Aid Effectiveness and My Weekend

The conference in the Volta region turned out to be about “Aid Effectiveness.” Unfortunately, there was no particular need for a lawyer at the conference- no disputes to mediate, no constitutions to write, no advice to be given. So I made my self useful by taking copious notes of the conference, and, at the request of Ken, the director of the Development Institute and my boss, I’ll produce a full report. Seeing as no one else was taking notes, the report will be pretty useful.

I also learned a lot about the complex and multi-faceted field of “aid effectiveness” and, since I’ve been meaning to reflect on my usefulness (and, to the extent I can, the usefulness of all the good intentioned volunteers, aid workers, engineers and the like), I’ll take this opportunity to do so.

First things first. Aid effectiveness is the quasi- scientific study of how the money and knowledge that the developed world sends to the undeveloped is actually used. There are treatises dedicated to it, and huge NGOs that do nothing but study it. Basically, in order to understand if aid is having any effect, there need to be what are called “indicators.” For example, a popular indicator is patronage. Is anyone using the new latrine that was donated by some Dutch NGO? It gets a lot more completed than that since many of the indicators deal with “harmonization”—whether the money is going into creating a system of, say land titling, that is compatible with tribal customs, etc. I don’t pretend to understand it beyond the basics, and neither did most of the people at the meeting.

Nowadays, the big thing in the aid effectiveness world is the “Third High Level Meeting on Aid Effectiveness,” to be held right here in Ghana in September 2008. The purposes of the meeting is, among other things, to refine the current indicators of aid effectiveness. The “Second High Level Meeting on Aid Effectiveness” (but I don’t it was called that) was held in Paris in 2005. At the Second High Level Meeting, donors, NGOs, government ministers, and representatives of local organizations, the world over, agreed on a set of indicators of aid effectiveness. Unfortunately, these indicators turned out to work really well for the donors and the NGOs, but not so well for the local organizations in the developed world charged with putting the aid to good use. The indicators need to be revised to take into account the concerns of the local organizations. I suppose that’s why the meeting was moved from the City of Lights (Paris) to the City of Open Sewers (Accra).

In preparation for the meeting, countries all over the world are holding there own mini meetings (perhaps they are called “low level meetings?”) to determine what kind of indicators they want to see. The meeting I attended was one of those meetings- each region in Ghana is coming up with its own indicators, and there will be a national conference in March 2008 to decide which indicators to present to the Third High Level Meeting. The meeting on Friday was the regional meeting for the Volta region. The whole thing is sort of meta: it was a meeting to evaluate the effectives of the indicators of effectiveness.

At the meeting, people came up with all sorts of great indicators, which mainly came down to local ownership and control of the project. In other words, a project will be judged to be effective if it controlled by the local people, rather than by an NGO or government agency working at behest of a donor country. Its easy to see why—when people feel ownership in a project, they are more likely to maintain it and the project is more likely to conform to local needs. There were lots of stories of enclosed markets built in a way that offended one group of people (location, hours, etc) and stories of textile production projects which had the perverse effect of drawing the kids away from school to work in the factory, etc. And the toilets that the NGOs build usually go unused for one reason or another. (Everyone has a toilet problem!) Local control would probably avoid all those problems. The elephant in the room, that only a few brave souls breached, is the fact that, when local people control too much, things get delayed, pockets get lined, and, most annoyingly, priorities get switched. For example, it was pretty clear that gender issues, which are super important to donors and NGOs, rank fairly low on the list of local priorities. Ditto for environmental issues. I don’t know how it will all sort out, but next September I’ll be reading the far end of the international section of the Times to see. I’m pretty sure it won’t be on the front page (but more on that, later).

In any event, issues of aid effectiveness are important to most volunteers in Ghana. We have all taken some time out of our otherwise busy lives to come here and help. Its obviously on the mind of the professional aid workers too, since, for the most part, they are a pretty talented group who could be doing something useful in their home countries if they were not here. So the question is, are we actually doing any good? Well, it depends how you look at it. Its true that many volunteers do very little (a lot are “gap” year students from the UK, Germany, the Netherlands and South Africa, among other places, who have very few skills in the first place) and some probably make things worse by misbehaving or doing shoddy work. However, I think that most volunteers work really, really, hard and make a difference: teachers and nurses are trained, English and science is taught, schools and eco tourism sites are built, constitutions and reports are written. (shout out to ME!) And that work is good and important.

However, even assuming the hundreds of volunteers and aid workers in this country are doing nothing (which is far far from the truth) I’m of the opinion that ineffective assistance is better than no assistance at all, although reasonable people can disagree. At least being here recognizes the fundamental inequities of the world, even assuming we are not doing much to bridge those inequities. And, if all the aid workers and volunteers can do something productive for the people of Ghana, that is just icing on the cake. Of course, “being there” is not a formal measure of aid effectiveness but, in my opinion, its an important one. Especially when the developed world simply ignores, and often exploits, Africa’s poverty.

But the deeper question is why? Why bother? What is it about poverty in the developing world that should demand our attention? Poverty is certainly not as pressing a concern as terrorism, nuclear proliferation and, lately, global warming. And, for that matter, developed countries have plenty of their own problems to address. Until we can come with a compelling reason to care, people won’t.

