NGO Inequality

Feelings of unfair treatment in the workplace are common among Kenyan NGO employees – and not without reason. The humanitarian and development sectors are known for their differential treatment of expats and locals, with the latter receiving fewer benefits and considerably lower salaries compared to their foreign colleagues.

A circular sent out by the board highlighted this disparity, arguing that expats often earn four or five times more than their Kenyan counterparts. The document reported that “expatriates are often too quick to dismiss dual salary systems as a non-issue, and the subject of wage disparities is a taboo topic in the charity sector.”

The NGO Board CEO Fazul Mohamed criticized foreign NGO workers for “getting rich from the charity sector.” 

A survey of 1,300 local and expat workers found a wage gap that ranges from 400-900% and causes significant resentment among local workers. Research measured the size of the wage gap and its effects on workers in six lower-income countries: India, China, Malawi, Uganda, Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea. These organisations were drawn from the aid, education, government and business sectors of the six countries. Participants worked in a range of job roles, from teachers to engineers, to doctors and managers, with expertise in areas such as microfinance, child labour, program administration and much more. The organisations draw aid funding from governments and donors around the globe.

Imagine finding out that your colleagues earn five times more than you. Not only that, but they get all sorts of benefits you’re not eligible for. They take a month of leave; you get 12 days. Your employer pays for their accommodation, health insurance and even their children’s school fees; you don’t get any of that. But you have comparable skills and qualifications. You do the same work. In fact, you understand the context of your work better than your higher-paid colleagues. So why are they earning so much more than you? What if you found out it was simply because of your nationality? Dual salaries are popularly referred to in some Pacific countries as “economic apartheid”.

The wage and benefits gap cannot be explained by differences in experience or skills. Rather, dual salaries exist because expatriates originate from higher-income economies and labour markets.

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2016/apr/20/expat-wages-900-per-cent-higher-than-local-employees-study?CMP=share_btn_tw

Canadian Colonialism

With a mere 0.5 percent of the world’s population, Canada is home to half of all internationally listed mining companies operating in Africa. Many companies based have even taken African names. African Queen Mines, Tanzanian Royalty Exploration, Lake Victoria Mining Company, African Aura Resources, Katanga Mining, Société d’Exploitation Minière d’Afrique de l’Ouest (SEMAFO), Uganda Gold Mining, East Africa Metals, Timbuktu Gold, Sahelian Goldfields, African Gold Group and International African Mining Gold (IAMGOLD) are all Canadian. Active in 43 different African countries, Canadian mining firms have been responsible for dispossessing farmers, displacing communities, employing forced labour, devastating ecosystems and spurring human rights violations.

Canadian companies loot (legally and illegally) African resources. Canadian mining companies have been accused of bribing officials and evading taxes. Last year TSX-listed MagIndustries was accused of paying $100,000 to tax officials in a bid to avoid paying taxes on its $1.5-billion potash mine and processing facility in Congo (Brazzaville). In April, a Tanzanian tribunal ruled that Barrick Gold organized a “sophisticated scheme of tax evasion” in the East African country. As its Tanzanian operations delivered over US$400-million profit to shareholders between 2010 and 2013, the Toronto company failed to pay any corporate taxes, bilking the country out of $41.25 million.

Canada’s paternalism towards Africans is deeply rooted in its  political culture.  Gripped by a desire to rid “darkest Africa” of “nakedness” and “heathenism”, Canadian missionaries helped the European colonial powers penetrate African society. In 1893 a couple of Torontonians founded what later became the largest interdenominational Protestant mission on the continent and by the end of the colonial period as many as 2,500 Canadians were proselytizing across Africa. Today, all the media-anointed Africa “experts” promote a similarly paternalistic version of ‘aid’ and largely ignore Canadian companies’ role in pillaging the continent’s wealth.

Recently, the Aga Khan Foundation Canada organized the World Partnership Walk in 10 cities across the country. In an article titled “How the World Partnership Walk” lets Canadians bring hope to African communities the organization’s International Development Champion, Attiya Hirj, writes about visiting Aga Khan Foundation and Global Affairs Canada sponsored projects in Tanzania and Mozambique. Hirj says her “trip really opened my eyes to what rural communities truly need, which is a sense of hope.” She suggests the situation can be remedied if enough Canadians come “together to fundraise and generate awareness through activities such as the World Partnership Walk.” There is no mention of the need for African resources to be controlled by and for Africans. Canadians concerned about African impoverishment should point their fingers at the Canadian firms controlling the continent’s resources and offer solidarity to those sisters and brothers fighting for African resources to be controlled by and for Africans.

http://dissidentvoice.org/2016/06/while-canadian-companies-exploit-african-resources/#more-62922

Exposing Charities in Africa

A good article by Tamara Pearson, teleSUR

Hypocrisy, Racism, Objectification

Crimes list:  

World Vision

Last year, World Vision announced its decision to finally stop discriminating and hire LGBTI people. However, after the announcement saw sponsors withdraw donations – apparently more concerned about people's sexuality than hunger, the decision was reversed and the organization continues to bring homophobia to the African continent.

Its president, Richard Stearns, studied business administration and began his career doing marketing for several Fortune 500 companies. His wage with World Vision is almost US$400,000 a year. He has blamed poverty as often being a result of “fathers that aren't around ... Boys learn from their fathers what it means to be a good man.”

Its publicity continues to be children-centered, simplistic, and individualistic. It tells little fairy tales: “In a nearby poverty stricken village … Mona, 11 years old, is teaching her brother a song, because Mona believes it doesn't take much to live happily … with $39 Canadian dollars we can help people like Mona.” Cameras angle down at big-eyed children with one name and an easily digestible story of suffering, easily cured with money and religion.

Gospel given with food: The U.S. evangelicals broadcast over their Christian Broadcasting Network and Trinity Broadcasting Network throughout sub-Saharan Africa.

Save the Children

An individualistic approach to a systemic problem. Donors choose the child they want to sponsor from a range of photos. This has many implications for the children, who become competitive with their friends who are chosen for sponsorship. The donor has the power to decide who will be more prosperous.

In 2013, Save the Children and Britain's biggest drug manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline joined hands, with GSK aiming to give the charity 15 million pounds (US$23.6 million). GSK pleaded guilty in 2012 to healthcare fraud, which involved promoting drugs, such as anti-depressants, for unapproved uses. It also fights to protect the patents of its HIV medicine, for example, which was developed using public funds, at the expense of affordable medicine.

Like World Vision, the CEO of Save the Children, Carolyn Miles, also has a business and marketing background. In 2013 she was paid US$407,399.

In 2014, war criminal Tony Blair was given Save the Children's Global Legacy Award at a gala dinner in New York. Funnily enough, the year before, former adviser to Tony Blair and current Save The Children chief executive Justin Forsyth was among nine at the charity awarded US$250,000 in bonuses.

In 2013 a whistleblower accused the charity of self-censoring criticism of energy corporations, such as British Gas, for fear of upsetting existing or future donors.

USAID

A racist gem from USAID administrator Andrew Natsios, who was quoted in the Boston Globe in 2001 as saying Africans wouldn't be able to successfully take HIV and AIDS treatment regimes because “Africans do not know what Western time is.” He allegedly said that many people in Africa "have never seen a clock or a watch their entire lives and if you say one o'clock in the afternoon, they do not know what you are talking about.”

