Ogugua,
I didn't write in anger, and my response was NOT intemperate. Since when is a robust disagreement an intemperate response? This must be a case of selective and emotive perception on your part.
I clearly stated that my argument applied to loans, not to grants. I even capitalized the word "LOANS." But in your own anger at my supposed anger, you missed that. You also missed my clear distinction between GRANTS and LOANS. Grants may be "free" money but loans are clearly not. Grants are not even "free" because they are tied to specific projects that would benefit the "donor" countries and may undermine the interests of the recipient countries. There are several examples of this. But in the case of loans, the argument that Africans should not concern themselves with whether the money is being wasted because it is not their money is wrong. It is their money. Whether or not these countries repay the loans in full, their people are "forever" burdened by the debt accruing from them. And the recipient countries continue to pay interest charges, fees, servicing dues, and other payments that barely touch the principal scratch and the cumulative interest, which keep growing. They do this even while begging for debt forgiveness. Why do you think that most African countries have huge debt overhangs and have nothing to show for the aid that resulted in them? It's the function of waste and corruption on BOTH SIDES of the aid industry. And here's the clincher: in many cases the recipient countries have paid back the initial loan amounts in the form of interest, penalties, and so-called servicing fees. Yet they are left with a huge principal and accumulated interests, much of which is traceable to "aid" loans. To settle its debts under Obasanjo's co-called "debt forgiveness" deal with the Paris Club of creditors Nigeria had to part with $12 Billion in cold hard cash! This in spite of the fact the original "aid" loans amounted to no more than $8 billion and the fact that between 1979 and 2006(?) when the "debt forgiveness" agreement was reached, Nigeria had paid back the initial debt at least twice over in the form of interests, charges, and penalties.
Finally, it appears that you and I have radically different views of "debt forgiveness." You talk about it like it's charity, an altruistic gesture on the part of the creditor countries. Often, the "forgiven" debt (initial debt amount) has already been repaid in full in absolute dollar terms. Is it not unconscionable to continue to collect millions from these countries in the form of "debt servicing" for debts whose initial amounts have been repaid in interests and fees? Does this not hamper the ability of these countries to fund development projects or to even finance parts of their budget? Does this not result in these countries needing perpetual annual budget support (aid) in a vicious cycle of an aid revolving door? Is this not one of the sources of the aid trap/dependency that we're critiquing? How can you give loans to regimes that you know would waste them on your own mandated, wasteful overhead and on its own corrupt patronage network and still have the nerve to advance the altruistic, feel-good language of "debt forgiveness" to describe arrangements that allow you to collect a lump sum settlement and/or dictate terms and conditionalities to the countries benefiting from the so-called debt forgiveness? I find the "donor" countries to be equally responsible for the problems plaguing the aid industry and for aid dependency in Africa. Directing your angst exclusively at the African partners and players in this scam and coyly giving a pass to the "donors" is reductive.
Another point you ignored is that many of the aid projects can effectively--more effectively-- and more cheaply carried out by African skilled and unskilled labor but the conditionalities built into aid often require that foreign workers be hired from the "donor" countries."
Moses
Thank you for your intemperate response to my humble contribution to what I believe, is a serious discussion.
I did acknowledge that there is indeed need for more foreign aid budget efficiencies. You missed that in anger. Why are you this angry about a subject that you know you and I for now at least, are at best are peripheral discussants?
Do you not know that no country is at the end of the day obliged to accept foreign aid? Foreign aid acceptance has always been a choice. It still is. You wrote like foreign aid was forced.
What is also true is that foreign aid and loans come as a package. The aid recipient country is not always able, or diligent enough, to pick and choose. Do you not know that if you do a loan application to a bank, your choice are clear: accept the bank's terms and receive the loan, or reject the bank's term and be denied the loan. You must have heard that he who pays the piper calls the tune. You probably know, as I do that beggers are usually not choosers.
