j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=719&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213843/original/file-20180409-114076-1nknd1j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=719&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213843/original/file-20180409-114076-1nknd1j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213843/original/file-20180409-114076-1nknd1j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213843/original/file-20180409-114076-1nknd1j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Kneeling Slave, ‘Am I not a man and a brother?’ c.1800 (by an unknown artist of the British school).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Kneeling_Slave,_%27Am_I_not_a_man_and_a_brother%3F%27.jpg">BBC Paintings</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Images of this kind smooth over the complexities of humanitarian intervention, such as the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/29/slavery-abolition-compensation-when-will-britain-face-up-to-its-crimes-against-humanity">millions of pounds paid in compensation</a> to slave owners upon emancipation in the British Caribbean colonies.</p>
<p>More generally, images of victimhood and dependency remove any sense of the political agency of the recipient of goodwill. They allow us to forget that enslaved peoples fought for their freedom, while, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/books/review/the-slaves-cause-a-history-of-abolition-by-manisha-sinha.html">as Manisha Sinha recently documented</a>, former slaves worked independently or alongside Western campaigners to promote the cause for liberation. </p>
<h2>Horror in the Congo</h2>
<p>In the early 1900s, humanitarian concern was directed to the brutal colonial regime of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_II_of_Belgium">King Leopold II of Belgium</a> in the Congo Free State. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213859/original/file-20180409-114084-1y6xqrx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213859/original/file-20180409-114084-1y6xqrx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=735&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213859/original/file-20180409-114084-1y6xqrx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=735&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213859/original/file-20180409-114084-1y6xqrx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=735&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213859/original/file-20180409-114084-1y6xqrx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213859/original/file-20180409-114084-1y6xqrx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213859/original/file-20180409-114084-1y6xqrx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Atrocities: two youths in the Belgian Congo with severed hands.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://screenheritage.wordpress.com/2008/01/02/magic-lantern-slides-at-anti-slavery-international/">Anti-Slavery International</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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<p><a href="http://shop.antislavery.org/category/Images-Historical-Belgian-Congo/10">Images of men, women and children</a> whose hands had been cut off under the orders of colonial officials prompted a <a href="http://www.congoreformassociation.org/cra-history/">Congo reform movement</a> in Britain and the US. Again, Africans featured in much of its literature as exhibits of suffering awaiting rescue. Their individual circumstances were barely explored. </p>
<p>Histories of the Congo have followed suit in focusing on the heroics of westerners who helped bring these images to the press. But <a href="https://www.routledge.com/African-Testimony-in-the-Movement-for-Congo-Reform-The-Burden-of-Proof/Burroughs/p/book/9781138631694">my new research</a> reveals the ways in which the Congolese acted as travellers, interpreters and testifiers in revealing colonial crimes. In doing so they too played a significant part in events leading to the end of Leopold’s rule in the Congo in 1908.</p>
<h2>New approach</h2>
<p>Examples from the imperial past tell us that there are deeply entrenched norms in how British agencies and institutions encourage us to think about poverty and suffering overseas. Ideas about national and racial identity are bound up in the image of Africans in need. It is welcome that Comic Relief has responded to Lammy and others in taking new steps to rethink those norms. </p>
<p>Sport Relief 2018 raised <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-43518433">just over £38m</a>, a huge amount, though considerably less than the £55.5m raised in 2016. While the shift away from celebrity visits has been mentioned <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2018/mar/30/oxfam-scandal-linked-to-sport-relief-raising-a-third-less-on-the-night">in association with this downturn</a>, more likely factors include a reduction in public and corporate trust following coverage of <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/oxfam-scandal-49793">a scandal at Oxfam</a> and other agencies.</p>
<p>Instead of discouraging the programme’s changing approach to documentaries in Africa and other locations, recent controversies underline the need for improved understanding of overseas charitable work, the broader contexts in which it happens, and the peoples and places it affects. </p>
<p>Both for the past and the present, thinking critically about the imagery used in charitable interventions in Africa, and placing Africans’ own stories and perspectives to the fore, can help to restore dignity to the receivers of aid, while also encouraging donor confidence by challenging stereotypes of Africa as a place of ceaseless misery.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/94041/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert Burroughs does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Comic Relief is leading a major rethink in how charities portray poverty in Africa.Robert Burroughs, Senior Lecturer School of Cultural Studies & Humanities, Leeds Beckett UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/916292018-02-27T19:13:28Z2018-02-27T19:13:28ZHere’s what happens to aid projects when the money dries up and the spotlight fades<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/206884/original/file-20180219-75984-1initit.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Aid projects in Iraq had more money than ideas.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Denis Dragovic</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As a former aid worker, I often wondered about what happened to the projects I worked on years later. Did the anti-corruption commission we founded itself become corrupt? Having given grants to women to start businesses, did the men allow them to work? And what about the community trained in maintaining the water pumps – did they see through their part of the bargain?</p>
<p>Evaluations, lauded by donors, report on a moment of time when the gloss is still shining. We don’t care, or possibly dare, to look back five or ten years later to see what happened.</p>
<p>I did. I wanted to know what happened to the projects and the people from a decade of aid work spanning East Timor, Iraq and South Sudan. I bought airline tickets, wrangled visas, and set off <a href="https://www.booktopia.com.au/no-dancing-no-dancing-denis-dragovic/prod9781925652314.html">on a journey</a> that changed my view of the aid industry.</p>
<h2>Government problems hobble South Sudan</h2>
<p>These <a href="https://theconversation.com/development-aid-works-over-time-but-must-adapt-to-21st-century-needs-52910">trips weren’t about measuring</a> the impact of certain projects, as too much time had passed. They were more about understanding. My colleagues and I had started along a journey without knowing how the story would end.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/development-aid-works-over-time-but-must-adapt-to-21st-century-needs-52910">Development aid works over time, but must adapt to 21st-century needs</a>
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</em>
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<p>My first return visit was to <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-14069082">South Sudan</a>. It came nearly a decade after I had worked supporting a refugee camp in Wau, which was established in the late 1990s following a civil war and famine. </p>
