Dead Aid

I have just finished an excellent book called Dead Aid by a Zambian economist, Dambiso Moyo. This is not an easy read. It requires concentration and thought as Moyo explains the detrimental effect that aid has had on Africa. The statistics are startling. She states that in the past 50 years over more than US $1 trillion dollars in development related aid has been transferred from rich countries to Africa. And yet “the proportion of the people in sub-Saharan Africa living in abject poverty increased to almost 50%. Between 1981 and 2002, the number of people in the continent living in poverty nearly doubles, leaving the average African poorer today than just two decades ago.” She also states that the life expectancy has stagnated and adult literacy across most African countries has plummeted below pre-1980’s levels.
This book is about foreign aid at a national level, not charity based aid. But as I read it I see many similarities in the results, whether it be thousands of dollars in charity aid or millions, billions, or trillions of dollars in national aid. The results are the same. It is easier to pocket aid money than investment money. Aid money is not as traceable as investment money. Aid money encourages people to wait for more aid rather than taking initiative to do things on their own. Also, emergency relief in not included her assessment of aid. This would include onetime donations to victims of natural disasters.
Moyo starts her book by saying that we live in a culture of aid. “Rich” people genuinely want to help “poor” people. It takes so few American or Canadian dollars to ‘help’ people in third world countries. But it is imperative that we consider if we are enabling or dis-enabling the people whom we are trying to help. A number of years ago someone told me about a wonderful mission project. Each year a group would go to the same place in Mexico. They would repair houses, purchasing all the needed supplies and taking along their own tools. Each year there would be a new list of projects. The residents of the village learned to do something to improve their village. They learned to make their list for each year. If this group no longer comes to do the repairs, what will happen to these houses? Have the people learned to do their own maintenance or have they learned to make a list? We build houses – do we enable them to build their own or do we give them a house?
This past week we faced the impact of the aid mentality. Jake attended the regular monthly meeting of the community. Much to his surprise, one of the items on the list was “Analizar misionario”. Now why would this be an agenda point? Are other people in the community analysed? The point being made is that we do not help the community. We do not give them project money. We are not giving them the things they would like – machinery and infrastructure money for roads, bridges and river canalization. The things that we consider important – walking beside them day by day, delivering babies, fetching the nurse, taking women to the hospital to have their babies, the micro-credit program. These things are just ‘little’ things and they want big things – and they want them free. Why? Because they, too, know the aid mentality. Although we can explain that this type of freebie aid does not work in the long run, they do not care. They want the money for themselves NOW. Let the future take care of itself. How we will address this is a question we have yet to answer. We pray, and we ask you to pray for us, that we will have the wisdom to deal with this situation.