RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Director of Water Programs, charity: water, New York, Projects in Africa

dear all, pius included:
after i returned from senegal in 2006, i wrote a longish piece on my experiences, which was published in Africultures. this is a fragment of that piece that bears directly on pius's points--bears on, and agrees completely with...

Shortly after I arrived in Dakar, I met a number of people who work at Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie, and we discussed the current state of affairs afflicting Senegal. They asked my opinion about where the responsibility lay, and I opined that the forces driving the economies of African countries were not controlled by African governments but by international organizations, and that the interventions of the World Bank, the IMF, and the multinationals of the global economy worked to the disadvantage of Africa. The key examples for me were such things as cotton subsidies and tariffs. I cited the views of Jeffrey Sachs that any opposition to foreign aid was immoral, and that massive amounts of money introjected in targeted areas were needed to give Africa a chance to develop and become competitive. Sachs seemed to be someone with unquestionable credentials and uprightness; his position seemed unassailable. The university's impoverished status seemed to bear him out.
        After a year in Senegal I am far less certain. Before this year I would have appreciated the drama of Sembène's depiction of Guelwaar, who mocked African dependency. The most powerful gesture made by the actor playing Guelwaar comes at a public meeting meant to acknowledge the generosity of foreign donors whose representatives are present, along with the politicians and general public in Thies. Guelwaar puts out his hand, palm up, and declaims that all this aid and dependency are teaching the children only one thing, to extend their hands and say "jerejef, jerejef"­thank you, thank you. Guelwaar is eventually beaten by the party goons and killed. But the youth of the town have learned from his speech and sacrifice, and at the end of the film, when they are returning from the cemetery, they cross a truck bearing sacks of food aid, and trash them. When I first had seen the film some 10 years ago, it was shocking to see the food trampled underfoot. Now I was beginning to change my mind.
        The signs of aid, dependency, are everywhere. On ambulances reading Italo-Senegalese cooperation on the side; French, European, Asian names appearing over and over with institutions of health, education, or the ubiquitous "development." Jerejef everywhere translates into industries of NGOs and granting agencies to which the Senegalese, like the Nigerians, or Cameroonians, endlessly extend their hands.
And I saw counter examples of non-state enterprises, like the Media Center in Dakar or the Claude Ake Foundation in Port Harcourt, struggling to distance themselves from state dependency, although still reliant on external funding from foundations like FORUT or Ford. Many of my colleagues, like myself, had received Fulbrights to teach abroad; but they also had regular support from UCAD to go on summer study tours in Europe or the US. Often these had the character of exchanges or research trips, not boondoggles.
        Despite opinions frequently voiced about corruption, I don't now believe that corruption is swallowing up Senegal, or the African state. Admittedly I have no way to measure its impact. But my interest lies elsewhere: it is in the space between systems that are grounded in notions of accountability versus those that generate self-sufficiency. The two are sides of the same coin, and both tend to be weakened by dependency, that is, the mentality driven by models of development and sustained by foreign aid. The response to jerejef in Wolof is "nyo ko bok," which means, "we share it." Not "you're welcome" or "je t'en prie," I beg of you. Nyo ko bok means that I don't see the solution for talibe lying in the abolition of daaras, or challenging the power of the marabouts. I see it in the work of PapeTall who had lobbied the marabouts' national association to provide children with recreation hours at the daaras. I see it also in L'Empire des enfants, with its reconstructed movie theatre run by Anta Mbow and Eric Alapini that now houses, feeds, clothes, and cares for up to 30 street children­including some who ran away from home or from the daaras. I don't think of UNICEF as the only option.
        Nyo ko bok also means that clandestine emigration is not to be resolved by Sarkozy's law of emigration choisie. It means at a minimum that the terms of African production and trade should by tilted by the WTO so as to favor their economic growth, not work against it. And it means that the "nyo," the "nous," us, must include in the family the community marked by a plural pronoun--not exclude. The modern version of the slave trade, clandestine emigration, is built on notions of radical otherness, leading Chirac to speak of a tide of black immigrants that will overwhelm Europe unless Europe develops Africa. Chirac was not talking of his own minister Sarkozy's parents when he had this black tide in mind. He thought he was being generous to them. But he missed on the word "them," not "us." Nyo ko bok­the only answer to Jerejef.
        Before I left, I pictured the African cotton farmer driven to desperation leaving his family to go north, crossing the Sahara and dying in the attempt to traverse the Mediterranean. I thought that Europe had driven him to it, and that if he made it the Europeans would think of him as someone too lazy to work and develop his own society, someone looking to steal or take advantage of the Europeans. I thought of Africans as victims, and Europe and the U.S. as the perpetrators. When I spoke to one of my students, asking whether he knew of anyone who had made the trip north, he told me he did. It was another young guy who worked in a boutique. He wasn't desperate; not a farmer driven to risk his life. He was someone who saw that Mercedes go down the street, saw the American sit-coms, and the European comedies on TV. He knew his life in Thies would never offer him a chance for what he saw, and decided he could make it. He was foolish enough, daring enough, strong enough, confident enough, to run the risk. His and other stories speak not of desperation, but of penury; not poverty, penury. And it isn't just large international systems that will give the full accounting.
The people in Dakar are making do, seeking to do better, and talking, talking all the time about what needs to be done to meet the current situation. I want to try to listen to them, and not Jeffrey Sachs for a while. Nyo ko bok is a good thing to say­at least for me, for now.
ken