Last year USAID joined with real estate company Rockefeller to launch a US$100 million “climate resilience fund” for Asia and Africa, with the vague aim of making communities more resilient to disasters. The alternative could have been policy that reduces the U.S’s huge contribution to contamination and global warming: but that would affect profits. Charities … as simple as white people's individual goodness. They become saviors, while the denial of complexity, the simplistic advertising dehumanize and rob people in Africa of their dignity, agency, intelligence, and power.

USAID has partnered with Monsanto to promote “biotechnology,” or genetically modified organisms. It launched the Agricultural Biotechnology Support Project in 1991 to introduce GM crops, which benefit patent-holding companies like Monsanto and works to create dependence on U.S. corporations' fertilizers and pesticides. USAID has invested millions in “biotechnology” in countries like Nigeria and Uganda and uses workshops on GMOs and other issues to promote policy change favorable to U.S. corporate interests.

USAID's slogan, “from the American people,” should be, “from U.S. corporations,” as it once claimed on its own website, “... the principal beneficiary of America’s foreign assistance programs has always been the United States. Close to 80 percent of the USAID contracts and grants go directly to American firms,” Grain.org reported. The USAID site also states that the organization works to promote “democratic” institutions (even though the U.S. is no model of democracy) and to “foster an environment attractive to private investment.” With its bureau for Africa located not there, but in Washington, D.C., Andrew Herscowitz, coordinator of the bureau, describes his position as “facilitating private investment to bring cleaner energy and electricity to millions across Africa.” Apart from the fact that that is another thing that the U.S. itself needs, its also another example of taking advantage of colonialism-caused lack of infrastructure to help companies make profits.

Many governments find it hard to stand-up to USAID, as it functions as a mouthpiece of the powerful, warmongering U.S. Grassroots organizations, however, are often more willing to resist.

World Food Program

Despite being the food assistance branch of the United Nations, and allegedly more neutral than some other charities, the WFP has corporate ties, and is problematic in similar ways to other charities

It cooperates with USAID, Save the Children, and receives significant donations from Monsanto. In 2011 for example, the WFP held a donation drive in which each dollar raised would be matched by a dollar from Monsanto. Monsanto however, contributes to world hunger by making farmers dependent on their seeds and with destructive agricultural practices.

WFP overlooks the role of big business in exploitation and causing poverty, instead promoting the private sector's role in the so called elimination of hunger. It is part of the Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, which was formed in 2012 to facilitate private corporations' profiting from hunger and as excuse for the rich nations to wash their hands of any responsibility.

WFP states on its website, “Cause related marketing generates support and awareness for your business ... presenting a unique opportunity for companies to simultaneously do well and do good.” Other WFP corporate partners unqualified to fight hunger include Pepsico Foundation (objectifies women and spent US$1.7 million in opposing U.S. citizens' right to know if food is genetically modified), Bank of America (2008 financial crisis) Yum (parent company of fake food restaurants KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell), Caterpillar (proud demolisher of Palestinian homes), and Cargill (energy trading, crops and livestock: no self-interest here, has had to recall a lot of its meat products for contamination, sued for extreme child exploitation on its cocoa bean plantations).

Similar images such as this one using victimized, helpless children, and empowering the Western savior – “you can save lives.”

Kenyan economist James Shikwati argued that WFP food aid was sometimes so big that it made it hard for local farmers to compete.

Clinton Foundation

The Clinton Foundation uses poverty in African countries as a public-relations tool for the families' politicians and for the celebrities who donate to it. It focuses on health systems, not that Bill Clinton was able to do much for health in his own country: a reoccurring story with many charities. The charity is also used to foster business deals. The Clintons and celebrities conduct fly-by visits through African countries as a kind of ego parade of people pretending to care, with all attention on the “helpers” and none on the people of those countries.

Earlier this year, the charity came under fire for not declaring tens of millions of dollars in foreign donations and in another unsurprising scandal this year, the Clinton Foundation worked closely with a pharmaceutical company to distribute “drastically substandard” antiretroviral drugs to third world countries that had no chance of helping HIV and AIDs patients, according to a Wall Street analyst.

Get Angry: Global Inequality Should Be Changed, and Charity Isn't the Way

The thing about aid is that it always comes with conditions (working with businesses, practicing religion, spending money according to the dictates of the charity), it always involves the inequality of a much more powerful giver and a disempowered receiver, and it involves the powerful side thinking it knows better that the receiver about what they need and how to make that happen.

There's little respect and a lot of condescension, as the boring rich try to show people in the apparently homogenous continent how to make wells, read the bible and make their own shoes. And, largely due to charities, the continent of Africa has become synonymous with poverty, starvation, tragedy – a homogenous blob of a continent of begging skinny children.

Charities simplify everything. They misinform. Solving poverty (which on the continent of Africa was due to the looting, interventions, social and economic colonization, and the constant stealing of local resources by those countries who tend to set up the charities in the first place) is as simple as white people's individual donations. They become saviors, while the denial of complexity, the simplistic advertising dehumanizes and robs people in Africa of their dignity, agency, intelligence, and power.

Charities become competitive for money and are forced to convince their public they are dealing with the “most needy” and “deserving”. The advertising is never accountable to those people objectified by it.

Charities like the Clinton Foundation don't deserve a pat on the back for given back a tiny proportion of what was stolen by the U.S. and Europe and their transnationals in the first place. Even less so when using poverty to dodge tax payments. Ultimately, such charities are a convenience for first world governments to outsource their social and political responsibility.

Unlike activist organizations, charities are undemocratic, alienating (donors are very disconnected from affected communities), and work over rather than with those communities. The big picture is the North (U.S, Europe, U.K, Australia, etc) has an undemocratic influence over the economies, resources, culture, and futures of countries in Africa – in addition to such influence through colonization, transnational resource robbing and so on already mentioned.

SOLIDARITY NOT CHARITY

Why Volunteer for Voluntary Work?

The New York Times reports that an estimated 100 million Americans go overseas to volunteer each year, and African countries are the most popular destinations for these trips.

Mwangi, a Kenyan activist wants to know: “Why?”

“There’s nothing wrong with service, and helping others by going abroad. I think it’s a very noble idea. The question is why are you doing it? Why go abroad when you can stop at the local homeless shelter?” Mwangi says, pointing especially to the experiences of black Americans in their own country. “My concern is that while you guys are out trying to save the word, you’re neglecting what’s going on at home.

One student tells Mwangi she wanted to volunteer abroad as an advocate for women’s rights in India, Africa, and the Middle East.

“So as a woman of color, why would you travel all the way to India to talk about women when you have race issues in your country that affect your people, people who look like you, and young black men? If you speak about it here, they’ll hear you more, because you’re local,” Mwangi says bluntly, before apologizing for putting her on the spot. Mwangi believes that students should spend time volunteering and advocating for change in their own communities before going international. 

One uncomfortable revelation was that it’s likely foreign volunteers in African countries benefit personally more than the communities they are trying to help thanks to the resume - and university application-enhancing powers of such an apparent altruistic endeavour.

Saving Africa

Western “solutions” to African’s problems don’t solve anything except Western NGO workers’ need for a regular salary.

Since 2005 LifeStraws proclaimed as a “cheap, portable personal water purifier,” has been picking up awards; Esquire said it was an innovation of the year in 2005, Time called it the “best invention of the year,” Gizmag, without any contrition, called it the “invention of the century” and Forbes called it “one of the 10 things that will change the world” in 2006. The “straw” is a long blue tube that “provides access to safe drinking water by converting microbiologically contaminated water into safe drinking water.” Publicity images of it show black Africans, sometimes half naked, bending over to drink purified water through it. Paul Hetherington, a spokesman for WaterAid in the UK, claimed “it is something that may well have very useful applications in an emergency scenario. But it’s not a development tool, it doesn’t really solve the problem of getting water to people.” Innovative devices like LifeStraw aren’t created with malicious intent, nor are they necessarily ineffective; many work perfectly fine.