You make the point about whose money, aid funds are. Do you mean "free" money or loans? Let us suppose that you mean loans. How many African countries have actually fully paid back their foreign loans with aggressive loan forgiveness pleas and chants? Do you not know that loan forgiveness is almost always, an agenda item at meetings of African countries? How many African countries have begged for and received debt forgiveness in the last two decades? To what extent are foreign aid funds, really Africa's money therefore?
Why in your opinion, are many African countries standing, sometimes cap-in-hand, in foreign aid lines? If you answer this question truthfully you will understand why, on both past and present experience, many African countries cannot be trusted to judiciously and prudently implement foreign aid budgets and programs without close supervision of aid agencies' personnel.
You are yet to address the question of what African countries need to do and must do to end their obsessive and shameful pursuit of and dependence on foreign aid. What needs to be done as a matter of great urgency, is to extricate Africa from it apparently settled state of indigence. Until this happens, you may continue to look back and forth in anger.
oa
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com [mailto:usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Moses Ebe Ochonu
Sent: Thursday, November 11, 2010 11:22 AM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Director of Water Programs, charity: water, New York, Projects in Africa
Anunobi,
Let me speak for myself. I was not condemning foreign aid or endorsing it--in totality. My critique was specific and narrow, directed at the huge overhead that comes with aid delivery and that ends up consuming, by some estimates, as much as 50 percent of aid money, leaving a trail of unfinished and substandard projects. Which brings me to your question about "whose money is being misapplied (wasted) anyway....? Implied in the question is the assumption that the money is foreign money and so how it is used should not be the problem of Africans. Actually, most of it is not foreign money, since, apart from grants, bilateral or otherwise, these monies are actually low to zero interest LOANS to be repaid by the AFRICAN countries who receive the aid. The fact that much of aid money comprises of loans is precisely why Africans should take a keen interest in how the money is spent and on what it is spent. So, in many cases, the answer to your question would be that it's Africans' money. Therefore, I think it is legitimate for Africans to raise these issues.
Your "long term" implications of aid argument is one that everyone is familiar with and shares. I have not seen anyone who is not a critic of aid dependency. Yes, it is a more significant critique of aid but there is no reason why one should focus on it to the exclusion of critiquing the obvious cesspool of waste that the aid industry has become. Another point you ignored is that many of the aid projects can effectively--more effectively-- and more cheaply carried out by African skilled and unskilled labor but the conditionalities built into aid often require that foreign workers be hired from the "donor" countries. In other words, it is not the case that without these expensive, over-pampered foreign workers the aid projects cannot be carried out. The waste that comes with SUV, five star hotel and expensive holiday-laden lifestyles is therefore entirely avoidable. Often, however, the aid is just another opportunity for the "donor" country to create jobs for its citizens and contracts for its manufacturers. There is nothing wrong with "donor" countries deploying aid in a self-interested way. But there is also nothing wrong with highlighting this reality as a way to complicate and critique the simplistic, self-serving narrative of altruistic Euro-Americans helping helpless Africans.
You'd be hard pressed to find anyone who disagrees with your point about pushing for less aid dependency at home and for reforms that would make aid unnecessary. That point is so banal that I don't think it should be a big part of this discussion.
On Thu, Nov 11, 2010 at 9:06 AM, Anunoby, Ogugua <AnunobyO@lincolnu.edu> wrote:
I must be missing something.
Is it being suggested that all "Euro-American" aid to Africa does not help targeted poor Africans because of budget inefficiencies?
Is it being suggested that foreign aid work should be devoid of some of life's comforts which serve as incentive for potential foreign aid workers?
Whose money is being misapplied (wasted) anyway if indeed many foreign aid budgets are misapplied?
It must not be forgotten that most foreign aid work are jobs. The jobs are often times some of the least salaried for those who choose to take the jobs. Foreign aid work in Africa is quite often times in unfamiliar, rural, and undeveloped communities and territory and laden with personal risk for foreigner aid workers.
