John Lowrie 

Whenever I am in Northumberland and watching TV, I keep seeing numerous advertisements from charities. They follow the same style. They depict pictures of hardship to evoke pity and ask you to hand over cash. If you do not feel guilty when not doing so, you may take comfort in that your tax has helped the UK Government to meet its over-generous commitment to devote 0.7% of GDP to overseas aid, and thus claim moral leadership among the world’s rich nations.

They are misguided.

Some celebrity donors around the world learned the hard way.

They were disappointed when it emerged things were not as presented to them for their desire to do something about “Human Trafficking”. Despite advice from inside people like me, lessons seem not to have been learned. (For that story please see this CNN clip.)

I have been at both ends of the wide aid and development spectrum. First there was Saint Helena, a tiny island, population around 5,000. Now there is Cambodia, 15 million today, and though far in size from countries also grant-aided with larger populations, it is almost certainly the one that has received the most intensive; costly and continuous aid intervention since it started in 1993. Both recipients in this sense are at the top of the most grant-aided nations per head of population.

Personally I would say that both are object lessons in how not to do “aid and development”. Basically after decades of support, neither population - despite those massive interventions - has attained self-reliance. For many, their world is "Upside-down, inside-out and roundabout!"

We really should try other ways to do aid, at the same time get rid of the jargon that cannot be conveyed properly in local languages and contexts!

In recent weeks, two authoritative reports, are saying the same thing as I started to say years ago. I will admit to being most unpopular with some representatives of donors and large international agencies for saying so. My original article questioning Aid “Sustainability” (development-speak for "built-to-last") is still often accessed from various websites.

The first of these two new reports comes from the UK’s reputable ODI that is usually a trusted insider – well done to them for changing tack. One quote is apt "Supporting change that reflects local realities and is locally-led"

The second report is actually a series of seven parts for development forum “Devex” “Foreign aideffectiveness: A radical rethink,” by Diana Ohlbaum — a former deputy director of USAID's Office of Transition Initiatives. Here is one more apt quote: "Where there's little or no government will for change benefiting the population building capacity is doomed to fail" 

In Cambodia, government and NGO officials alike are addicted to overseas aid. It has been lucrative for them. As Sophal Ear comments, aid has actually prevented citizens from holding their government to account. They would be better able to do so, if there was a direct link between service provision and payment of taxes or fees. Instead that link especially in education, health and social services, is in the form of a free hand-out from rich donors!

Donor fatigue though is beginning to set in. The vast NGO sector must contract. It is far too large. There are too many duplications – repeating the same work again, revisiting areas supposedly served before. The best of NGOs and NGO practice in Cambodia is great, but there is too much mediocrity, so the challenge is to retain the best and lose the rest. Before they depart or scale down, donors in my view should be seeking to help NGOs to merge and to operate leaner, in order that funds are better used. That means leaving most if not all things to locally-managed organizations, and not imposing daft decisions on them. (I blog about one in Alnwickdotes No 4.) True, there will be "seepages" but then they exist now, despite the vast army of expatriate adminstrators, project managers, technical advisers, and evaluators - the Lords and Ladies of Poverty!

But I bet someone will be saying this again in 5 years, 10 years, 20 years in Cambodia and Saint Helena! Too many in #foreignaid conform, not enough perform.

I took issue with the UK Daily Mail latest “revelation” supporting its quest against taxpayers' money spent on foreign aid. The newspaper has been equally hostile to my friends on Saint Helena with reports of child abuse on the island (found to be exaggerated) and its UK Aid-funded airport (labelled by tabloids as "World's most useless airport" when regular flights were delayed due to unanticipated wind-shear affecting safety).

Readers must judge for themselves about the quality; accuracy and fairness of such journalism, but sadly the post-Leveson Press watchdog sees nothing wrong with it. Apparently “balance” is no longer needed. My view is vulnerable people are denied an equal voice to correct mis-impressions, whether they include the ever-loyal pro-UK Saint Helenians, or the much more numerous and disempowered world’s poor.

The basic charge made by the Daily Mail is that direct cash payments to the world’s poor is inappropriate and a misuse of aid money. The fact is it can be a highly effective and the most economic way of delivering cash and benefits to the poor cutting out the vastly more expensive conventional models. I refer here of course to the usual system administered by and through Lords and Ladies of Poverty. (I set out for the Daily Mail and IPSO the entire series of steps from inception of donor aid programmes right through to their conclusion and aftermath, a process that costs vastly more than whatever sum ends up with AND is retained by the poor.)

My main point, based on my personal experience with community-based self-help groups of the world’s poorest and most marginalised citizens, is that actually once they have the money in their hands, they actually make good use of it. On average 85%* (see update 4 July 2019 below), I have found do so. High overheads; leakage, even fraud is far more likely to occur among the ranks of salaried NGO or public officials entrusted with roles over them. I also cited articles making similar points: “Just Give the Godam Fish” and one in foreign aid information network Devex. Shouldn't the Daily Mail reflect such opinions?