But let’s look at the images again; young, half-naked Africans hip deep in a pool of water, stooping to drink the water through one of these devices. When Europeans travel to countries with sub-standard water, they sometimes bring water filtration systems, tablets or other means to purify water. We don’t see pictures of them bending over streams, cow-like, drinking water through LifeStraws. High-tech straws are not suggested as a means to solving filtration problems for white people, say, in parts of rural Russia or Romania, where there might be contaminated water, so why are they “good enough” for Africans? And it isn’t just about straws: the device is emblematic of an entire industry of suddenly popular, quickly forgotten programs and devices that will “save” Africans or “solve” Africa’s problems.

Lack of access to safe drinking water is the problem. Almost a billion people worldwide are estimated to not have access to safe water; and supposedly around 35 percent of them live in Sub-Saharan Africa. Basically that means most of Africa doesn’t have access to decent water. That’s a problem. It was also a problem for Europe and the West well into the 20th century. So why is it that all the processes that led to safe drinking water in Europe are not seen as workable for Africa? Why is it the “answer” to African problems is always some charity with portable toilets or stoves or some other device – even cardboard bicycles – that no one would ever expect poverty-stricken Europeans to use? Google “solve Africa’s drinking water problems” and you come across “a giant basket that uses condensation to gather drinking water.” Looks pretty, next to some grass huts. But they won’t be using that in Nevada. Nope. Just for Africans.

Another website claims to have “15 concepts for providing clean drinking water,” which include a photo of African children who “pump while playing” and another that proposes transforming “sewage to drinking water.” Sounds wonderful. No one expects people in America to drink sewage, but in Malawi it’s a great idea. Another system made by SunDwater uses a “green...low-cost, low maintenance system that converts dirty or salty water into potable water.” It involves a four-square-meter photovoltaic dish (like a satellite dish) and the water is condensed on it. It sounds nice, but it isn’t a real solution; after all, no one is going to be using it in Portugal, so why expect it to be used widely in Uganda?

A story in 2013 tells of a school in Tel Aviv where ninth and tenth graders are testing the simplest, cheapest and fastest way to solve the problem of malnutrition.” In plastic bottles they had bred a blue-green algae called spirulina, that looked like green slime, and the theory was this would be good for Africa. I have a better idea: serve this in the cafeteria of schools in the wealthy communities of Israel, and if the kids there agree to eat it for a year, then export this idea to Africa. Because if a bunch of nice kids in your community don’t want to eat green algae, don’t expect “Africans” to want to.

“Watering the grassroots” was a project to train African women to solve water problems.” Using a “rainwater harvesting system” Oddly, that wasn’t the solution to China’s drinking- water issues. Just Africa. In China the Ministry of Water Resources estimated that as of 2005 three-hundred million people were unable to access safe drinking water. Almost 200 million people in rural areas were still exposed to harmful substances. To combat these problems the government was investing in a massive “11th five year plan” which envisioned plowing $5 billion into safe drinking water. By contrast 334 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa were estimated in 2010 to not have access to clean drinking water. That’s roughly the same as in China, yet in China they are digging up rivers, laying pipe and building massive infrastructure projects worth twice the GDP of Malawi to combat this scourge; they are not handing out straws, solar panels and baskets.

Solutions to problems in Africa tend to involve handing out 21st century high-tech gadgets to infrastructure-poor countries that require massive 20th century reforms and solutions. All of the problems Africa faces, whether it is the supposed need for “smokeless stoves” or clean water, are ones every other country in the world faces or has faced. Yet the solution for Africa almost always does not take into account incremental changes that people want; rather they envision some miracle device that “solves all these problems, and would help reach the Millennium Development Goals,” or some foreign imposed solution. The Western concept of “saving” and “solving” Africa’s problems too often derives from a sub-conscious racist “white man’s burden” mentality, wherein the “starving African” is “saved” by the white man from abroad. The solutions offered are manifestly inadequate and ridiculous, but serve industries of charity and self-promotion. The legions of nonsensical awards for these inventions are part of this “salvation” culture. If you want to save Africa, demand that the technology be exported there to bring it up to Western standards. Don’t expect people there to live a life drinking out of straws like cattle and eating algae slime.

“Saving” Africa, or “building schools in Africa” has nothing really to do with Africa.

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Terra-Incognita-Stop-saving-Africa-385994

Charity and Political Power

A trawl of charity and company documents shows how Tony Blair has attracted millions of pounds in donations from the super-rich, as well as from the US government and even the Swedish lottery, largely for foundations he has set up since leaving Downing Street. His remarkable ability to network and use contacts made in and out of office has helped him establish two major international organisations with wide-ranging influence: the Tony Blair Africa Governance Initiative and the Tony Blair Faith Foundation.

Paolo Pellegrini, an Italian-born banker and his third wife Henrietta, have given AGI $1.5 million (£1 million) in three payments each of $500,000 spread over three years. The Pellegrinis made the payments through their charitable foundation – the Paolo Pellegrini and Henrietta Jones Foundation. The money was used in part to fund AGI’s move to new offices overlooking Hyde Park in central London. AGI plans to expand its operations advising African leaders into half the countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, giving Blair influence over hundreds of millions of people. AGI states its “longer-term, five-year vision of achieving a footprint that touches on 15-20 countries”. If AGI was successful that would see the charity operating in about half Sub-Saharan Africa, giving Blair and his charity — which offers governance and investment advice to presidents, prime ministers and ministers — enormous influence in the region.

In Guinea, the report highlights how AGI’s team of four persuaded the president Alpha Conde to change his management style. “When we began, the president had a very personalised style of management. He delegated very little, directly managed nearly all important ministers and most of the more than 30 advisers at the presidency, and scheduled most of his own meetings via his four cellular phones.”  AGI states it was able to introduce practical changes including the introduction of a morning meeting with “the president’s top team … and even the reduction in the number of the president’s phones from four to one.”

The Swedish lottery gave AGI more than £750,000. Part of that donation was spent on AGI’s team in South Sudan, a short-lived foray that ended when the country fell into civil war and AGI was forced to pull its team out.

Bill and Melinda Gates, the richest couple on the planet and good friends of Blair, gave AGI almost £500,000 last year.

Blair has also lobbied the UK Government for funding for AGI, but having been turned down on a number of occasions by the Department for International Development (DfID), has given up trying.

AGI has been more successful with the US taxpayer. Washington’s equivalent to DfID, called USAID, is committed to giving £4.5 million through three grants. At one stage Blair’s great friend Hillary Clinton was then US secretary of state in overall charge of USAID.  Blair has insisted his charity went through proper tendering processes before winning the contracts. Emails obtained by The Telegraph, whose existence has been reported by this newspaper, disclose how Blair and his charity lobbied USAID officials ahead of the award of sizeable grants.

Last month, the US branch of Save the Children gave Mr Blair its global legacy award for his and AGI’s efforts in alleviating poverty in Africa. But the prize caused a huge split inside Save the Children with a letter signed by its own staff demanding the award be revoked while an online petition has attracted 120,000 signatures demanding the same.

