Just Now, On the Phone with Jeffrey Sachs
Yesterday, I got an email from an old friend who works at SIRIUS Satellite Radio, asking if I'd throw in an opinion on Jeffrey Sachs' pilot show, The Power of One, for the station.
I've been a fan of Sachs' since I read his book, The End of Poverty, about a year ago. I think his advocacy of the Millenium Development Goals and his drive to wipe out the most extreme forms of poverty are fantastic and necessary ideas.
On the show, I asked if Sachs could "separate so-called 'good' aid from 'bad aid'? How do you [Sachs] respond to criticisms of people like [the Ugandan journalist] Andrew Mwenda, who argue that any form of international aid damages African socities?"1
Sachs responded rather forcefully that aid to rural Africa is a good and necessary thing. There's no reason to hold off on malaria medications and mosquito nets that will help rural Africans, certainly, and the more ARVs we can distribute in sub-Saharan Africa, the better. And I agree.
But perhaps where we don't see eye-to-eye on this issue is the question of delivery mechanisms. I can't agree that aid is unquestionably good in all situations. Certainly, aid programs can be hijacked, misused, or poorly designed, and thus exacerbate political, ethnic, social, or economic distinctions in societies. Sachs' guest seemed to do a wonderful job of bypassing some of these issues by directly targeting a single, easily accessible village in Senegal for a direct injection of material aid. I think that method certainly has its advantages. But that approach has limited applications.
Certainly, large scale projects, like promoting HIV/AIDS education here in sub-Saharan Africa, or the delivery of the millions of mosquito nets that will be needed in the next few years, or even debt forgiveness requires far more resources than can be mustered by school children in New York City. The largest and most complicated development attempts have to be channeled through organizations and governments on the ground in the Third World. And it is in those situations that aid tends to distort African societies by focusing politicians on their relationships with donor countries and NGOs, allowing them to make trade-offs in the names of their constituents. It's the largest programs that breed the most obvious corruption.
And this is where Mwenda certainly has a point, although I don't agree with him that no aid is better than any aid. Instead, how do we handle aid so that we avoid giving people fish rather than teaching them to use fishing poles? How can we direct the flow of aid so that it doesn't eddy into the pockets of bureaucrats, but flows to the appropriate institutions? This issue is overlooked far too often in developed countries, but it's a fact of life here. (For instance, the rumors in Kampala are that a large government cache of ARVs were allowed to expire, simply because the money required to distribute them across the country was siphoned into the private accounts of various, unnamed officials.)
Where Mwenda and other critics of the international donor community are leading us, I think, is not really to a "no-aid" system, but to a "smart-aid" system, where the distorting political, economic, and social effects of aid are openly discussed and mitigated wherever possible. This can be done the way Sachs' guest did: target a small, discernible problem -- a well-cover for a village, a bore-hole, malaria medicine for 12 months, plowing equipment for an over-farmed area. Sachs himself argues in his book that changing the structure of aid to emphasize local demand for programs and then putting local aid organizations in charge helps to alleviate these problems. And that's probably true.
But not all aid projects can be pursued at such a small scale. Educational programs, especially, benefit in concrete ways from expanded mandates and expanded budgets. But those same enhancements often inflate or exacerbate structural, social, or political schisms related to, or in the worst cases actually caused by, those programs. Donors and donor nations need to be transparent in assessing the potential for misuse of donor funds, reinforcing hierarchical or autocratic tendencies inherent in these programs, and the exploitation of the poor or politically isolated that can occur in such situations.
Donors need to start walking the line of necessity, of only doing as much "good" as is absolutely required, then allowing indigenous actors to take the lead. Help people learn to fight their own battles.
Programs should to be tailored to fit the exact needs of their target group. Trimming the fat on aid programs will help reduce the amount of corruption associated with donations by assuring that the program's primary goals are met first. Grandiose, complicated schemes to reduce poverty or alleviate inequalities across broad areas are noble, but ultimately too unwieldy for even developed nations to pursue adequately and cleanly. Stick to the basics, whenever possible.
------------------------------------------------------
I want to thank SIRIUS Satellite Radio for allowing me to talk to Jeffrey Sachs by calling me, thus insulating me from crippling airtime charges on my Uganda mobile.
------------------------------------------------------
Edited at 11:00am EST. Added note thanking SIRIUS and link to Sirius's website. Also added name of Jeff Sachs' show.