<p>The camp had established itself organically, so there was a spaghetti logic to its layout. By the time I had arrived in the early 2000s, international attention had moved on, so there were limited resources available. My job was to wind down and close out activities.</p>
<p>A decade later, the camp had become a small town struggling to survive. Water pumps and wash points were mostly broken. We’d trained people on how to maintain them, but the government that had agreed to provide the spare parts appeared to have had a change of heart.</p>
<p>It took some time before I learned that the state officials refused to give the former refugees property rights. As a result, families didn’t invest in their homes for fear of making them even more attractive for appropriation.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/206885/original/file-20180219-75974-1r5zrdz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/206885/original/file-20180219-75974-1r5zrdz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/206885/original/file-20180219-75974-1r5zrdz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/206885/original/file-20180219-75974-1r5zrdz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/206885/original/file-20180219-75974-1r5zrdz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/206885/original/file-20180219-75974-1r5zrdz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/206885/original/file-20180219-75974-1r5zrdz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">State officials in South Sudan refused to give former refugees property rights.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Denis Dragovic</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Did aid make a difference in Iraq?</h2>
<p>After South Sudan I returned to <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-14542954">Iraq</a>, travelling first to the north and then to Najaf, the centre of religious learning and home to Iraq’s powerful Shi’a Ayatollahs. </p>
<p>Iraq didn’t face the same shortage of resources as South Sudan: quite the opposite. There was more money than ideas.</p>
<p>I first arrived in Iraq a few months after the invasion in 2003; I moved straight to my posting in the conservative cities of Najaf and Karbala. We rehabilitated water treatment plants and parts of the regional hospital, provided psychosocial support to children, helped the disabled, and distributed humanitarian aid. </p>
<p>We were a one-stop shop for assistance, competing with the government and local religious charities.</p>
<p>Returning several years later and speaking with the governor, an ayatollah, and former staff who had become politicians and community leaders, the consensus was that had we not arrived, it would have only been a matter of months – or at most a year – before the same work would have been done by the authorities or the local community.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/206887/original/file-20180219-75987-e3y0m8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/206887/original/file-20180219-75987-e3y0m8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/206887/original/file-20180219-75987-e3y0m8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/206887/original/file-20180219-75987-e3y0m8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/206887/original/file-20180219-75987-e3y0m8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/206887/original/file-20180219-75987-e3y0m8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/206887/original/file-20180219-75987-e3y0m8.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The same aid work in northern Iraq could have been undertaken by local authorities.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Denis Dragovic</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>East Timor didn’t lack money – just sense</h2>
<p>From the deserts of Iraq, my final stop was the lush tropics of <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-14919009">East Timor</a>. This was where I started my aid career in 2000 as a shelter engineer.</p>
<p>A decade separated the shelter distribution and my return visit. My memories had faded, but luckily I had stayed in touch with a former colleague who undertook the journey with me. </p>
<p>We were on the trail of houses built from a shelter distribution program. Surprisingly, many were still standing, with extensions and improvements tacked on. The pressing issue then – and what was evident during my return visit – wasn’t a lack of money, but how it was spent.</p>
<p>The then sovereign authority, the <a href="https://peaceaccords.nd.edu/provision/un-transitional-authority-agreement-between-republic-indonesia-and-portuguese-republic">United Nations</a>, had treated its responsibility as a factory production line churning out widgets, rather than as community development. It implemented off-the-shelf projects in an accelerated timeframe. </p>
<p>Plans called for consultation and engagement, but the reality became a race toward inputs and outputs. The culture of the international bureaucracy had won over the culture of the people.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/206886/original/file-20180219-75964-883nkt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/206886/original/file-20180219-75964-883nkt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/206886/original/file-20180219-75964-883nkt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/206886/original/file-20180219-75964-883nkt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/206886/original/file-20180219-75964-883nkt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/206886/original/file-20180219-75964-883nkt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/206886/original/file-20180219-75964-883nkt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The culture of the international bureaucracy won out over the culture of the East Timorese people.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Denis Dragovic</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The lessons learned</h2>
<p>Through a mix of hitching rides on military convoys, slipping into Iraq on a pilgrim’s visa, or relying upon the goodwill of former colleagues, I managed to achieve what I had set out to – meet with beneficiaries, former staff and local leaders to hear what they thought about our work.</p>
<p>Each person had a story to tell; each place had a different lesson. But what was true in every location was the importance of the people. </p>
<p>The “stuff” we gave, the “things” we built: they became worn and broken. But the people we worked with, invested in and empowered continued to develop and grow. They took the skills and experience with them to new lives as business, community and political leaders who continued to transform their countries long after we had departed. </p>
<p>It’s a salient lesson to remember: the one and only truly sustainable activity we do is help people help themselves.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Denis Dragovic’s new book <a href="https://www.booktopia.com.au/no-dancing-no-dancing-denis-dragovic/prod9781925652314.html">No Dancing, No Dancing: Inside the Global Humanitarian Crisis</a> is published by Odyssey Books.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/91629/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Denis Dragovic does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>We don’t care, or possibly dare, to look back five or ten years later to see what happened to international aid projects.Denis Dragovic, Honorary Senior Fellow, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/917012018-02-12T17:58:52Z2018-02-12T17:58:52ZOxfam scandal: development work is built on inequality but that’s no reason to cut foreign aid<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/206018/original/file-20180212-58322-1d55s4y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Oxfam: under pressure. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/oxfameastafrica/6058871675/sizes/l">Oxfam East Africa/flickr.com</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/11/oxfam-staff-raise-concerns-over-charity-vetting-processes-haiti-abuse">Revelations</a> that Oxfam workers paid for prostitutes in Haiti as the organisation was supporting survivors of the earthquake in 2011, have reopened a longstanding debate about foreign aid in the UK.</p>
<p>Penny Mordaunt, the international development secretary, suggested government funding to Oxfam could be cut if it could not show “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/11/oxfam-show-moral-leadership-lose-government-funds-prostitutes-haiti">moral leadership</a>”. The scandal raises challenging questions about the conduct of aid workers, yet public outrage reveals a deeper problem in how British society thinks about the development industry.</p>