When subsidising the wealthy is charity

Millions of pounds of British aid money to tackle poverty overseas has been invested in builders of gated communities, shopping centres and luxury property in poor countries, the Guardian can reveal. Wholly owned by the Department for International Development (DfID), CDC invests in private companies with the stated aim of reducing poverty in developing countries. Its investments count as aid and DfID is its sole shareholder. CDC has investments in construction and property across sub-Saharan Africa from Ghana to Zambia as well as in India. Many projects appear to cater to the elite.

In Kenya, $25m has been put into a 13-hectare (32-acre) mega-development in Nairobi called Garden City with hundreds of upmarket flats, a business hotel and what will be east Africa's largest shopping centre.  A glossy brochure for Garden City in Nairobi, which includes 400-plus flats and townhouses, boasts: "From the aquamarine water of the heated swimming pool to the ultra-modern fitted kitchen, solid bamboo flooring and glass balcony balustrades, quality is the defining characteristic of the Garden City Village."

In Mauritius, more than $24m has gone to a developer whose portfolio includes a 170-hectare "aspirational ocean lifestyle village", with luxury beachfront homes from $500,000 and an elite boarding school managed by the Berkshire-based Wellington College. A brochure for Azuri, a development for the CDC-backed Indian Ocean Real Estate Company, invites would-be residents to "Close your eyes and imagine yourself breathing in the warm Indian ocean breeze, absorbing all that the Mauritian lifestyle has to offer." Azuri offers "exquisite, high-quality living" with an expansive oceanfront resort, five-star hotel, yacht club and spa – "the ideal living environment to promote both bodily and spiritual happiness".

In addition to upscale residential developments, CDC has millions invested in shopping centres across sub-Saharan Africa, including the huge Jabi Lake mall in Abuja, Nigeria,which aims to "meet the desires of sophisticated Nigerians wanting a compelling retail experience with leisure facilities and high-quality brands". In Nigeria investments also include two Protea hotels – part of a chain recently bought by Marriott International – including one in Lagos at which rooms booked online start at $400 a night.

Nick Dearden, director of the World Development Movement, accused the government of exporting a "highly financialised, highly unequal, highly ideological form of 'development' which helps big business, not ordinary people. If you live in a slum in Nairobi, seeing development money pouring into a luxury block of flats is an insult."

In Kenya, Dereje Alemayehu, Christian Aid's east Africa country manager, said hotels and shopping centres could not be considered neglected economic sectors. "There are already more than enough such facilities for tourists, expats and the relatively large national middle class."

Does anyone seriously believe this Government is interested helping the poor in Africa for example when it is so dismissive of the fact that so many UK families rely on food banks?

Band Aid is indeed a bandaid

Sir Bob Geldof’s reissued Band Aid 30 charity single, Do They Know It’s Christmas?, has reignited the debate on what is patronising and what is empowering.

Africa is the birthplace of humanity and the home of some of the earliest civilisations such as Ancient Egypt. It is the world’s second-largest continent of 54 countries speaking more than 2,000 languages, and boasts some of the largest quantities of crucial minerals such as copper, diamond, platinum, gold and bauxite, or aluminium ore. Then, of course, is its oil supplies in Nigeria, Libya and Angola. Yet its international image is one of poverty, a continent in constant need of charity from philanthropists.

An open letter from Race Equality: In Music Industry – signed by academic Dr Robbie Shilliam and Hugh Francis, chair of UK Black Music, among others said of Band Aid “…what many within the African British and black music communities see from the published lineup is another form of Eurocentrism – the European off to help the African, without engagement with African musicians in Britain, let alone on the African continent.”  

 It is a flawed idea that Western nations are constantly aiding Africa when in fact it is Africa that is aiding the rest of the world. Health Poverty Action director Martin Drewry said of a recent report entitled Honest Accounts “This report – looking at the amount Africa loses to the rest of the world, in comparison with what it receives in aid and other inflows – is a response to a growing unease we have at Health Poverty Action that the UK public is not hearing the truth about our financial relationship with Africa. The truth is that rich nations take much more from Africa than they give in aid – including through tax dodging, debt repayments, brain drain, and the unfair costs of climate change – all of which rich nations benefit from.”

It estimated that while $134 billion flows into the continent predominantly in the form of loans, foreign investment and aid, $192 billion is generated through Africa’s natural resources, but lines the pockets of foreign companies or goes to pay off global debt.

The report noted: “For years the British public have been asked to donate money to Africa, yet the end to poverty is nowhere in sight….It is time for the British government, politicians, the media, and NGOs ourselves to stop misrepresenting our ‘generosity’ and take action to tackle the real causes of poverty. This includes urgent government action to close down the UK’s network of tax havens; an end to the plundering of African resources by multinational companies; an end to ‘aid’ as loans and greater transparency and accountability in all other loan agreements; and ambitious and far-reaching climate change targets.”

Socialist Banner can add that Band Aid activist Bono is an expert on tax evasion.

From here

Tony Blair, Malawi and Charity

 Tony Blair's Africa Governance Initiative rushed into Malawi soon after Joyce Banda's rise to the presidency. Tony Blair's presence at the Lilongwe state house was regarded as an important goodwill gesture. Malawi's first and Africa's second female president could only benefit from the governance expertise of Blair's organisation.

Eighteen months later as Malawians continue to suffer hardship in the wake of the biggest corruption and financial mismanagement scandal ever recorded, Blair has pulled out of Malawi amid allegations that Banda may have paid the former British PM millions of  taxpayer money for governance consultancy and advisory services. Three weeks ago, as pressure continued to mount on Banda's administration regarding her failure to deal effectively with the corruption scandal now christened "Cashgate", the former British PM announced he had severed all his ties with President Banda.

Newspaper reports published in Malawi allege that the payments made by Banda to Blair’s Africa Governance Initiative were made illegally as they were made outside the budget and without the approval of the parliament. In Malawi, Banda has come under fire from critics and civil society for not disclosing to Malawians the exact nature of Blair's presence in Malawi. Many are also worried that this impoverished southern African country's empty coffers may have paid the former British PM such huge sums of money, reported to be in excess of $5m when all along, Malawians have been made to believe that Blair's presence in the country was a charitable act.

 the Malawi government signed a contract with Tony Blair as an individual to be advising the Malawian leader on regular basis. The reports further claim that some of Blair's staff working under the AGI were placed in the Malawi president's office for regular monitoring of performance and evaluation of progress, and to play an advisory role in the absence of the former British PM. Additionally, it is alleged that Blair and the AGI staff, operating from the president's office in Lilongwe had access to the Malawian leader 24 hours through telephone and that face-to-face appointments with the president needed to be guaranteed to the Blair team at short notice.

According to the allegations, at least eight payments were made from the Malawi treasury at various points in 2012, just months after Banda took over the presidency. The Malawi government was paying Blair through various banks accounts in the names of  "the Tony Blair Africa Governance Initiative (AGI)", "Tony Blair Associates", "Windrush Ventures" and "Firerush Ventures". All the payment details were referenced to Blair's operating office addresses: PO Box 60519, London W2 7JU (Grosvenor Square, Mayfair, Central London.)

Blair's office, as well as the official spokesperson for AGI, released separate statements categorically denying receiving any payments from the Malawi government and insisting that Blair's presence in Malawi was humanitarian, and the presence of the AGI in Malawi was only for charitable purposes.