------------------------------------------------------
1. My apologies to you, Andrew; I think I'm overstating your position here, slightly.
I've been a fan of Sachs' since I read his book, The End of Poverty, about a year ago. I think his advocacy of the Millenium Development Goals and his drive to wipe out the most extreme forms of poverty are fantastic and necessary ideas.
On the show, I asked if Sachs could "separate so-called 'good' aid from 'bad aid'? How do you [Sachs] respond to criticisms of people like [the Ugandan journalist] Andrew Mwenda, who argue that any form of international aid damages African socities?"1
Sachs responded rather forcefully that aid to rural Africa is a good and necessary thing. There's no reason to hold off on malaria medications and mosquito nets that will help rural Africans, certainly, and the more ARVs we can distribute in sub-Saharan Africa, the better. And I agree.
But perhaps where we don't see eye-to-eye on this issue is the question of delivery mechanisms. I can't agree that aid is unquestionably good in all situations. Certainly, aid programs can be hijacked, misused, or poorly designed, and thus exacerbate political, ethnic, social, or economic distinctions in societies. Sachs' guest seemed to do a wonderful job of bypassing some of these issues by directly targeting a single, easily accessible village in Senegal for a direct injection of material aid. I think that method certainly has its advantages. But that approach has limited applications.
Certainly, large scale projects, like promoting HIV/AIDS education here in sub-Saharan Africa, or the delivery of the millions of mosquito nets that will be needed in the next few years, or even debt forgiveness requires far more resources than can be mustered by school children in New York City. The largest and most complicated development attempts have to be channeled through organizations and governments on the ground in the Third World. And it is in those situations that aid tends to distort African societies by focusing politicians on their relationships with donor countries and NGOs, allowing them to make trade-offs in the names of their constituents. It's the largest programs that breed the most obvious corruption.
And this is where Mwenda certainly has a point, although I don't agree with him that no aid is better than any aid. Instead, how do we handle aid so that we avoid giving people fish rather than teaching them to use fishing poles? How can we direct the flow of aid so that it doesn't eddy into the pockets of bureaucrats, but flows to the appropriate institutions? This issue is overlooked far too often in developed countries, but it's a fact of life here. (For instance, the rumors in Kampala are that a large government cache of ARVs were allowed to expire, simply because the money required to distribute them across the country was siphoned into the private accounts of various, unnamed officials.)
Where Mwenda and other critics of the international donor community are leading us, I think, is not really to a "no-aid" system, but to a "smart-aid" system, where the distorting political, economic, and social effects of aid are openly discussed and mitigated wherever possible. This can be done the way Sachs' guest did: target a small, discernible problem -- a well-cover for a village, a bore-hole, malaria medicine for 12 months, plowing equipment for an over-farmed area. Sachs himself argues in his book that changing the structure of aid to emphasize local demand for programs and then putting local aid organizations in charge helps to alleviate these problems. And that's probably true.
But not all aid projects can be pursued at such a small scale. Educational programs, especially, benefit in concrete ways from expanded mandates and expanded budgets. But those same enhancements often inflate or exacerbate structural, social, or political schisms related to, or in the worst cases actually caused by, those programs. Donors and donor nations need to be transparent in assessing the potential for misuse of donor funds, reinforcing hierarchical or autocratic tendencies inherent in these programs, and the exploitation of the poor or politically isolated that can occur in such situations.
Donors need to start walking the line of necessity, of only doing as much "good" as is absolutely required, then allowing indigenous actors to take the lead. Help people learn to fight their own battles.
Programs should to be tailored to fit the exact needs of their target group. Trimming the fat on aid programs will help reduce the amount of corruption associated with donations by assuring that the program's primary goals are met first. Grandiose, complicated schemes to reduce poverty or alleviate inequalities across broad areas are noble, but ultimately too unwieldy for even developed nations to pursue adequately and cleanly. Stick to the basics, whenever possible.
------------------------------------------------------
I want to thank SIRIUS Satellite Radio for allowing me to talk to Jeffrey Sachs by calling me, thus insulating me from crippling airtime charges on my Uganda mobile.
------------------------------------------------------
Edited at 11:00am EST. Added note thanking SIRIUS and link to Sirius's website. Also added name of Jeff Sachs' show.
------------------------------------------------------
1. My apologies to you, Andrew; I think I'm overstating your position here, slightly.
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