<p>Reports of <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/world/2017-06-09/un-peacekeepers-sexual-assault-problem">sexual assault by peacekeepers</a> in conflict zones have been rife for years, but have only <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/10/rights-groups-failing-prosecute-peacekeepers-accused-rape-car-171024174502894.html">recently</a> been taken seriously by the UN. The problem <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/oxfam-aid-work-prostitutes-un-workers-child-sex-abuse-harassment-dfid-a8204526.html">is systemic</a>, and anybody who has worked in development or as part of an emergency response is unlikely to be surprised that some NGO workers were found to be paying for sex. </p>
<p>But by singling out Oxfam as lacking in “moral leadership”, the government eschews the more uncomfortable question of how to address reports of this nature across the industry, and beyond. </p>
<p>The accusations emerged amid a growing <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/10/16/me-too-alyssa-milano-urged-assault-victims-to-tweet-in-solidarity-the-response-was-massive/?utm_term=.206928a4ff3c">movement</a> that recognises the pervasive nature of sexual violence across the world and challenges mysognynistic organisational cultures. Unlike other sectors where allegations of misconduct have led to calls for reform, the response here has been to suggest <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/oxfam-sexual-exploitation-charity-aid-funding-government-penny-mordaunt-international-development-a8204896.html">funding cuts</a> to the industry as a whole. </p>
<p>Government representatives and media pundits who argue that the UK cannot afford to send money abroad, or that it cannot ensure taxpayer money is used effectively, see this scandal as a confirmation of their reservations. </p>
<p>The truth is that the way development is currently understood in the West has made it impossible to talk about the industry’s inequality problem – both when it comes to aid workers’ conduct and in terms of justifying overseas aid. </p>
<h2>Mirage of morality</h2>
<p>With its fundraising appeals and glossy project reports, the development industry was built entirely around an image of morality. Campaigns appeal to our instincts to do what is right in the face of ills such as poverty, war and famine. These images are powerful and necessary to mobilise support for the important work that organisations like Oxfam do abroad. </p>
<p>However, they hide from view the ways in which these projects operate in situations of sustained disparity, such as the way the presence of Western aid workers in countries such as Sierra Leone or South Sudan reflects broader global inequalities. Because giving aid is portrayed as unassailably the moral thing to do, it becomes impossible to talk about how it reproduces racial and gender inequalities, for example through staggering <a href="https://theconversation.com/mind-the-gap-in-local-and-international-aid-workers-salaries-47273">pay gaps</a> between local and international staff. </p>
<p>The sex work economies that appear around the deployment of rich Western humanitarian workers are an extreme example of the power that those workers yield against beneficiaries living in conditions of poverty. To defend the value of foreign aid from constant attack, the industry has placed itself on a moral pedestal, so that when individual aid workers fall off, the value of the entire project is put in question. </p>
<p>But while inequality is inherent in the development project, this should not to provide fodder to those who would have it scrapped. Quite the contrary: it is an appeal to be more realistic about what development is and why foreign aid matters. Both supporters and detractors of foreign aid steer clear of placing it in its historical context, emerging in the shadow of Western imperialism. </p>
<h2>Righting historical wrongs</h2>
<p>The problems faced by developing countries are rarely seen as products of colonial experiences and the distorting effects that imperial ventures had on colonised societies and economies, despite plenty of <a href="http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/africaatlse/2017/08/18/book-review-the-divide-a-brief-guide-to-global-inequality-and-its-solutions-by-jason-hickel/">evidence</a> to that effect. Not only that, Western powers’ current wealth is <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2015/nov/27/enough-of-aid-lets-talk-reparations">linked to</a> the profits made in the colonies. </p>
<p>Talking about development as disinterested charity or the goodwill of Western governments misrepresents the historical responsibility of aid-giving countries such as the UK or France towards former colonies. </p>
<p>Aid should be seen as a form of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/poverty-matters/2013/nov/13/slavery-reparations-development-aid">reparation</a> for past wrongs. This would help reframe the conversation about its value – alongside broader arguments about global citizenship. It would also help to question the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-years-of-imf-prescriptions-have-hurt-west-african-health-systems-72806">ways</a> in which developing countries continue to be kept poor by international economic policies and how much of British development aid in fact makes its way <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-daily-mails-petition-gets-international-aid-wrong-23145">back</a> into the British economy.</p>
<p>The Oxfam scandal is not surprising to those in the industry, but it is disturbing. Staff will be disciplined, and Oxfam will have to consider its practice, but the scandal also offers the opportunity to start talking more frankly about the role of foreign aid in an unjust world. </p>
<p>We must dig deeper than individual aid workers’ misconduct to tackle underlying questions of inequality and power – a first step towards making the industry more just, rather than questioning its value.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/91701/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Luisa Enria receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council</span></em></p>Power imbalances and inequality lie at the heart of the international development industry. But the Oxfam scandal shows that organisations mustn’t succumb to it.Luisa Enria, Lecturer in International Development, University of BathLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/892472017-12-19T15:05:42Z2017-12-19T15:05:42ZAid scepticism isn’t damaging donations to international charities – but it might in future<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199782/original/file-20171218-27591-z6p176.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Getting aid to those who need it in Kenya. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/oxfam/5936953618/sizes/l">Oxfam International/flickr.com</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Christmas is a time for giving, when people think about how to extend their generosity to those in greater need. We put additional items in our trolley to donate for food banks, have a clear out of blankets, warm clothes or toys for local charities, or search for <a href="https://www.toilettwinning.org/">unique charity gifts</a> that help disadvantaged people overseas.</p>
<p>Since the financial crisis, international aid and development spending has been in the firing line. The British government’s pledge to spend 0.7% of gross national income on aid has acted as a lightning rod for <a href="http://www.politics.co.uk/comment-analysis/2017/07/27/we-need-to-talk-about-the-uk-s-aid-budget">criticism</a> from the right-wing media, who claim the money is mispent and that it should be spent in the UK. </p>
<p>My colleagues and I were interested in exploring the effects of austerity and the continuing narrative of <a href="https://www.bond.org.uk/news/2017/11/how-to-engage-a-development-cynical-audience-insights-from-daily-mail-readers">aid scepticism</a> on the development sector. So we embarked on a quest to <a href="https://mappingdevelopmentngos.wordpress.com/">map the UK’s development NGOs</a>, including charities who help in emergency situations as well as those funding longer-term development projects.</p>