Nevertheless, Malawians are still left wondering what really were the interests of Blair in Malawi, considering that he appeared on the scene claiming that he would offer governance advice, and that it was during his watch that the Cashgate scandal has been exposed. Could it be that Blair, having allegedly been paid millions to advice on governance, a task he has demonstrably failed to do, is now deserting Malawi at a time when Malawi needs his advice the most? A growing number of people in Malawi now believe that Blair knew about the high level corruption, fraud and looting and that his only interest in Malawi was financial exploitation.

Nevertheless, Malawians are still left wondering what really were the interests of Blair in Malawi, considering that he appeared on the scene claiming that he would offer governance advice, and that it was during his watch that the Cashgate scandal has been exposed. Could it be that Blair, having allegedly been paid millions to advice on governance, a task he has demonstrably failed to do, is now deserting Malawi at a time when Malawi needs his advice the most? A growing number of people in Malawi now believe that Blair knew about the high level corruption, fraud and looting and that his only interest in Malawi was financial exploitation.

From AlJazeera

Charity and aid doesn't stop poverty

For Nina Munk’s new book, “The Idealist: Jeffrey Sachs and the Quest to End Poverty,” she spent six years following the Millennium Villages Project. The brainchild of Columbia economist Jeffrey Sachs, MVP has over the past 10 years funneled more than $100 million into an ambitious antipoverty program in Africa. Munk’s book focuses closely on two villages — one in Kenya and the other in Uganda.

Extracts from an interview by her

“Jeffrey Sachs and his team, hoping to create a modern economy from scratch, introduce fertilizer and high-yield seeds, with the idea that people would grow and sell cash crops — tomatoes, soybeans, corn.  And sure enough, when you introduce fertilizer, you get extraordinary results. In Ruhiira, in a single season average maize yields increased from 1.8 tons per hectare to 3.7 tons. There was an enormous bumper crop.

The problem was what to do with the crop. No one had really thought of the next stage. There were no storage facilities for the surplus, and there was no market for it. Southern Ugandans don’t like maize, but the village was so far away that any profits would be wiped out by transport cost. Then there were rats and vermin who took over the town. Eventually the farmers threw up their hands and dumped the maize on the market and prices collapsed.

Ruhiira is a perfect example of what goes wrong with well-intentioned ideas. Providing fertilizer and high-yield seeds is a magnificent idea. It looks flawless on paper. But soon you face a whack-a-mole problem. You fix one problem but a whole host of others suddenly pop up.

 These big ideas imposed by outsiders can be breathtakingly arrogant. What, then, is the solution, if we care about the world's poor, as I hope most of us do.

If your goal is to help a limited number of people in a single village, you can do that. That's called charity. In the Millennium Villages Project many people's lives have been improved. There is less malnutrition, less malaria, more children in school in all of those villages. If you invest $5 or $10 million into an isolated African village, you are going to get results. Far too many nonprofits and NGOs boast about the sums of money that they're spending on big projects. That's no way to evaluate an antipoverty program.

Brand-new neonatal incubators sitting unused in the corner of a clinic because there was no electricity in the village. The skeletons of well-intentioned development projects litter the continent of Africa — bridges that lead nowhere, rusted tractors, broken water wells, schools that were never completed, maternity wards that are crumbling. One of the great hurdles of charity work in Africa is making sure that the work is maintained. In many places there simply aren't the tools or the knowledge to maintain projects built by outsiders. In Dertu, Kenya on the border of Somalia, there was a water well built by UNICEF in the 1990s. It's a life-saver for the area, one of few sources of water in an arid spread of land populated by nomadic camel herders. But every time the well pump breaks down, it can take months and months to fix it or for parts to arrive. And in the meantime, people just drop dead.

When the water well broke down, and the Millennium Villages Project decided to keep people alive by bringing in huge water tanks to supply water. But the supply of water simply wasn't enough to sustain the people and their camels. And before long fighting broke out, and a 16-year-old boy was stabbed to death because he was accused of cutting in line for water. The driver of the water tanker was beaten up by a mob. When you see desperate people fighting over limited resources you begin to understand how fragile human life is there.

One of the consequences of the Millennium Villages Project pouring a lot of money into this pastoral community is that more and more people gave up being camel herders and decided to settle instead in town. Thanks to the Millennium Villages Project, Dertu became an island of prosperity. There was a fully functioning clinic, a vastly expanded school, all kinds of new investments that encouraged nomads to become sedentary. I returned again and again to Dertu, and I saw this place that had been a sort of wide-open pastoral area begin to resemble an urban slum, with tightly packed housing, sewage running through the streets. It was, again, a horrible unintended consequence of good intentions. There is no economy to speak of in Dertu. The nomadic herdsman coming through trade or sell livestock. Some of them sell camel milk. Basically the only economic activity there has been gun-running and cattle raiding. This is the great failing of the Millennium Villages Project, and of so many other antipoverty efforts in developing parts of the world.

Jeffrey Sachs and his team came in and spent a great deal of money to lift people on what Sachs calls the “ladder of economic development.” Health care was improved, malaria went down, more children were in school. They had one success after another in basic indicators. But that doesn’t mean people had jobs. Nor was there is anything to suggest there could ever be industry in a place like this.

The lack of transparency is unfortunately the only way that many NGOs know how to operate. They are afraid that if they tell their donors about failures the flow of money will stop. In order to keep funding, nonprofits are forced to paper over and in some ways lie about some outright failures. Anyone who has ever worked in development knows perfectly well that maybe as much as half the money ends up being wasted.”

Africa can help itself

This article by the writer Paul Theroux is well worth quoting from at length.

" The desire of distant outsiders to fix Africa may be heartfelt, but it is also age-old and even quaint. Curiously repetitive in nature, renewed and revised every decade or so, it is an impulse Charles Dickens described, in a wickedly accurate phrase, as "telescopic philanthropy." That is, a focus from afar to uplift the continent: New York squinting compassionately at Nairobi.

Never have so many people, so many agencies, so many stratagems, so much money been deployed to improve Africa -- and yet the majority of the movers are part-timers, merely dropping in, setting up a scheme in the much-mocked "the-safari-that-does-good" manner, then returning to their real lives, as hard-charging businessmen, Hollywood actors, benevolent billionaires, atoning ex-politicians, MacArthur geniuses, or rock stars in funny hats. It's not hard to imagine the future tombstones of the Clintons and Bono and Gates, and many others bitten by the eleemosynary[gratuitous] itch, chiseled with the words, Telescopic Philanthropist. The farther away the donors are, the shorter their visits ("Chelsea Clinton took time out of her 10-day humanitarian trip in Africa to meet some of the kids that her AIDS work is benefiting…"), and the more passionate their feelings.

Never mind that Africa receives roughly $50 billion in aid annually from foreign governments, and perhaps $13 billion more from private philanthropic institutions, according to Penta's estimate. Never mind that Angola's oil revenues are around $72 billion, and Nigeria's $95 billion; that Africa boasts at least 55 verified and somewhat detached billionaires. I can testify that Africa is much worse off than when I first went there 50 years ago to teach English: poorer, sicker, less educated, and more badly governed. It seems that much of the aid has made things worse.

I am not alone observing this fact. In his new book, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality, economist Angus Deaton questions the usefulness of all aid, and describes how the greater proportion of the world's poor are found not in Africa but in the booming, yet radically unequal, economies of China and India. Zambian-born economist Dambisa Moyo calls aid a "debilitating drug," arguing that "real per-capita income [in Africa] today is lower than it was in the 1970s, and more than 50% of the population -- over 350 million people -- live on less than a dollar a day, a figure that has nearly doubled in two decades." The Kenyan economist James Shikwati takes this same line on aid, famously telling the German magazine Der Spiegel, "For God's sake, please stop."...

