All this aid easily adds up to trillions of dollars in today's money. Even so, the world's poorest countries are in Africa. In relative terms, many African countries are poorer today than they were at the time of independence, in spite of all the aid. In other words, these countries have a smaller share of the world's GDP today than they had at the time of independence. This should raise red flags as to the utility of aid.
While some aid practitioners maintain that raising the GDP was not their objective, development is typically measured in GDP per capita, and development assistance should logically help countries to develop. GDP may not be an ideal measure of development, but there is no better single indicator. A recent article in the Financial Times pointed out that: "GDP is almost everything - everything is better in countries with high GDP, even things that are free".
Better-informed aid professionals attribute this state of affairs to high population growth in Africa and massive GDP growth in China. While that may be correct, it is worth reflecting on the fact that China developed without any aid - as did most of the so-called Asian tigers. Is there a country, anywhere in the world, that has developed through aid?
Most indicators relating to health, education, water, sanitation, nutrition have improved in most African countries since independence. Whether this is due to aid or would have happened without aid or in spite of aid is not possible to convincingly determine. It has not stopped hundreds of aid outfits from standing up and taking credit. Bill Gates, some time back, took credit for more children being in school today than ever before. Did he have much to do with this?
Either way, a healthier, well nourished, and better educated population should logically be more productive and grow the GDP. Economic growth is happening at a very slow pace in most of Africa and without economic growth, there will not be any sustainable development. Does this justify more aid?
Growing the aid industry is in the practitioner's interest, even if their first priority should be to work themselves out of a job. Aid practitioners are highly paid, often inexperienced and underqualified and few could find a job outside of the aid business that would offer similar salaries and benefits. Not only UN staff that are overpaid; some heads of NGOs earn more than $1,000,000 per year. They are the lords of poverty, exactly the same as we were. We talk about the scourge of inequality in the world, while our monthly pensions exceed the annual GDP per capita of most african countries by multiples. Aid agencies, including UNICEF, typically skim off well over half of the money they receive for salaries and overhead costs. Often, the elite in recipient countries directly benefits from aid, through corruption or redirecting internal money flows. Aid may indeed help to perpetuate the status quo; the aid industry keeps growing even if the results for the general population are meager or even negative.
It must be quite obvious to any honest observer of Africa that any meaningful development is not possible in countries with incompetent, corrupt, and abusive governments. That aid does nothing to address any of these three crucial issues must be equally obvious. This leads to the question: does aid help keep incompetent, corrupt, and abusive governments in power?
The question has not been thoroughly debated within the aid industry, if debated at all. This may be because the two most important constituencies, the taxpayers in the West and the intended beneficiaries in Africa, have no say in the matter. If UNICEF is serious, it should invite Dr. Moyo to Istanbul together with representatives from communities in Africa that have been let down as well as representatives of taxpayers from countries who have provided most of the aid. Proxies will not do, the taxpayers should not be represented by jaded officials from donor countries nor should any beneficiaries be represented by their often corrupt governments. To televise this interaction would, in the name of transparency, be a step forward in the process of determining the future of aid.
Surely it must be more useful to have such a meeting rather than, as in the Plaza Hotel in NewYork, paying for Hans Rosling to flatter us and for a conman lying to us about the results of Three Cups of Tea in Afghanistan. It would also give UNICEF staff the opportunity to justify their salaries and benefits to the ones who pay them and to the ones they are paid to help.
Admittedly, my knowledge of UNICEF is 20 years old and Detlef never stops telling me that things have improved on all fronts since my days. Nevertheless, I bet one month's pension on UNICEF not daring to hold such a meeting. If I am wrong I will donate one month's pension to UNICEF.
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Thomas Ekvall can be contacted via: thomas.ekvall9435@gmail.com
I agree that aid is not an appropriate way to help countries raise their GDP.
ReplyDeleteI disagree that GDP is the universal (proxy) measure for ‘development’ – which of course would require a discussion and agreement of what development means. I also disagree with UNDP’s HDI (Human Development Index) as a substitute measure. For example, to me, Saudi Arabia is not a developed country; it is merely rich.
The UN is not really about economic development (even though it often pretends to be), but about the values that people accept as universal (such as equality of men and women or the best interest of children).
The rate of child mortality, combined with the rate of child stunting, is the single most important measure of a country's (or geographic area's) state of development, or lack of it. The position on the trend line between this mortality/stunting index and the national GDP per capita is a good proxy measure of governance and political commitment to development and human rights.
ReplyDeleteUNICEF, and much of the wider UN, is not or should not be about "aid", but, as Detlef says, about promoting values and standards, and their application by governments and societies. The exception being where States have categorically failed to protect their citizens from harm (through war, disease and hunger). Also, more arguably, where they have declined or neglected to do so?
The correlation is close between the under-five mortality rate, the stunting rate, the quality of governance, GDP per capita, and the Corruption Perception Index. In other words, if you only want to pick one, it doesn't matter much which one you pick to measure development. You, by and large, end up with the same ranking.