<p>We’ve now produced a <a href="https://mappingdevelopmentngos.wordpress.com/check-your-data/">database</a> of over 900 development NGOs that spend over £10,000 a year, tracking their incomes and expenditures from 2009 to 2015 (the last year of publicly available data). In 2015 alone, we found that the British public contributed 40% of the sector’s overall income of nearly £7 billion – equivalent to around half of aid spending of £12.2 billion by the government <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/provisional-uk-official-development-assistance-as-a-proportion-of-gross-national-income-2015">in that year</a>.</p>
<h2>Public keep on giving</h2>
<p>The public is by far the major donor to British NGOs working in international development, contributing more to the sector than government grants, other charities and business combined. </p>
<p>Donors have remained committed to this generosity, even as incomes have been squeezed. Public giving did not followed downward trends in real household income – their peaks and troughs have been diametrically opposed across the period we looked at. At first we thought these sustained and increasing contributions were largely driven by rich philanthropists whose incomes may have been largely protected since the financial crisis. But at a <a href="http://siid.group.shef.ac.uk/events/public-attitudesrns-and-new-data/">recent event</a> we held on public attitudes to international development we were challenged on this.</p>
<p>Fundraisers told us they were not surprised that donations have increased even as incomes have been squeezed, highlighting ancedotally that regular members of the public, rather than major donors, have always – and remain — their biggest funder.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199780/original/file-20171218-27538-1lnttrp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199780/original/file-20171218-27538-1lnttrp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199780/original/file-20171218-27538-1lnttrp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199780/original/file-20171218-27538-1lnttrp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199780/original/file-20171218-27538-1lnttrp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199780/original/file-20171218-27538-1lnttrp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199780/original/file-20171218-27538-1lnttrp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/199780/original/file-20171218-27538-1lnttrp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Changes in giving from the public to development NGOs and real household disposable income available in the UK.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author provided</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>International development is just a drop in the ocean when it comes to the UK’s overall charitable funding. An analysis of Charities Commission data highlights that most charitable expenditure – £53 billion out of £68 billion in 2015 – is spent by charities that operate only in the UK. Charitable expenditure on international development is less than 10% of the total of what charities spend.</p>
<p>The British public has provided the backbone to a sector that has shown sustained growth since the early 2000s – in both the number of organisations and in total funding. Up until 2015, the last year of data available for our analysis, there was no sign of a decrease in the number of organisations or overseas expenditure. Income across the sector is distributed highly unevenly, with the 77 largest organisations (8% of the 900 NGOs in our database) accounting for over 90% of the sector’s expenditure. Our data shows government funding going almost exclusively to NGOs with incomes over £1m and a large increase in government funding to NGOs spending more than £100m since 2010. This makes income from the public particularly important for small to medium-sized development NGOs earning less than that.</p>
<h2>Concerns for the future</h2>
<p>Our research may show a largely positive situation for the UK’s development NGOs, but the picture is not universally rosy. These findings are at odds with growing concerns within the sector, include unease around a funding environment that is getting harder and harder, with growing competition and a public that are getting less receptive or more hostile to international development causes. </p>
<p>The data is not yet available to look at how funding trends continued across the sector in 2015 and 2016, but the people in NGOs we’ve spoken to feared that the sustained commitment they had seen until recently was no longer looking as robust, and that <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/voluntary-sector-network/2017/may/05/gdpr-charities-prepare-eu-data-protection-changes-consent-fundraising">new data protection changes</a> could hinder their fundraising and campaigning activities.</p>
<p>Our findings only track <a href="https://mappingdevelopmentngos.wordpress.com/check-your-data/">trends until 2015</a>, the latest year when income data is universally and publicly available. There have seen many changes since, including a Brexit vote that deepened the “charity begins at home” narrative. Both academic colleagues and those working in NGOs fear this will weaken the British public’s engagement with the overseas charitable sector. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-charity-causes-that-brexit-britains-leave-and-remain-voters-support-81533">The charity causes that Brexit Britain's Leave and Remain voters support</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The <a href="https://www.ucl.ac.uk/political-science/research/projects/aid-attitudes-tracker">Gates Aid Attitude Tracker</a> project has been tracking changes in attitudes to aid across the UK, revisiting the same households every six months since 2013. Their findings suggest that the number of people in its sample donating money to international development causes dropped in the second half of 2015 and has remained lower ever since. Economic issues and attitudes to immigration were found to negatively influence public engagement in the sector. </p>
<p>Changes at home will be <a href="https://www.bond.org.uk/news/2017/02/what-brexit-means-for-the-ngo-operating-environment">exacerbated</a> by UK-based NGOs potential losses from EU development funding, for which they may no longer be eligible after Brexit. A post-Brexit weakened exchange rate has also increased the costs of funding projects and infrastructure overseas: a double-whammy. Now is the time to reaffirm our commitments internationally as well as at home.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/89247/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicola Banks receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council under the ESRC Future Research Leaders scheme. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dan Brockington has received funding from the ESCRC, Natural Environment Research Council, Arts and Humanities Research Council and British Academy. He is a board member of two small UK based development charities: Micaia and the Development Studies Association. </span></em></p>Even as incomes are squeezed, the British public continues to give more money to international NGOs than anyone else.Nicola Banks, Lecturer in Global Urbanism and Urban Development, Global Development Institute, University of ManchesterDan Brockington, Director of the Sheffield Institute for International Development, University of SheffieldLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/883602017-12-03T22:20:57Z2017-12-03T22:20:57ZWomen’s NGOs are changing the world – and not getting credit for it<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196996/original/file-20171129-12029-1gvofri.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Women's NGOs work hard to improve the lives of women in the developing world, including in countries like India and Tanzania. But then they're often cut out from the process. This photo was taken in the remote village of Uzi on Zanzibar Island in Tanzania in April 2016.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In contemporary global development circles, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are now performing many more roles and activities than they did a few decades ago.</p>
<p>NGOs work with governments, community groups and the private sector — to develop and implement programs, monitor and evaluate their progress and help train people working on those projects.</p>