...The most recent example of a Westerner running amok in Africa appears to be the celebrity-economist Jeffrey Sachs and his $120 million effort to end extreme poverty there. Nina Munk documents in her book The Idealist how, among other things, Sachs' Millennium Villages Project poured $2.5 million over three years into a sparsely populated community of nomadic camel herders in Dertu, Kenya, and trumpeted its success.

In actual fact, the charity's paid-for latrines became clogged and overflowing, the dormitories it erected quickly fell into disrepair, and the livestock market it built ignored local nomadic customs and was closed within a few months. An incensed Dertu citizen filed a 15-point written complaint against Sachs's operation, claiming it "created dependence" and that "the project is supposed to be bottom top approached but it is visa [sic] versa."...

....I am not criticizing the humane desire to help. My modest point is that, for all the talk of "reinvention," aid to Africa has been discussed in exactly the same terms for 173 years... it's just nothing new....

....Years living simply on the ground in Africa convinced me that there was more for me to learn from Africans than to teach. I saw there were many satisfactions in the lives of people who were apparently poor; many deficits in the lives of the very wealthy. I saw that African families were large and complex and interdependent; that old age was revered, that Africa's link to the distant past -- to the dawn of the world -- was something marvelous and still intact in many places.

Most of all, I was impressed by the self-sufficiency of ordinary people. Without much in the way of outside help, the people in the countries I knew managed to endure, usually through the simplest traditional means, and finally to prevail. Africa has the schools, the money and the resources to fix its own problems; it's appalling to think of donors telling them otherwise, of the whole continent terminally indebted and living on handouts.

Full article can be read here 

Socialist Banner can sympathise with the essence of what Theroux writes but would simply add the caveat that for Africans to succeed they will require to change the system that at present dominates their economies and social relations and their daily lives. Africa has to struggle with the rest of the world to rid ourselves of capitalism.

Withdrawal Of Medical Charity Impacts On 100,000s Of Somalis

Afgooye Hospital, situated in the agricultural town of Afgooye, 30 km southwest of the Somali capital, Mogadishu, is one of the many health facilities that used to receive support from the international medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), or Doctors Without Borders. Because of this support the hospital was able to provide free healthcare to the residents of Afgooye and surrounding areas. But it has been almost a month since MSF left Somalia because of security concerns for its staff, and the senior nurse at Afgooye Hospital, Aisha Ahmed, told IPS that the hospital was running out of basic drugs and vaccines.
The 20-bed Afgooye Hospital has only one doctor and seven nurses, who provide what services they can to the hundreds of patients who come through the doors every week.
"This is the place people who want free healthcare turn to, but since MSF left and no agency has filled its place we cannot support the health needs of the people here and in the town's periphery," Ahmed said.

The international charity had been one of the few providers of essential healthcare here for the last 22 years. Somalia has been through almost 20 years of war, and its citizens are affected by poverty and a lack of essential services.
The current government has had to function with limited financial resources and the continued threat of the extremist Islamist group Al-Shabaab, which has waged a number of recent terrorist attacks on the capital Mogadishu despite being ousted from key cities across this Horn of Africa nation.

In an earlier interview with IPS, presidential spokesperson Abdirahman Omar Osman explained that the government's monthly "revenue is roughly three million dollars from Mogadishu's seaport and the airport, and yet the budget we need to execute our daily activities is at least 20 million dollars each month."
The health centres supported by MSF were provided with various services, including free basic healthcare, malnutrition treatment, surgery, epidemic response, water and relief supplies.
MSF said more than 1,500 staff worked for its medical programmes across Somalia, including in Mogadishu and the two outlying towns of Afgooye and Daynille, as well as eight other towns across the country.
"In 2012 alone, MSF teams provided more than 624,000 medical consultations, admitted 41,100 patients to hospitals, cared for 30,090 malnourished children, vaccinated 58,620 people, and delivered 7,300 babies," MSF said in August in a statement announcing its decision to leave Somalia. But Somali doctors warn that the decision will adversely affect the lives of "hundreds of thousands of people".

Mohmaoud Yarow, a health officer in Mogadishu, said the impact of the MSF withdrawal was immediate and health centres that had previously received support from the international charity now have hundreds of people in need of care and many lack the drugs with which to treat them.
"I can understand how difficult it has been for MSF to leave Somalia, but the impact the pullout has had on the country's health sector is enormous … with time this could turn into a deadly health crisis," Yarow told IPS in Mogadishu.
Local media reported in August that Al-Shabaab fighters seized control of a former MSF-funded hospital in Marere, Middle Jubba Region, along with the medical equipment and drugs.

Medical officials also say that the MSF pullout further complicates the polio outbreak the country is facing as the medical charity had provided essential vaccines against the disease. Earlier this year, polio was detected in several areas in Somalia, including the eastern region of Puntland as well as southern and central parts of the country. The World Health Organisation has confirmed 101 cases here and a massive vaccination campaign against the viral disease was launched in August.

The Somalia government has said that it was "deeply saddened" by the MSF decision to withdraw and has reiterated its commitment to providing a secure working environment to all aid agencies in the country. Abdelaziz Qafiifo, spokesperson for Somali Ministry of Human Development and Social Services, which is responsible for the health sector, told IPS: "It is unfortunate that the withdrawal of MSF is having an impact on the lives of the Somali people. We understand the reasons for its pullout but that decision, whatever may have been its justification, is now causing huge suffering in Somalia."
The Somali government said that the MSF decision has created "a critical vacuum that needs to be filled" and could "lead to a catastrophic humanitarian crisis", and has urgently called on the international community and donor countries to offer their support. But until support comes, many here will have to live without access to treatment.

From here

Curse Charity

I worked as a school manager at Bridge International Academiesfrom  2010 to mid this year. The company’s business is educating the less fortunate in society at an affordable cost. Most of the company's schools are constructed using iron sheets. And they are located in the slums.

Workers (teachers, school managers) in these schools are poorly paid, work for long hours and are not represented in any trade union. The proprietor of these schools is a top American capitalist. Profit is his main theme, though from time to time high quality education is dangled to parents and in prospectuses to attract them to the schools.

Workers are paid per the pupils who pay that month. Those who pay later on don't count for this and the money remains the profit of the company (worker's sweat). Any worker who makes a slight attempt to as complain or show displeasure is shown the door.

Morale has been low and prospects of employees scaling the corporate ladder are slim as there is no upward mobility in the firm. The company pays US nationals handsomely while Kenyans are left to feed on crumbs.

Out of the 210 schools, 75% are profitable but this profit doesn't get to those who make this a reality (teachers and school managers).

If that's the way capitalism operates, then damn the system. It's ugly and repugnant. Companies ought to realise that without their workers the wheels of their operations would grid to a halt.

Patrick.W.Ndege, 
Nairobi, Kenya.

Bono, The Apologist for Capitalism

Socialist Banner has often used the articles of George Monbiot as sources of information. His latest exposure of  the hypocrisy of Bono is well worth quoting extensively from.

 In 2005, at the G8 summit in Scotland, Bono and Bob Geldof heaped praise on Tony Blair and George Bush, who were still mired in the butchery they had initiated in Iraq. But this is worse. As the UK chairs the G8 summit again, a campaign that Bono founded, with which Geldof works closely, appears to be whitewashing the G8's policies in Africa.