But there are a few reasons to care. I’m not a religious person, but the bible certainly has a lot to say about helping the needy. Likewise, I don’t often think of things in moral terms (probably because I’m so hedonistic) but helping those less fortunate is morally correct. Some people even suggest that altruism is in our genes:

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200710/generosity-and-evolution/

For me, however, the more compelling reason is a philosophical one (although, with apologies to the philosophers who might be reading this, I can’t name the actual philosophers who thought this up, if any): we can’t really talk about freedom, justice, faith in science, the wonders of art and creativity if we can’t meet people’s basic needs (food, clothing, shelter, peace). Everything we take for granted, civil society, scientific progress, live theater, etc., become nothing more than a temporary luxury of people who have too much, and not the real state of human affairs. The real state of human affairs is sleeping in a slum in Accra, without air conditioning (or running water, for that matter). (70% of the people in Accra live in slums, and, world wide, 1 billion people live in urban slums in developing countries). Its all very theoretical when written in a blog but, when you see it for yourself, the poverty in places like Ghana (and Ghana is by far not the poorest place in Africa) is an affront to our basic values (freedom, equality, faith in science, etc).

Look at it this way: the guy in the slum is not coming to share his way of life with us, and most people don’t want it. But we can share ours with him, without much cost, and we should. Otherwise, the only difference between the slum dweller and the New York co-op owner is purely materialistic, and that’s deeply upsetting from a philosophical standpoint. Philosophically, the most important difference should be that you care about him, but he has too many things to worry about to think about you. Without that key distinction—using our prosperity to help others—everything we have achieved is meaningless and fleeting.

Another problem with not helping is that it raises the specter that prosperity is actually an evil and should be shunned. It works like this: maybe, just maybe, our prosperity is built off their misery. Seen that way, prosperity, progress, etc. is malevolent because the prosperity of the few leads to the suffering of the many, and that is just plain wrong no matter how you look it at. As we go about our lives in the developed world, we know that is not the case, it is not a zero sum game, and prosperity can be shared by all. But it’s only wishful thinking unless we take the time to actually make it so.

Yes, yes, I know: there are poor people in the developed world, and rich people in the developing world, so nothing is as simple as it seems. In fact, just today the World Bank came out with a study that showed that African economies are growing at a rate of about 5% per year, and more in African countries with oil, since oil is super expensive these days. The U.S. economy, in contrast, grows about 3% per year. However, in African countries, gains are not broad based and concentrate in the few. Thus, even with the gains, many Africans still remain very poor. Also, my analysis is sound because the framework for aid effectives is the same whether its intra or inter country (e.g. rich Ghanaians to poor Ghanaians, etc) and even at 5% a year, Africa has a lot of catching up to do.

Just to clarify, I’m not talking about sending over a boat load of Sony Playstations or opening up lots of fast food joints (which they have lots of here, anyhow). What I mean is training people in the developing world on farming techniques, sanitation, family planning, education, developing a land market (shout out to me, again), funding programs that developed good government and civil society in developing countries, etc. etc. etc. I’m also talking about developing trade polices that help Africa, instead of the current ones that have the opposite effect. Debt relief is also key (African countries spend a lot servicing their foreign debt). Or at least try to do all those things. And we are back to where we began: volunteering is important and what all the under employed volunteers in Ghana and other places are doing makes a difference, in small way.

So while we are “sharing our way of life” we might as well have some fun, right? I think so! I spent this weekend in the Volta region, hiking. A guy I work with set me up with a friend of his to show me around. Here is a picture of Henry and I:

Henry took me around on his motor cycle, and zipping around the back roads of the Volta region on a motorcycle was a good time. Saturday, I climbed the highest mountain in Ghana, Mt. Afadjato. That’s the mountain behind Henry and me. Its not all that high, 885 meters, but the climb is intense owing to the lack of a switchback. You basically go right up the mountain. But I made it up to the top:

Sunday I went to the Wli Falls. It’s the highest waterfall in West Africa and its one of the better developed tourism sites in the Volta region. I took a two hour hike to the upper falls (and two hours back). The upper falls were pretty spectacular. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a waterfall so high. Again, the hike was grueling but my guide was wearing flip flops, so I really had no excuse not to make it. And I did. Another picture:

In other news, I’ve moved. I’ve left the beautiful single star “Hotel Grisfarm.” I’m now boarding in a guest house on the border of Osu and another neighborhood. It’s a much better set up because I have my own kitchen and a small sitting area. Its not a hotel, so I don’t have to talk to the receptionist every time I come in and out, which I hated. The Hotel Grisfarm also had a "security guard" who carried a baseball bat, which always made me uneasy. The security guard asked me for “gift” a few times, which I resented (I never did give him anything). I don’t need to deal with him anymore, either. I actually like the location of the new place better because its not on a dark back road, like the Grisfarm was.

The place was a mess when I agreed to take it (it looks like the last person moved out, a while ago, and no one bothered to cleaning since then), but I saw a bed and a floor and I trusted the landlady to put the place together in time for my arrival. She did, except there is no hot water. I forgot to ask. Oops. Its far from luxurious, but its comfortable enough. AJWS representative, not the incompetent Douglas, but another one, found the place, and I’m thankful.

I’ll be in Accra for the next four weeks or so, with only weekend trips. Apparently, no one will be in the office on Friday, so I plan to take the day off and go to Kumasi for the weekend, which is the second largest city in Ghana and has lots of history. At work, I’m writing an Alternative Dispute Resolution manual for the resolution of community disputes, which is pretty interesting, but nothing anyone wants to read about. So, aside from my trip to Kumasi, I’ll try to blog about my daily life here. Look for those entries in the next week or so.