<p>They’re considered more nimble than other institutions in accomplishing development goals, because they can reach the most vulnerable or disaffected people in a community and find innovative solutions to problems. </p>
<p>Although their funding streams and institutional decision-making structures are typically multinational, NGOs’ legitimacy, indeed, often rests on perceptions of them being “local” and “close to the people.” </p>
<p>NGOs are increasingly taking on the responsibility of implementing the gender equality and women’s empowerment agendas of the global development sector. </p>
<p>But very rarely have researchers tried to understand or document the specific challenges and opportunities that NGOs working on gender equality, or those that define themselves as feminist NGOs or women’s NGOs, face — when participating in multiple-stakeholder projects like <a href="http://international.gc.ca/world-monde/issues_development-enjeux_developpement/priorities-priorites/policy-politique.aspx?lang=eng">Canada’s new feminist international assistance policy.</a></p>
<p>The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, adopted in 2015, and the Canadian initiative that includes $150 million in funding for advancing the rights of women and girls, will undoubtedly increase the engagement of women’s NGOs in a variety of activities. </p>
<p>That means understanding the opportunities and constraints faced by women’s NGOs in multiple-stakeholder projects is increasingly important.</p>
<h2>Women’s NGOs in India and Tanzania</h2>
<p>We’re basing our observations upon research conducted over the past decade in <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1477-8947.2007.00153.x/full">India, where women’s NGOs were involved in delivering urban basic services like water, sanitation and electricity</a>, and in <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09614524.2017.1349734">Tanzania, where women’s NGOs helped deliver community health and microenterprise development services</a>. </p>
<p>In both contexts, we found that women’s NGOs played crucial roles in development projects, often mobilizing, organizing and building projects that otherwise would never have launched. </p>
<p>In India, for example, women’s NGOs in the state of Gujarat mobilized local communities to participate in urban development projects. They helped form community-based organizations to represent local interests and implemented community development projects — such as health services, adult literacy and child care.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/197386/original/file-20171202-5395-1am60lk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/197386/original/file-20171202-5395-1am60lk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197386/original/file-20171202-5395-1am60lk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197386/original/file-20171202-5395-1am60lk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197386/original/file-20171202-5395-1am60lk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197386/original/file-20171202-5395-1am60lk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197386/original/file-20171202-5395-1am60lk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A mother and child in a rural area in the Indian state of Gujarat in October 2015.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Women’s NGOs also conducted research to determine whether local communities could afford to pay for basic urban services. </p>
<p>They negotiated subsidies, fair pricing and flexible terms of payment with utilities on behalf of marginalized people. They arranged access to loans from microfinance institutions for households that could not cover the cost of water or electricity connections. </p>
<p>And by insisting that water and electricity bills be issued in the names of female heads of households, women’s NGOs strengthened women’s access to property and housing. </p>
<p>The NGOs also educated stakeholders about the realities of life for the urban poor, and shared lessons learned in one urban area with NGOs in other cities in India.</p>
<p>In Tanzania, we studied the community partner role played by a women’s NGO in a project delivering health and microenterprise services across East Africa. </p>
<p>The project, which brought together the Tanzanian government, public research and medical institutions, international charitable organizations, community-based organizations and beneficiaries, envisioned the establishment of community kitchens across East Africa <a href="http://international.uwo.ca/whe/about_us/yoghurt_mamas.html">to produce probiotic yogurt.</a> </p>
<p>The yogurt would be sold for profit and distributed for free to certain vulnerable groups, including children with nutritional deficiencies and people living with HIV/AIDS.</p>
<h2>Women operated the yogurt kitchens</h2>
<p>Local entrepreneurs were offered loans, technical assistance and other training to start up the businesses. A women’s NGO that had previously worked to reduce gender-based violence in Tanzania helped local communities establish, operate and maintain the kitchens. </p>
<p>Before the idea of community kitchens was taken up by more financially and politically powerful project partners, it was in fact the women’s NGO that had proposed the idea of establishing yogurt kitchens that could be run by local women in keeping with Tanzanian dietary, cultural and consumer norms.</p>
<p>The four earliest community kitchens were run entirely by women. The economic empowerment of poor women in Tanzania was identified as one of the founding goals of the project because of the advocacy work done by the women’s NGO.</p>
<p>In later years, the pilot project was expanded to include kitchens run by men. </p>
<p>The women’s NGO provided training on probiotic yogurt production, the health benefits of probiotics, financial accounting, entrepreneurship and the importance of combatting HIV/AIDS transmission and stigma. </p>
<p>Until 2012, when the women’s NGO withdrew from the project, community kitchen groups also received training on gender equality, the rights of women and girls and the links between violence against women and HIV.</p>
<h2>Women’s NGOs easily marginalized</h2>
<p>Common findings emerge from our research in India and Tanzania. </p>
<p>In both contexts, we found that women’s NGOs had made vital contributions to the success of development projects, but they were easily marginalized and trivialized once those projects got off the ground. </p>
<p>In India, after the success of the pilot projects, the other partners declared that they would “go it alone” and no longer involve the NGO partner in delivering basic urban services.</p>
<p>A similar pattern emerged in Tanzania. Once the project was well-established, it started to expand to include community yogurt kitchens run by men, as well as kitchens in other parts of Tanzania, Rwanda and Kenya. The women’s NGO was forced out. </p>
<p>What’s more, the gender equality training, identified initially as a key project priority in Tanzania, was discontinued entirely. </p>
<p>Although the contributions made by the women’s NGOs were critical to the existence and success of the initiatives, they were often dismissed as supplementary and dispensable by the other partners. </p>
<p>Because the NGOs’ role of organizing, mobilizing and helping local communities participate in development initiatives was seen as a “natural” extension of women’s care-giving work, it was easy for other partners to diminish and dismiss their contributions. </p>
<p>And because the other partners did not fully appreciate the contributions of the women’s NGOs, they were unwilling to share credit for the success of the project.</p>
<h2>How to bolster the role of women’s NGOs</h2>
<p>We recommend several strategies to strengthen and validate the role of women’s NGOs in development partnership projects. </p>
<p>A memorandum of understanding (MOU) that defines the specific roles and responsibilities of each partner should be an essential requirement for multiple-stakeholder projects. </p>
<p>The lack of such formal agreements entrenches the perception that the role NGOs play is not particularly valuable. But the involvement of partners with a wide range of views, sizes, structures and experiences underscores the importance of formalizing the role of women’s NGOs.</p>
<p>When the relationship among the different parties is formalized, constructive debate can be encouraged among all partners. </p>
<p>The lack of a memorandum of understanding causes overlaps in function, weakens accountability and exacerbates conflict among partners. While it’s possible for diverse institutions with different philosophies to work in an integrated way, it doesn’t happen automatically or easily. </p>