The New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, launched in the US when it chaired the G8 meeting last year. The alliance is pushing African countries into agreements that allow foreign companies to grab their land, patent their seeds and monopolise their food markets. Ignoring the voices of their own people, six African governments have struck deals with companies such as Monsanto, Cargill, Dupont, Syngenta, Nestlé and Unilever, in return for promises of aid by the UK and other G8 nations. A wide range of activists, both African and European, is furious about the New Alliance. But  Bono’s organisation stepped up to defend it. The article it wrote last week was remarkable in several respects: in its elision of the interests of African leaders and those of their people, in its exaggeration of the role of small African companies, but above all in failing even to mention the injustice at the heart of the New Alliance.

The Irish scholar Harry Browne maintains that "for nearly three decades as a public figure, Bono has been … amplifying elite discourses, advocating ineffective solutions, patronising the poor and kissing the arses of the rich and powerful". His approach to Africa is "a slick mix of traditional missionary and commercial colonialism, in which the poor world exists as a task for the rich world to complete". Bono, Browne charges, has become "the caring face of global technocracy".

Bono claims to be "representing the poorest and most vulnerable people". But  Bono and others like him have seized the political space which might otherwise have been occupied by the Africans about whom they are talking. Because Bono is seen by world leaders as the representative of the poor, the poor are not invited to speak. This works very well for everyone – except them.

Bono’s ONE campaign claims to work on behalf of the extremely poor. But its board is largely composed of multimillionaires, corporate aristocrats and US enforcers. Here you will find Condoleezza Rice, George W Bush's national security adviser and secretary of state, who aggressively promoted the Iraq war, instructed the CIA that it was authorised to use torture techniques and browbeat lesser nations into supporting a wide range of US aims. Here too is Larry Summers, who was chief economist at the World Bank during the darkest days of structural adjustment and who, as US Treasury secretary, helped to deregulate Wall Street, with such happy consequences for the rest of us. Here's Howard Buffett, who has served on the boards of the global grain giant Archer Daniels Midland as well as Coca-Cola and the food corporations ConAgra and Agro Tech. Though the main focus of ONE is Africa, there are only two African members. One is a mobile phone baron, the other is the finance minister of Nigeria, who was formerly managing director of the World Bank. What better representatives of the extremely poor could there be? Yet ONE  keeps telling you that it's a "grassroots campaign."

His positioning of the West as the saviour of Africa while failing to discuss the harm the G8 nations are doing has undermined campaigns for justice and accountability, while lending legitimacy to the neo-liberal project. This collaboration of multimillionaires and technocrats looks more like a projection of US and corporate power. U2's complex web of companies, the financial arrangements of Bono's Product RED campaign and his investments through the private equity company he co-founded are all famously opaque. And it's not an overwhelming shock to discover that tax justice is absent from the global issues identified by ONE.

Access for Food

History is riddled with examples of the poor dying of hunger when food was plentiful. Classic amongst these is the famine which wracked the West African Sahel during the early 1970s. While people were dying of hunger in Senegal, Mali and Niger, peanuts — a key sauce ingredient and source of protein across the region — were being exported to Europe.

Central to the philanthrocapitalist worldview is a belief that private enterprise is the fundamental agent of progressive change and that business acumen trumps other forms of expertise. It is also very convenient when a company’s profit motive lines up nicely with an initiative promoting the end of African hunger. The G8, the world’s richest democracies, launched the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition (NAFSN) last May. This $3 billion commitment by the G8 plus 21 African and 27 multinational companies aims to lift 50 million people in Africa out of poverty by 2022. Nearly 30 companies are involved with the NAFSN initiative (from Syngenta to Monsanto).

Cargill is a US-based large agricultural, financial and industrial corporation. Greg Page, Cargill’s chairman and chief executive, has been particularly active on the talk circuit and in the op-ed pages of American newspapers, articulating his support for NAFSN and similar initiatives. Cargill is a massive company, with revenues of $133.9 billion in 2012, which would rank No. 8 on the Fortune 500 list if it were publicly traded. It operates in 66 countries with some 133,000 employees. In voicing his support for the NAFSN approach, Mr Page outlines the need for free trade, growing crops where there is a comparative advantage to do so, property rights reform, and access to fertiliser, quality seed and mechanised equipment.

In a July 2012 speech in Minneapolis, US, Page compared Zambia and Mozambique. Cargill does a considerable amount of business in Zambia, which allows 99-year land-use permits that can be transferred between buyers and sellers, or transferred from one generation of farmers to the next, Page said. This type of policy encourages agricultural investment, spurring food production in the country, he argued. Last year Zambia produced a million more tonnes of maize than the country could eat — and Zambia is now a ‘net exporter in a continent of food shortage,’ he added.

In Mozambique, however, land-use rights are conferred for half the length of time and permits are non-transferable between parties, Page said. ‘If you look at the soil types, the rainfall patterns and everything else, there is no demonstrable reason that Mozambique should not produce more food than Zambia, and yet in the absence of the right legal frameworks, they’ve not been able to do that.’

What Page fails to understand is that producing more food in the aggregate is not synonymous with improving household food security. While Zambia may now be a food exporter, this does not necessarily mean that Zambia’s historically food insecure groups are better off. Instead, food insecurity remains a major issue for certain segments of the population, including child-headed households and those taking care of orphans (largely due to HIV/AIDS), the unemployed in urban areas, and smallholder farmers in the drought-prone, southern and western parts of the country (where an overreliance on drought-vulnerable maize has made the situation even worse). Furthermore, the Zambian government, because of its market-oriented land tenure legislation, has leased 8.8 percent of its agricultural land to foreign entities, according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation. These companies and foreign governments are primarily interested in producing food for export. Their interventions have done little to improve household food security amongst poor Zambians.

The best way to address food insecurity for the poor is emphasising access and not production.  The big money, for input providers, agro-processors and traders, is in building more capital-intensive and market-integrated African farming systems. There is little to no profit to be made from eradicating hunger.

The business of charity

A British charity which builds wells in Africa was refused overseas aid funding because its bid was not “innovative” - but the consultants who decide which charities should be helped were paid a million pounds.

 It is a small British charity with a simple goal – to supply clean water to villagers in some of Africa’s poorest countries.Just £3,000 can build a well  serving 4,000 people. A further £170 provides a latrine. Such straightforward schemes can save and transform lives. Operation WellFound has so far built more than 25 wells in four countries. WellFound has worked in Kenya, Senegal and Guinea Bissau, building sealed wells with hand pumps in areas where families previously sent their children many miles to fetch fresh water, or risked contracting dysentery, typhoid and cholera from contaminated shallow wells. WellFound requested £250,000 to build wells and latrines for 60,000 people in Burkina Faso, one of the most impoverished nations on Earth. The bid for funding was referred by the Department for International Development (DfID) to Triple Line Consulting, a London-based company which advises on overseas aid, to be examined in detail. The application was rejected. In an email sent by Triple Line to WellFound, the consultancy gave three reasons why the charity should not receive funding. The bid was considered not “sufficiently innovative”; it did not clearly explain how poverty would be alleviated; and it did not provide evidence of how the work could be replicated on a larger scale in the future.

 £29 million was paid in the past 12 months to Triple Line, whose main contract is to assess applications for grants from DfID’s Global Poverty Action Fund. The company passed on £27.1 million of the funding to aid providers it had vetted, while keeping the remaining £1.9 million as a fee for its services. Charities which are approved by Triple Line do not qualify for funding straight away. Instead, they are subjected to a second round of scrutiny by a different consultancy – this time a specialist branch of the global accounting firm KPMG. In the same 12 months, DfID paid KPMG more than £35 million. According to KPMG sources, most was passed on to aid providers and £3.5 million was kept as a fee.  