There is not much that is wrong with criticism that are intended to improve the efficiency of foreign aid budgets.
Critics of Euro-American aid to Africa should however be slow to extended their criticism to foreign aid workers. Many of them risk life and limb, to help communities and people they did not have to care about. Does anyone know what the poor Africans whose lives are impacted upon by Euro-American aid feel and say about foreign aid?
A more serious gripe about all foreign aid to Africa it seems to me, should be about foreign aid's long-term effect on the can-do spirit of beneficiary countries (governments and people). Do we all know that foreign aid is an item in the national and other budgets of some African countries? Is it not the case for example, that President Mugabe of Zimbabwe argues that the criticism of and "hostility" to his government by the British and American (U.S.A.) governments especially, are the primary reasons for the decline in foreign aid to his country? President Mugabe apparently does not seem to know that good governance and self reliance as viable alternatives to reliance on foreign aid. Foreign aid is not all bad as inefficient as their budget implementations might be. Europe and Japan after the great war of 1939-45), and South Korea and Taiwan are cases in point.
African critics of Euro-American aid to Africa may wish to consider using their knowledge and time better i.e. persuade African countries' governments to pay more attention to improving living conditions for their citizens such that all foreign aid to Africa is unnecessary sooner rather never.
oa
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com [mailto:usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Moses Ebe Ochonu
Sent: Wednesday, November 10, 2010 12:07 PM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Director of Water Programs, charity: water, New York, Projects in Africa
Pius et al,
We were just talking about this in my class the other day. The truth is that the SUV/Five Star Hotel (counter)narrative of the Mercy Industrial Complex (apologies to you, Pius), does not sell with Americans. Students, politicians, liberal, conservatives, regular folks, it doesn't matter. It just doesn't because it refuses to fit neatly into the feel-good rhetoric of American generosity and of the army of self-sacrificial Americans and Westerns that slaves in the scotching African sun and treacherous bush to bring development and uplift to Africans. Needless to say, when I broached the subject of the crazy overhead of NGOS and charities it didn't find many takers. Let's just say it wasn't the most popular segment of the seminar. It obviously threw a wrench in the settled self-narrations about American sacrifice for the good of Africans. When I personalized it and asked the students if, upon graduation, they would take a job with some "development agency" in some of the African villages we saw in class movies without "hazard allowances," comfortable SUVs, cozy hotels, and paid holidays, the class fell silent. Once I drove that point home, it became clear to them that the aid and charity industry is a global behemoth that "helps" and sustains Euro-Americans as much, if not more than, it "helps" Africans. This is precisely the reason why, broken as it obviously is, the aid industry is impervious to reform, rethink, and self-critique. Too many people, blacks and whites, are invested in it.
On Wed, Nov 10, 2010 at 10:31 AM, Tony Agbali <attahagbl@yahoo.com> wrote:
And Pius, don't also forget that image of "Mama Africa" painted by Wole Soyinka's "You Must Set Forth at Dawn," the kind that loves Africa more than Africans, while paving a way for a distinguished and functional lifestyle springing forth from donations.
Apart from the notion of ongoing western patronization of these unfortunate "uncivilized," hapless and helpless poor, so often visualized in civilizing and salvific constructs, this modified and modulated modern "civilizing missions" further produce new imaginaries and images of Africa of a stunted continent. These evolutionized tribe of new civilizers also become the official "mouth-organs" of Africa and African issues in the west, aided in large measure by the beguiling pixelized imageries of Kwashior and emanciated children daily reified on the media- TV, newspaper (secular and church ads), etc,).
Not only does this objectified pixeled images produce imaginative effects through the way it darkens and blurs the screen (in the case of TV ads), but acutely and intently are designed toward jolting sympathetic action from the "civilized and privileged" imagination into pivoting effective action that stimulates their consciences into reaching deep into their pockets.