<p>At a deeper structural level, advocacy work — whether it’s gender equality or community mobilization — must be treated as a non-negotiable priority in global development partnership projects, instead of as a value-added or supplementary task.</p>
<h2>Women’s NGOs deserve recognition</h2>
<p>Our research has shown that women’s NGOs play integral roles in the projects they participate in. </p>
<p>It’s unfortunate they must “justify” their long-term involvement in such initiatives, but it may be incumbent upon them to make their contributions to the project more visible to the different partners and to the development community at large. </p>
<p>Collecting, maintaining and analyzing data on a regular basis about key project impacts and outcomes will be crucial for making NGO contributions more visible and less dismissible. </p>
<p>Collaborating with academics and other development professionals to publish and disseminate findings from such projects will also strengthen and validate NGO efforts. This article is one small contribution toward ensuring women’s NGOs get the credit and support they so richly deserve.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88360/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dr. Bipasha Baruah receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dr. Kate Grantham receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. </span></em></p>NGOs (non-government organizations) run by women in India and Tanzania fuel the success of development projects, but the women are too easily marginalized once the projects get off the ground.Dr. Bipasha Baruah, Professor & Canada Research Chair in Global Women's Issues , Western UniversityDr. Kate Grantham, Research Associate, International Development, McGill UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/870372017-11-07T15:45:28Z2017-11-07T15:45:28ZPriti Patel in Israel: a funny way to bring accountability to aid spending<p>In yet another difficult moment for the British government, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-41853561">Priti Patel</a>, the secretary of state for international development, has been found to have conducted secret meetings with government officials while on a private holiday in Israel. This even included an encounter with Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.</p>
<p>Some of these discussions reportedly centred on Britain <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/07/priti-patel-wanted-to-send-aid-money-to-israeli-army-no-10-confirms">providing financial support</a> to humanitarian operations of the Israeli army in the Golan Heights. Patel has received heavy criticism for her actions, and has since issued an apology. But the incident raises questions about her suitability for this role. </p>
<h2>From DfID sceptic to defender</h2>
<p>Patel, a leading figure of the Brexit campaign, arrived to the Department for International Development (DfID) in July 2016. She had a reputation as a strong sceptic of foreign aid. Back in 2013, she even called for DfID to be <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/new-international-development-secretary-priti-patel-called-for-department-for-international-a7137331.html">abolished</a>. Colleagues and I have <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-923X.12369/abstract">argued</a> that Patel represents a vision for international development that puts trade interests at the fore.</p>
<p>DfID is one of the world’s largest aid agencies and has an excellent reputation for being a transparent and progressive aid provider. However, it <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-diverting-more-uk-aid-to-fund-costs-of-hosting-refugees-would-be-a-mistake-76608">has been under seige</a> since 2015, when the government enshrined in law the target of spending 0.7% of gross national income on aid. So while most other government departments have been facing significant cutbacks, DfID has been expanding. </p>
<p>Perhaps realising the difficulty of changing the culture of a large organisation, or perhaps “going native” by gaining a deeper appreciation of DfID’s work, Patel has made several U-turns on her previous positions. She has emerged as a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jun/18/exclusive-priti-patel-insists-uks-aid-influence-is-massive">defender of DfID</a>, as well as the global role and influence that development aid allows for the UK. In October, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/oct/24/no-foreign-office-takeover-of-international-aid-budget-says-priti-patel">she came out strongly against rumours</a> of the Foreign Office taking over DfID’s budget.</p>
<p>Patel’s secret Israeli negotiations are in stark contrast to the image she has been painting of herself, as well as the culture of transparency at DfID. She has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/oct/03/uk-ethical-code-to-stop-fat-cats-profiteering-from-aid-budget">promoted an ethical code</a> to ensure that “fat cats”, understood as companies, charities and international organisations engaged in implementing UK-funded aid projects, stop reaping excessive profits. Patel has said that she is a “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jun/18/exclusive-priti-patel-insists-uks-aid-influence-is-massive">no-bullshit person</a>” when it comes to accountability and getting results. Inflated contracts and high expert fees have indeed been seen by many as <a href="https://theconversation.com/fixing-aid-we-cant-turn-off-the-tap-at-the-first-sign-of-corruption-33769">problems</a>, and an emphasis on better value for money and greater transparency at DfID have been welcome. </p>
<p>It’s difficult to square carrying out negotiations in secret with this emphasis on transparency. What’s more, Patel, who is a known supporter of Israel, seems to have been using her position as the international development secretary to promote her own agenda.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, she may well emerge from the scandal untarnished. After the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-41838682">resignation of Michael Fallon</a> as defence secretary, Prime Minister Theresa May is eager to avoid any more changes in her government which would imply her own weakness. To some, especially on the right wing, Patel may even be able to paint a picture of herself as a maverick promoter of British interests within May’s indecisive government.</p>
<p>Still, Patel’s actions may have long reaching consequences. In the Arab world, and more broadly among Muslim countries, this incident will not be helpful. While governments are likely to turn a blind eye as long as UK aid keeps flowing, the secret negotiations will fuel conspiracy theories about Western support to Israel. Extremists will be more than happy to promote these.</p>
<p>The scandal also raises questions about the competence and credibility of the British government and its members. If what we know about Patel’s negotiations are true, she made promises that Britain couldn’t have delivered anyway. Israel is a rich country and so not eligible for aid from DfID. Nor does Britain even acknowledge Israel’s presence in the Golan Heights – so it can’t support any actions there. The otherwise welcome initiatives against “fat cats” will also suffer if the very minister initiating them herself engages in ethically dubious actions.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/87037/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Balazs Szent-Ivanyi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>When the DfID minister held secret meetings with government officials while on holiday, she seems to have forgotten about her quest to stamp out dodgy dealings in development spending.Balazs Szent-Ivanyi, Lecturer in Politics and International Relations and Deputy Director Aston Centre for Europe, Aston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/814182017-08-14T16:24:17Z2017-08-14T16:24:17ZThe danger of supplementing aid to Africa with weapons<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181796/original/file-20170811-13463-xpkue8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Illicit firearms and small weapons recovered during security operations being destroyed in Nairobi.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">REUTERS/Thomas Mukoya</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>During the <a href="http://www.dw.com/en/merkel-calls-for-greater-investment-in-africa-ahead-of-g20-summit/a-39220029">recent</a> G-20 meeting in Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel floated the idea that African countries should be given weapons as part of development aid so that they could be more effective in combating militant <a href="https://theconversation.com/merkels-proposal-to-transfer-weapons-as-aid-needs-to-be-approached-with-caution-81035">groups</a>. </p>