 Triple Line, based in Putney, south-west London, is owned by two directors who founded the company in 1999: Lydia Richardson, 42, a “socio-economist”, who lives with her husband in a £1 million house in Southfields, south-west London, and David Smith, 54, an economist, who lives with his family in a £750,000 house a few streets away. Triple Line – which states on its website “We operate on the principles of openness, transparency, accountability and trust” – is registered as a small company, meaning it is not required to publish its accounts. Last night its owners declined to disclose what the company’s income or profits were last year, or how much they were paid in salary or dividends.

A DfID spokesman said: “Operation WellFound was one of 238 applicants for a grant under the Global Poverty Action Fund. The top 20 will be awarded a grant. The nature of a competitive process means there will necessarily be a number of organisations that will just miss out.”

Aid - the negative industry

The financial figures are trotted out so often they are becoming almost boring: seven of the world's 10 fastest-growing economies, 13 countries with a higher per capita GDP than China, a fast-emerging middle-class with higher household spending than India.

Unfortunately, such truths have been obscured by the Live Aid legacy. For all their fine intentions, the mega-concerts proved a disaster for Africa. The tone was set by the absence of African artists from the line-ups of bands playing at concerts designed to save their continent. The message was clear: it was western voices that counted.

Two decades ago there were thought to be 70 charities operating in Ethiopia; today, the figure is close to 5,000. In Kenya, there is a slum with an estimated one charity for every 32 people living there. After any major disaster, where once 40 groups operated, there will now be in excess of 1,000, causing chaos and confusion rather than helping the afflicted, as seen following the Haitian earthquake two years ago. Western politicians of all hues, desperate to look sensitive and caring, cravenly pandered to this aid lobby led by Bob and Bono, while journalists put on kid gloves when engaging with it, ignoring practices that would provoke outrage elsewhere. As a result, global aid spending soared from £50bn a year to £83bn over the first decade of this century.

 Today 595,000 people work in a fiercely-competitive industry.

A study last year found even among these aid workers only about one-third thought their projects worked. In private, many will admit to grave doubts. You could fill this entire newspaper with examples of how the flood of money washes down the drain: a report by two health economists, for example, found nearly two-thirds of health aid in Africa is diverted. The waste, the ineptitude, the tolerance of corruption, the support for repression, the furthering of inequality, the boosting of arms spending is utterly scandalous.

First, all those new colonialists riding around in their big white jeeps telling the locals what is good for them. "They don't consult with us," complained a minister in Somalia, latest recipient of massive British aid. "It's like a doctor trying to prescribe medicine for a patient you haven't seen yet." This distorts priorities of recipient nations. It leads to the creation of pointless bureaucracy – one study found a typical African country must churn out 10,000 aid reports each year. Additionally, while Western government attacks welfare dependency at home, it encourages it abroad with unquestioning support for politicians who have no need to bother responding to the needs of their own citizens.

Imagine how you would feel if armies of Africans came and told you how to run your schools and hospitals (while living in some of the smartest homes)? Or funded politicians who steal and murder? But this is the West's approach abroad: we know best, our voices count. This is how Britain ended up funding a regime that sent a hit squad to this country to kill people. And how it spent £1bn supporting education in just three east African countries but failed to check whether the teachers turned up or the children were learning; sadly, they were not.

Second, there is strong competition from all those charities for your money. They produce adverts and leaflets to tug your conscience, making it seem like the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse – war, poverty, starvation, disease – gallop constantly across Africa. "If you are not negative enough, you won't get the funding," confessed one charity boss. A study suggested the dominant image remains "malnutrition and pot-bellied young children desperate for help with flies on their faces". The result of all this poverty porn – especially combined with a similar and lazy media narrative – is that Westerners see the continent as one benighted and dangerous country, not a vibrant, inventive and increasingly-successful collection of 54 diverse nations. This constant negative imagery puts them off travelling or trading there.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/ian-birrell-geldofs-obsession-with-aid-hurt-africa-but-now-trade-is-healing-the-scars-7792579.html

Di's dying legacy

An elderly home opened by Britain's Princess Diana in a Zimbabwe township during her African charity crusades has run out of money. The Society for the Aged Destitute has had to reduce the number of elderly given shelter with only a few months of funding left. After years of economic meltdown in this southern African country, those turned away from the home resort to the surrounding litter-strewn streets where homeless elderly dressed in rags beg for money and scavenge for food scraps and anything of value. The home's grounds are overgrown and a bedroom wing has been shut down. The residents stream into a bare eating room holding battered tin plates.

 Administrator Louise Allaart said met Princess Diana at the home in 1993 and said she touched the hearts of everyone she met. "I was so impressed with her. She had contact with people. It was absolutely amazing. She had that gift. I want her children to know she touched many people's hearts in Zimbabwe," 



Her children have an income of about half a million punds a year.

The British charity HelpAge cut its funding in 2008. The plight of the home is seen as a reflection of Diana's legacy in Zimbabwe.

Sevias Mujere, a trustee at the home, said Zimbabwe's approaching winter months pose health risks to the men and women, some aged into their 90s. During frequent power outages after years of political and economic turmoil, the vulnerable "sit in the dark, cold and shivering," he said. He said they were susceptible to sometimes fatal infections and respiratory disease and the home lacked money for medicines, treatment and hospital care. "We are struggling to pay salaries for our six workers" who made personal sacrifices in their dedication to the home, he said.
http://news.yahoo.com/money-dries-zimbabwe-old-age-home-opened-princess-101014646.html

a capitalist failure

Thousands of needless deaths occurred from famine in East Africa last year because the international community failed to heed early warnings. Oxfam and Save the Children say it took more than six months for aid agencies to act on warnings of imminent famine.

"Many donors wanted proof of a humanitarian catastrophe before acting to prevent one," the report says. "Sophisticated early warning systems first forecast a likely emergency as early as August 2010, but the full-scale response was not launched until July 2011." By that time it says, "malnutrition rates in parts of East Africa had gone far beyond the emergency threshold and there was high profile media coverage of the crisis"

Between 50,000 and 100,000 people died in Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia. At one stage during the famine the United Nations estimated that 10 million people were in need of humanitarian assistance.

Oxfam's Chief Executive, Barbara Stocking said "It is shocking that the poorest people are still bearing the brunt of a failure to respond swiftly and decisively."

Save the Children's Chief Executive, Justin Forsyth, said clear warnings had been ignored. "We can no longer allow this grotesque situation to continue; where the world knows an emergency is coming but ignores it until confronted with TV pictures of desperately malnourished children"

charity for who?

Kenya has a history of land-grabbing by senior government officials. Land disputes are common as legal documents of ownership are often missing or have been forged.

Around 2,000 pastoralist Samburu families have stayed squatting on edge of territory after the land they lived on for two decades was sold to two US-based wildlife charities. The two conservation groups gifted the 17,100 acres to Kenya's government in November to create a national park to be run by the Kenya Wildlife Service. NGO Survival International said the Samburu were evicted following the purchase of the land by two American-based charities, the Nature Conservancy and the African Wildlife Foundation.

There has been an ongoing, constant level of fear, intimidation and violence towards the community

"The displaced community has nothing but their livestock, thousands of which were impounded – with no reason given – on 25 November 2011. This is an urgent and serious violation of the rights of this community, which has been left squatting beside its land with no amenities" Survival said.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/14/kenya-samburu-people-evicted-land