It is not for nothing, therefore, that these imageries are often depicted in black and white photography or videography, as effective and profoundly symbolic tools in creating stark differentiations that cast and contrast between our ways and theirs,and through masquerading the ideas of darkness, ancient, back-wood civilization, given emphasis to the heightened Dubyan ideology that pegs the distinction between "us" and "them."
--- On Wed, 11/10/10, kenneth harrow <harrow@msu.edu> wrote:
From: kenneth harrow <harrow@msu.edu>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Director of Water Programs, charity: water, New York, Projects in Africa
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Date: Wednesday, November 10, 2010, 8:00 AM
charitable organizations are legally supposed to list how much of one's contribution goes to overhead expenses and how much to the project. some are much better than others.
ken
At 06:19 PM 11/9/2010, you wrote:"Compensation:
A competitive compensation package will be offered to the successful
candidate."
This is always the annoying catch with these yeye American and European "charities." The compensation package is always the catch. By the time they pay for the brand new Pajero Jeep or Land Rover of this new employee, one or two free tickets back home to America or Europe per year, competitive incovenience allowance, a villa in the city from where to take episodic excursions to that bush Africa that needs charity water, a driver, and a chain gang of domestic aides, very little will be left of the $2 billion that this new employee is supposed to raise in order to facilitate the re-invention of charity.
Ask Bono.
Pius
--- On Tue, 9/11/10, Jessica Matthews <devnetjobs@gmail.com> wrote:From: Jessica Matthews <devnetjobs@gmail.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Director of Water Programs, charity: water, New York, Projects in Africa
To: "USA Africa Dialogue Series" <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Tuesday, 9 November, 2010, 19:16
Director of Water Programs
charity: water
New York, NY
charity: water is focused on providing clean, safe drinking water to
100 million people in the next ten years. To do this, charity: water
is scaling its staff, its countries of work, its international
partnerships-and they are-inventing charity in the process.
The DIRECTOR OF WATER PROGRAMS will:
• As a member of charity: water's Executive Team, help lead the
organization and drive the cultural values that make our organization
distinct.
• Drive charity: water's program strategy and build partner capacity
to fund $2B in projects over the next 10 years.
• Have ownership of all funds sent to the field for project work.
You'll deploy, monitor and report on $10-20M in project funding this
year, growing to $500M per year over the next 10 years.
• Develop and lead people and systems to manage continual influx of
complex project data, and to scale exponentially over the next 5-10
years.
• Develop and manage high-level relationships with NGO leaders, water
experts, field engineers and community workers, driving testing and
broad adoption of viable new technologies and best practices.
• Drive quarterly project funding planning, including vetting and
negotiating partner project proposals and coordinating funding
capacity with fundraising and accounting teams.
• Represent charity: water in the global safe drinking water,
sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) sector.
• Uphold charity: water's commitment to transparency and efficiency by
holding partners accountable for financial and project status
reporting.
We are looking for a truly remarkable individual to join the senior
leadership team. The ideal candidate will display these unique
qualities:
• At least 5 years experience and expertise in international
development, preferably focused on programs providing clean drinking
water and hygiene and sanitation training to impoverished communities.
• Experience with designing and managing scalable systems to track,
organize and analyze complex project data.
• Proven relationship skills with ability to develop and leverage
productive relationships with NGO executives, water experts, engineers
and field workers.
• Strong communication skills, with ability to speak authoritatively
at conferences, in meetings and on video.
• Analytical, detailed and numbers-oriented approach to planning and
budgeting.
Education:
Bachelor's degree is required. Advance degree a plus.
Travel:
Travel internationally at least 12 weeks per year.
Compensation:
A competitive compensation package will be offered to the successful
candidate.
For more detailed information, go to: http://devnetjobs.tripod.com/9november2010-charitywater.html
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unsubscribe@googlegroups.comKenneth W. Harrow
Distinguished Professor of English
Michigan State University
harrow@msu.edu
517 803-8839
fax 517 353 3755--
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