ReplyDeleteIf development assistance is about promoting values and setting standards it is poorly understood, particularly among the relatively poor taxpayers in northern Europe who pay for most of it. They have never been told that their hard-earned tax money went to promote values. They were told their money went to help poor countries develop. In any case, what are those values and standards? Is there universal acceptance of these? Or is it just a convenient and unmeasurable afterthought to deflect criticism and cover up failures?
Surely, the $170,000,000,000 that is spent annually on development assistance must be about more than values and standards. The discussion should, of course, be about why the results of all this money are so meager and possibly negative.
Thomas, I didn't write that development assistance is about promoting values and standards. Rather, that most of UNICEF's and the UN's work is, or should be - emergencies aside. This is valuable work for human progress and can be cost-effective too. Values include those explicitly adopted by the UNGA and Member States in human rights treaties (as we know, for children's rights, only the USA has declined to do so). Standards extend from child and refugee protection to food safety, data quality and disease control. I was having the respective UN mandated agencies in mind. Many thanks.
ReplyDeleteIf we are talking about human rights, perhaps we should put more emphasis on the promotion of such rights at the very top. There are countries on the UN Security Council, that violate human rights as I write this, that would benefit from lectures on rights and values. Obviously, universal acceptance of these rights is rather weak. More efforts in this regard would be very valuable for human progress and also cost-effective.
ReplyDeleteIf we can't sort out our own house, we haven't got a leg to stand on when it comes to promoting these values to hard-pressed governments of poor countries that struggle to keep their heads above water.
I can't help getting the impression that xUNICEFers are trying to change the rules mid-game: Africa may or may not be poorer today than it was 50 years ago, either way, it has little, if anything, to do with the UN; the UN agencies are about food safety, disease control, and data quality.
This said, I am all for changing the rules, but it should not be done through the backdoor. Imagine the impact 170 billion dollars a year would have if it was spent on addressing existential issues such as climate change. Phase out aid as we know it over a few years and use the money on, say green energy in Africa.
It would work. The west would have skin in the game - it is existential. It would be a bit like the smallpox eradication program. It succeeded - it was very important to the rich world. They saved billions of dollars not having to vaccinate their children against polio.
Regrettably, this development business did not work out as we all hoped and expected just a couple short decades ago. To be honest, it has been obvious for some time, but now when so many smart and articulate intellectuals in Africa have got wind of the fact something needs to be done.
ReplyDeleteHowever, there is no need to hang around and take responsibility for this debacle. UNICEF simply needs to be repurposed. It is most encouraging that so many of you are already hard at work doing just that. We are fortunate in that we can easily hang our hat on children's rights. It is a good niche, safe and hard to measure - it will serve the purpose for decades to come.
Our poor sisters and brothers in UNDP may not be as fortunate. The name alone will make it so much harder, but they will figure something out, they have been dodging bullets for many years.
We may not need to worry too much about the donors right now. They have been in it with us for 60-70 years or more and their taxpayers for always suckers. Longer term we have to figure something out though. These pesky African intellectuals are getting louder.
The governments we work with should not pose any real problems. They will figure something out to benefit from us - they always have.
The aid industry may have been going pear-shaped, but crude sarcasm won't do anything to set it right. The biggest challenge the world is facing is climate change - it is existential, and affecting all of us. Unless decisively addressed there won't be a world worth living in for our grandchildren and none at all for our great-grandchildren.
ReplyDeleteThe south, least responsible for causing the calamity, must be given help to address the climate issues. Help with say producing green energy would be a good step in the right direction. It could indeed also help with development something aid has failed to do. If done on a commercial basis it would also be sustainable. There would be no better way to spend the $ 170 billion annual aid budget.
Success with greening Africa would pave the way for more transfers from the north to the south for addressing climate change. The north would have a major stake in making it succeed, which in turn would help it to succeed.
I have come to the conclusion that I have preached to the inconvertible. That was foolish of me. I am obviously not much of a provocateur. I should have understood that anything that could possibly rock the boat would be ignored.
ReplyDeleteI was just too naive to believe that retired aid workers would have enough courage to dare to at least debate the utility of aid on their own blog. It is not exactly like standing up on a soapbox in the speaker's corner or writing an opinion piece for a newspaper. It reminds me of the old days when we looked over our shoulders, felt where the wind was blowing, and went with the crowd. We never had much courage.
Whatever I think of you I don't think you are unintelligent or uninformed. Everyone who reads this knows that the 500,000-people-strong aid industry is at best questionable and the $170,000,000,000 they spend annually could be spent better.
I have been following this discourse with keen interest and feel encouraged to find that we have been able to stir up a lively debate here around it. It's good to stand up, stick your neck out and muster up courage to call a spade a spade when and where required.
ReplyDeleteBesides the astronomical figures spent on and by the aid industry, largely on operational costs and staff support, there is the obvious political dynamics that the industry has acquired through decades and it remains deeply entrenched no doubt.
Talking about development assistance, I am more inclined to go with the old Chinese proverb on providing an angling rod and teaching how to fish rather than feeding fish that lasts only for a meal. Capacity building and empowerment should be at the core of development initiatives in my opinion rather than doling out charities.
Although our Weekly Digest is based on News&Views, we rarely capture the views of our readers here. I thank you all personally for having kept alive this debate and hope to see more added.