At 11:49 AM 11/11/2010, you wrote:

Ogugua, Ogugua, Ogugua,

How many times I call you? Take your time o. You have missed a lot of things here. You have completely missed what Moses and Tony are saying but that is the mildest of your misses. Go and read that job ad again. How do you, an African, feel when you encounter that phrase about the re-invention of charity? Now, that's a new one. Think about that phrase in terms of its deeper implications for your dignity as an African.

We are talking charity and its underlying philosophy here in the West, you are talking foreign aid. Not exactly the same, although I'm opposed to both. Look, Ogugua, charity along with its discursive frames and actualities in the West, is fundamentally a source of the self, of the Western self. There is a huge Mercy Industrial Complex out there that would not exist if there wasn't this self with an infinitely elastic sense of its fundamental and messianic goodness. And it is frustrating when colleagues brush these issues under the carpet and brandish the example of one village that received Jeffrey Sachs's mosquito nets as evidence of the alleluia value of charity like you are doing here. What next will you make a case for? When the Nigerian politician or government official steals money, buys rice, and distributes it to the people, oho, so we should focus on the fact that the sacks of rice will feed some villagers and forget the overall corrupt frame of the enterprise, abi?

To colleagues who live in America and pretend to be strangers to the feel-good triumphalist philosophy of charity that is all around them, I have always said: wait till your five-year old returns from school and tells you that his peers have been looking at him "one kain" since the day their teacher asked them to bring sachets of Uncle Ben's rice and leftover packets of cookies for the food donation basket that will be shipped to "the hungry people of Africa" - always a blanket Africa. When that has happened to your child, Ogugua, come back here and lets debate charity.

By the way, Ogugua, I am sure you have not noticed that the lucky candidate who gets the advertised job of Director of Water Programs is also expected to go to Africa and teach villagers hygiene and sanitation. Perhaps that includes teaching them how to stop wiping their behinds with leaves after doing the big one in the bush? Perhaps they will be taught to use toilet paper while singing char char charmin!

Anyway, "curing their ills" and teaching "them" hygiene and sanitation is an independent area of discourse that I can't get into here. At any rate, if you have no problem with charity, I don't imagine you'll have any problem with American 18 year-olds telling you that they are going to teach elders in your village how to be clean, abi?

Pius




--- On Thu, 11/11/10, Anunoby, Ogugua <AnunobyO@lincolnu.edu> wrote:

From: Anunoby, Ogugua <AnunobyO@lincolnu.edu>

Subject: RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Director of Water Programs, charity: water, New York, Projects in Africa

To: "usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com" <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>

Date: Thursday, 11 November, 2010, 15:06

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

www.charitywater.org

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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Kenneth W. Harrow
Distinguished Professor of English
Michigan State University
harrow@msu.edu
517 803-8839
fax 517 353 3755