It is probably because we are nearly due to have time out of country that I am in a bleak mood about Africa. It is cumulative.
One wishes so much to see signs of progress; to have hopes that things might improve and all that there is to see are signs of steady, consistent deterioration.
Whether it is politically driven; people driven; circumstances driven or just the screwed up way of Africa, things here seem to go ever downwards, from bad, to worse, to basket-case and there they muddle along simply because there is no further to fall.
But all that aid you cry! Yep, all that aid, utterly useless in the main and a part of the process of destruction because it breeds not progress, but more corruption, more greed, more self-serving incompetence and more and more and more pathetic dependence on foreign aid.
The truly depressing thing about living for so long in Africa is how aid achieves so little and in fact, is probably far more destructive than constructive.
Many people with the best intentions in the West spend a lot of time collecting and sending money to the African continent and it pours down the pit of greed, corruption, self-serving and incompetence like a torrent.
In the past 50 years some $3trillion in aid has come into Africa and the average African is worse off than they were 30 years ago. A few Africans are very, very, very rich.
There are moves by some nations who give a lot of aid to 'control' it by providing it as loans with conditions, but I would be prepared to bet that the Africans on the receiving end are not the least bit interested at the end of the day because they cannot milk it. Sad but true. Westerners caring desperately about poverty in Africa and Africans caring desperately only about lining their own pockets.
I would end aid, apart from emergency tomorrow I it was up to me. The West had to drag itself out of corruption, self-serving and incompetence by its bootstraps and everyone else should have to do the same. Only a fool keeps doing the same thing, no matter how many 'warm fuzzies' they might get from it, when it clearly achieves next to nothing, but momentary warm fuzzies for a few, the illusion of progress for some and it all spirals down the African drain anyway.
And Africa is awash in broken water pumps. Pay for a pump to go into a village and expect any or all of the following:
The local chief steals either all or part of it for a pump outside his own house; the local chief takes control of the pump and makes people pay for water; the pump breaks down and no-one has the skills to repair it or the money to buy parts......
According to a RWSN report, May 4th 2010 in Africa roughly 50% of the 350.000 donated pumps are abandoned;
http://mamboviewpoint.blogspot.com/2012/03/sustainable-hand-water-pumps-in.html
Excerpt: Providing water to communities in Africa has historically been challenging for many reasons. The litany of failed hand-pumps scattered across Africa is extremely disturbing, both for the community and for the original donors who have invested their time and resources in providing a water solution for the community. We know it is not sexy to raise money for repairs and we also know the costs involved of maintaining a water source over 20 years are not only more expensive than the original build, but it is more complex in terms of management, ownership, servicing and repairs.
http://www.waterforafrica.org.uk/water-crisis
And the frustration levels do rise for those who live and work here because you so, so, so want and you so, so, so wish that it could be different, that it could be better, that it could be other. But it isn't. The aid money pours in and things remain pretty much as they always were - poverty-stricken, miserable, desperate but manageable and a few Africans get very, very, very rich.
I shake my head at the people behind these aid projects: what on earth are they thinking? Are they thinking? Probably not. Africa does not seem to attract the most experienced or the wisest. It has a lot of people on the ground who are very good, very committed, very devoted and very caring Christians but they have God first and foremost in their minds and salvation more than soap, evangelicals as most are and very unlike the earlier Anglicans and Catholics who did actually achieve something, in those days before such missionary work was considered patronising.
It also has a lot of very young, very inexperienced, very caring, very cheap men and women who come to Africa - or no doubt any other Third World, poverty-stricken hellhole because they have a conscience and want to help. Some of them are driven by religion but not all of them; all of them are however driven by idealism or they would not be here.
They are the gofers, learning a bit about themselves and Africa, providing labour for the aid agencies and religious organisations which abound in Africa - if presence achieved anything this continent would be exemplary. If experience achieved anything the success rate in Africa for aid projects would be at least three out of four, not one out of four.
Beyond African corruption and a lack of community consciousness, trapped as people are into rigid and at times brutal tribal and chieftan systems, the lack of success by aid agencies has been in Africa economically criminal, if not criminally incompetent to levels which even Africans could not manage.
One particularly ludicrous example of Aid money ill-spent are the signs along the road from Lilongwe to Blantyre, in Malawi, telling people to wash their hands with soap after going to the toilet - the signs are in English and the local language is Chichewa, amongst others and the people can't afford soap and it would be the last thing they would buy. What lunatic came up with this idea which probably cost millions and achieves nothing.
The other factor which seems never to be taken into account is that when you build something - health clinic, school, water pump then there is a good chance the local chief will appropriate it and force people to pay to use it; that it will break down and no-one will have the skills to carry out the repairs; that it will break down and no-one will have the money or be prepared to find the money to repair it; that the 'parts' may be of more use than the whole and bits and pieces will be 'taken' over time, either to meet the needs of the local chief or to be sold by the desperate...... and on it goes.
Excerpt: One director of an African water charity speaking on condition of anonymity was scathing about how money was wasted. He described how corruption on the ground was rife, giving the example of how some international contractors paid more than $1,000 a day by water charities to drill boreholes had little concern for whether drilling was even appropriate, just as long as they kept themselves in a job. He concluded grimly: "If anyone ever told the truth, no one would give us anything." And this is the catch-22 many good charities find themselves in. They can keep quiet and watch money wasted in massive quantities, or expose the waste and risk damaging charitable giving to the sector as a whole.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/nov/24/africa-charity-water-pumps-roundabouts
If nothing else Africa is a lesson in expecting very little because that way you will not be disappointed.
But surely we must do something, they say. Why? If only a fool keeps doing the same thing and expecting a different result, why should Africa be used to assuage your sense of guilt at having so much when others have so little when clearly, that assuaging is destructive, not constructive?
Surely if doing something, doing a lot actually, $3trillion dollars over 50 years is a great deal and no sniff in anyone's economic wind ... and yes, that is a pun because most of that money has amounted to no more than one enormous, smelly fart ... achieves nothing and things are worse than they were, then sanity demands you stop and you do nothing!
For no other reason than for the sake of Africans. Give up the warm, fuzzy feelings you get by donating, that feel-good crap which is great for you and absolutely useless for the people you tell yourselves you are helping. Please, yes, for the sake of this benighted continent, do nothing. Absolutely, totally, nothing!
