Are the NGO's killing Niger's Babies?

Andy Hobotraveller my favorite online travel blogger has been in Niger the past 2 weeks. He likes to do what he calls current event travelling to see for himself what is going on. His conclusion Leaving Niger and the last 2 weeks of blogging has seemed more than a bit disillusioned with things.

Basically as he says no one is starving as this is a disaster of malnutrition and not of hunger. They don’t need food as there is plenty. The other side is that every NGO under the planet has had an office with complementing collections of SUV’s on every street corner. Andy thinks that the root of the problem is that the NGO’s have created a culture of dependency which has ended up making people lazy. If it is easier to go to the NGO for food then why not sell your food in the market or just stop growing it.

Andy was wondering if maybe this wasn’t a problem that could be solved quite easily and should have been solved ages ago. I may be reading between the lines here, but I think he thinks that maybe it would have been solved by themselves if the NGO’s hadn’t been there.

The NGOs are trying to be multi-cultural or cross-culturally respectful and to try I think to bring a respect for all cultures to the table, however and I think they often forget the goal is to create a world where they are not needed. If that is not a conflict in interest for most of the lower cultures who are employed in a NGO. If I do great, I will not have a job. Cultural Testing

This is basically what my old rant The pitfalls of Philanthropy says, just carried out in action. See Pelle’s second law:

“A philantropic act becomes an economic act for one or more parties in the philanthropic chain when said parties become (or appears to be) dependent on their role for survival”

The whole process was described by James Shikwati in this interview with him in Spiegel For God’s sake please stop the aid

But it has to be the Kenyans themselves who help these people. When there’s a drought in a region of Kenya, our corrupt politicians reflexively cry out for more help. This call then reaches the United Nations World Food Program — which is a massive agency of apparatchiks who are in the absurd situation of, on the one hand, being dedicated to the fight against hunger while, on the other hand, being faced with unemployment were hunger actually eliminated. It’s only natural that they willingly accept the plea for more help. And it’s not uncommon that they demand a little more money than the respective African government originally requested. They then forward that request to their headquarters, and before long, several thousands tons of corn are shipped to Africa …

My take on it is that “rich” countries want to feel good. In Denmark it is an actual election issue, where the parties talk about how they will give more. It makes Danish people feel like they are really great folks who want the best for the world. When really what Denmark should do is push to kill the stupid EU farm subsidies. So they go to poor places. To a Dane anything that isn’t furnished in at least IKEA is poor, so it’s pretty easy to do. They then send Danish experts down to work with locals well educated experts, who they more than likely steal away from private industry as the aid agencies no doubt pay better and give more prestige. Now the vicious circle is in place. The local experts need to find (or create) cronic problems, so they can keep their SUV’s and nice jobs. There is never any incentive by anyone to fix anything.