Aid to Africa - More Harm Than Good?

Watched If... We Stop Giving Aid to Africa on BBC2 last night, and I found the following two articles this morning:

Aid 'is not solution' for Africa
Aid to Africa 'must be doubled'

I must say I am very skeptical about a lot of aid myself, even though I know that Africa won't sort itself out if you just leave it be, as some handwringers might like to claim.

The one big question that sticks in my mind though, is "If Governments govern their countries badly and drive their people further into poverty, why reward them by giving more aid?" How do you answer that question? How do you reconcile the fact that people are dying, with the risk that "helping" them more will reward bad governance?

The President of Botswana was talking on The Politics Show yesterday, about how his country might be forgotten, and might get very little help because it is one of the relative success stories. His country might have done themselves a great deal of harm in the long run by being prudent, and getting left behind as a result. Of course you need to help those that need help the most, but there are two sides to every coin, and this does potentially send out very mixed messages.

Of course the trade rules are far more important in the long term, in getting to a situation where aid is not needed, but good governance is crucial too, and I'm quite open to arguments that the aid we currently give does not always encourage this.

SPW Tanzania this year have a much-expanded programme thanks to the funding recently secured from major donor YouthNet. They're a really good NGO, who spend their money very wisely, showing that much of the work can be done for very little money at all.

This is so important to their ethos, because they aim to have local youths continuing the work after the NGO has left. If they threw money around on vehicles and computers like certain other major charities have been known to do, then this defeats the whole object of the exercise.

Their volunteers work under the umbrella of the Ministry of Education, and most of them are also Tanzanian, so it's not a charity coming entirely from the outside looking at the situation from a Westerner's point of view. All, in all they have a bloody good and appropriate style of working.

Yet much of the money comes from the outside, and they are carrying out work that, whilst effective, is work that should by rights be the responsibility of the national Government. There is a potential conflict there, and offers the Government some small excuse not to take their responsibilities seriously.

Now, the Government does not have the capacity to carry out that particular responsibility, but unlessed managed correctly does not encourage them to build that capacity and eventually take over the project (or allow a truly Tanzanian organisation to take over the project) either.

Which brings me back, ultimately, to The Hoja Project, which I worry will face the same issues. Will building and funding a Tanzanian secondary school with UK money, whether it is the brainchild of a Tanzanian or not, inadvertantly contribute to relieving the Tanzanian Government of the burden of responsibility of providing free education to its people?

Perhaps, but I do see another potential sequence of events unfolding also. What if more and more of these schools popped up? What if more and more people, who are deprived of a proper education, see more and more others who benefit from schemes such as this? Will they not start asking a bit louder why they have not had these opportunities?

As long as we don't forget that one day we want this school to fund itself, and not rely on foreign pounds, then the only significant effects of the school should be positive ones.

One thing I do know: it's better to to take positive action than to do nothing for fear of a few negative side effects.