<p>This was a bold departure from the traditional emphasis on economic aid as the bedrock of development efforts in African countries. To many, and for most African states, her statement sounded like a contradiction in terms because spending on arms <a href="https://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/tb-practical-guide-arms-trade-decisions-apr09.pdf">can divert</a> funds from vital areas such as food security, health care and education. </p>
<p>Over the past 20 years Africa has been transitioning from a focus on economic integration to one on security. Until the late 1990s the emphasis in many regions was on economic integration. This was clear from the consolidation of a number of <a href="http://www.un.org/en/africa/osaa/peace/recs.shtml">regional</a> economic integration communities like the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). </p>
<p>But since the turn of the century, there has been a much bigger focus on security and fighting radical Jihadist groups typically affiliated to Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. As of May 2015, <a href="https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/peace-operations-africa">there were</a> nine UN Peacekeeping missions in Africa. The big shift towards security started in 2002 when the United States Africa Command <a href="https://www.africom.mil/">(AFRICOM)</a> was formed. This was followed by a security partnership being agreed between the African Union and the EU. And then there are sub-regional security forces like Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group and the <a href="http://www.africanews.com/2017/02/07/sahel-g5-countries-to-form-joint-counter-terrorism-force//">Sahel G5 states’</a> counter-terrorism force.</p>
<p>As a result of the growing threat from terror groups, a number of countries, with the help of major powers, have boosted their military capabilities. <a href="http://www.npr.org/2017/03/16/520440725/u-s-military-works-with-african-special-forces-to-fight-boko-haram">These include</a> Mali, Nigeria, Cote d'Ivoire to name a few.</p>
<p>Merkel’s statement was made in the context of many African countries experiencing economic growth while, at the same time, battling militant and terrorist groups. </p>
<p>The view seems to be that by helping Africa contain instability, growth rates will be enhanced, and Europe relieved of mass migrations.</p>
<h2>Increase military capability</h2>
<p>Increased securitisation – the emphasis on a militarily strong state at the expense of basic human needs and a strong civil society – started after the 1998 Al-Qaeda attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. These led to the creation of AFRICOM which included putting active American troops on the continent. Djibouti serves as a forward base for AFRICOM. It also included a commitment from the US to train and advise African countries that request it. Current key beneficiaries of US military assistance <a href="http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/19995/u-s-military-assistance-to-africa-is-growing-but-is-it-succeeding">are</a> Djibouti, Ethiopia, Uganda Chad, Cameroon, and Mauritania. </p>
<p>In addition, French troops have become <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/frances-military-is-all-over-africa-2015-1">more active in Africa</a>. In Mali <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/05/emmanuel-macron-visits-french-troops-northern-mali-170519112433707.html">they are helping</a> the government contain Jihadist organisations in the north of the country. </p>
<p>There are also regional international efforts, such as the <a href="http://www.africa-eu-partnership.org/en/priority-areas/peace-and-security">security partnership</a> between the European Union the African Union, and the <a href="http://indianexpress.com/article/world/france-and-us-agree-on-un-resolution-welcoming-sahel-force-4714435/">UN Mission</a> established to contain terrorist attacks in the <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-africa-security-sahel-un-idUSKBN18Z2R7">Sahel region</a>. Known as the G5 Sahel force, it includes troop contributions from Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger.</p>
<p>France and the US are also active in the Sahel region providing training and equipment to the militaries of Chad, Burkina Faso, Mali, Naiger and Mauritania, and engaging in joint exercises with the <a href="http://www.ecfr.eu/article/commentary_serious_questions_remain_over_g5_sahel_military_force_7300">G5</a> forces. </p>
<p>Merkel’s proposal is aimed at taking these engagements even further. What’s she’s <a href="http://www.dw.com/en/merkel-calls-for-greater-investment-in-africa-ahead-of-g20-summit/a-39220029">put on the table</a> is a compact with Africa and the G20 which includes weapons transfer as development aid.</p>
<h2>Implications</h2>
<p>Merkel’s suggestion would mean more weapons on a continent that is already awash with <a href="https://unoda-web.s3-accelerate.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/assets/education/docs/SALW_Africa.pdf">small arms and light weapons</a>. It can’t be denied that Africa as a secure continent would benefit Europe. But weapons as development aid sounds like a contradiction. Do weapon transfers in fact contribute to development? </p>
<p>There are studies that show that the acquisition of weapons by developing countries doesn’t contribute to <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=1LpiAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA73&lpg=PA73&dq=the+acquisition+of+weapons+by+developing+countries+doesn%27t+contribute+to+%5Bdevelopment%5D&source=bl&ots=nl08QINADe&sig=LoIdw3iTLWb38tIqSpWWNqWGdzY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjTibmY_tbVAhWBaRQKHVmvC-IQ6AEIRjAG#v=onepage&q=the%20acquisition%20of%20weapons%20by%20developing%20countries%20doesn't%20contribute%20to%20%5Bdevelopment%5D&f=false">development</a>. </p>
<p>I believe that more weapons on the continent would have the opposite effect. The African continent already has a great deal of weapons which exacerbate civil strife. <a href="https://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/file_attachments/rr-human-cost-uncontrolled-arms-africa-080317-en.pdf">Evidence</a> points to the fact that weapons transfers are responsible for conflicts in the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, the Central African Republic and Somalia, among others. </p>
<p>More weapons and an increased military presence for incumbent African regimes could have negative consequences. </p>
<p>Firstly, it could lead to even more violations of the rule of law as incumbent regimes become militarily stronger. </p>
<p>Secondly, it would improve the changes of regimes surviving longer. They would have the wherewithall to violate human rights even more, as well as suppress opposition voices. And finally, weapons could be diverted to rebel groups through political corruption or for personal selfish objectives.</p>
<p>In conclusion the G20 Compact with Africa is very encouraging. But when it comes to the transfer of more weapons, donors and investors should make sure that this is done under strict rules and regulations. Conditions for receiving aid should also be based on strict adherence to the rule of law, and in particular democratic processes. </p>
<p>In the end the biggest emphasis should be on private investments – as set out in the compact – which will generate millions of jobs for the unemployed.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81418/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Earl Conteh-Morgan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s comments about weapons as part of development for Africa could have the opposite effect if conditions aren’t strict and democratic processes aren’t followed.Earl Conteh-Morgan, Professor of International Studies, University of South FloridaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/810352017-07-19T18:22:33Z2017-07-19T18:22:33ZMerkel’s proposal to transfer weapons as aid needs to be approached with caution<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178239/original/file-20170714-14248-1i8clie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">There are 100 million uncontrolled small arms and light weapons in African crisis zones.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Goran Tomasevic</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>German Chancellor Angela Merkel recently <a href="http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-g20-germany-africa-idUKKBN1931SG">commented</a> that large industrialised countries should be more open to transferring weapons as part of their development aid so that African countries can battle militant groups. This followed complaints from several African leaders, while discussing Germany’s “<a href="http://www.politico.eu/article/angela-merkels-neighborly-plan-for-africa/?utm_source=Active+Subscribers&utm_campaign=e4a11bbe7c-MR_07112017&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_35c49cbd51-e4a11bbe7c-64039129">Compact with Africa</a>”, that they were expected to combat militancy without receiving significant military aid from the West.</p>
<p>Merkel’s statement may sound surprising. In all fairness, however, her <a href="https://www.compactwithafrica.org/content/compactwithafrica/home.html">Compact with Africa</a> – a flagship programme for boosting private investment in Africa – emphasises sustained and inclusive economic development. In addition, African governments have as much right as any other government to protect their national interests. This requires appropriate security forces and equipment.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, Merkel’s proposal needs to be approached with great caution and on a country by country basis. Certain conditions should be met before countries receive any arms. These should include; an understanding that they won’t be used against legitimate internal protests, that they won’t be transferred to rebel groups in neighbouring countries. Countries that already have more arms than they need should be excluded. Finally, donor governments need to be aware that some governments label legitimate opposition groups as terrorists or militants to attract Western support.</p>
<h2>Western military assistance to Africa</h2>
<p>There’s the additional concern that much of Africa is awash in arms. This is particularly in the case of small arms that often elude government control and fall in the hands of non-state actors. </p>
<p>By one estimate, there are <a href="https://www.oxfam.org/en/research/human-cost-uncontrolled-arms-africa">100 million</a> uncontrolled small arms and light weapons in African crisis zones. Some of these weapons were once in government stocks but are now being used by terrorist organisations such as al-Shabaab in Somalia and Boko Haram in Nigeria.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://life-peace.org/hab/arms-transfers-to-the-horn-of-africa-a-snapshot/">Horn of Africa</a> has been especially susceptible to the misuse of imported weapons. Civil war is ravaging in South Sudan where its oil economy resulted in military spending in 2015 of <a href="http://life-peace.org/hab/arms-transfers-to-the-horn-of-africa-a-snapshot/">almost</a> 14% of GDP. Sudan is the largest arms importer in the Horn and continues to take delivery of advanced ground attack aircraft and multiple rocket launchers.</p>
<p>But Western bilateral military assistance to Africa is modest compared to arms sales from all sources and consists mostly of training. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/world/which-countries-get-the-most-foreign-aid/">US security assistance to Africa</a>, for example, barely registers if you omit Egypt.</p>
<p>The Trump administration is making an argument that contains aspects of Merkel’s suggestion. It proposed major cuts in humanitarian and development aid to Africa while shifting some of this to security assistance. But even US military officials <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/25/world/africa/white-house-pushes-military-might-over-humanitarian-aid-in-africa.html">are concerned</a> that shifting these funds will hurt American interests in the long term by failing to stimulate development.</p>
<p>Major <a href="http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/19995/u-s-military-assistance-to-africa-is-growing-but-is-it-succeeding">African beneficiaries</a> of US military assistance in recent years include; Djibouti, Ethiopia, Uganda, Chad, Cameroon and Mauritania. While they face legitimate security threats, they also pose serious questions about democratisation and human rights.</p>
<p>Merkel has a more valid point if the issue is military training, particularly for African armies that have demonstrated a willingness and ability to combat militant groups. Any government has more flexibility if it can purchase weapons rather than depend on military assistance – both equipment and training. </p>
<p>Most African countries don’t seem to have a problem prioritising and purchasing military equipment. In fact, many of them spend more on military hardware, especially high end equipment, than their security situation merits. Sudan, for example, takes delivery of advanced ground attack aircraft and multiple rocket launchers. While Uganda has <a href="http://intelligencebriefs.com/uganda-air-force-takes-final-delivery-of-its-sukhoi-su-30mk2-jet-fighters/">received</a> substantial amount of weapons since 2010, including highly advanced Su-30MK fighter bombers.</p>
<h2>Arms sales to Africa</h2>
<p>Major <a href="https://www.sipri.org/sites/default/files/Trends-in-international-arms-transfers-2016.pdf">weapons imported by African countries</a> declined by more than 6% between 2007-2011 and 2012-2016. But there are no reliable figures for small arms and light weapons.</p>
<p>The three largest importers during 2012-2016 were Algeria, Morocco and Nigeria. At 35% of the total, <a href="https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2017/05/18/russia-makes-big-strides-expand-arms-sales-africa.html">Russia</a> was the largest supplier of arms to Africa, followed by China at 17%, the US (mainly to Egypt) at over 9%, and France at almost 7%.</p>
<p>Sub-Saharan Africa received only 35% of total African imports of major arms. The five largest importers were Nigeria, Sudan, Ethiopia, Cameroon, and Tanzania, which combined accounted for 48% of the sub-region’s imports. China provided 27% of the major weapons entering sub-Saharan Africa followed by Russia at 19% and the Ukraine at 18%.</p>
<p>The question is: what is appropriate for any given country and how are the weapons and military training used? </p>
<p>Arms sales to African countries almost always have a profit motive, whether the seller is a private or state-owned company. But there is also often a foreign policy motive. Arms sales are, for example, an important political tool for <a href="https://jamestown.org/program/could-africa-become-a-new-leading-market-for-russian-arms-sales/">Russia</a> and <a href="http://www.brownpoliticalreview.org/2015/11/export-to-arm-is-chinas-weapons-trade-as-menacing-as-it-seems/">China</a> in building relationships with African countries where they have special interests.</p>
<p>While most government to government weapon transfers are done transparently, some countries such as North Korea are not transparent in an effort to circumvent sanctions. A <a href="http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=S/2017/150">UN panel of experts report</a> has documented, for example, the transfer of North Korean military radio equipment to Eritrea, satellite guided missiles to Sudan, and Scud spare parts to Egypt.</p>
<p>Before the West provides military aid, there should be an understanding that it is not to be used to suppress legitimate internal protests. There needs to be agreement on the right kinds of equipment to deal with the threat and assurances from the recipient that it will not be transferred to rebel groups in neighbouring countries. Finally, countries that spend a disproportionate percentage of their GDP on security should be considered ineligible.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81035/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David H. Shinn does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>African governments are open to military aid from the West. However, Germany’s recent remarks about the transfer of weapons to countries battling militants, needs to be approached with caution.David H. Shinn, Adjunct professor of international affairs, George Washington UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.