Challenge: As a follow-up to Part 1 (which I recommend skimming, to set the mood), ask at least two rhetorical questions per paragraph. Note: again, do not be discouraged by the excessive cynicism, which is a direct result of this Challenge.
Imagine you are an accountant at a company. You notice that one of the contractors seems to be charging your company a lot of questionable expenses. You go to your boss to mention that this contractor seems dishonest. Before you can speak, your boss tells you to double the budget for contractors. Next, he threatens to fire you if your department stays under budget this quarter. You go back to your desk and sit down, staring at this inflated and slightly corrupt expense report which has just been put into perspective. What do you do? Firing the contractor would lead to a lot more work for you. In fact, any streamlining whatsoever could become career suicide, because your boss has told you that you must spend every penny or you will lose your job! Is this a budget or is it a quota?
When it comes to international aid, we are the company: the UN, the G8, the Pope, you, me, philanthropists, churches, our governments, and Angelina Jolie. Who is accountable to whom? NGOs are accountable to their donors, who are accountable to their donors, who are by and large accountable to Western governments and churches, who are accountable to their people. Us. Individuals. This is democracy, remember?
We, all the individuals in Western nations, are the highest authorities on aid to Africa. We are the bosses. We tell our governments to double our spending. Our governments search for more and more organizations to burn through the money. The organizations, in turn, compete fiercely for the right to burn the money: everybody wants an air-conditioned SUV. The aid industry is by and large a push-based system: it is fed money, rather than asking for money as nourishment. Have you ever been shown a proposal or a quarterly report? If the authority is top-down, why is there no bottom-up accountability?
The easy answer is that most people do not care enough. Also, many of the vocal few who do sincerely care are severely biased. Biased because of ignorance? Biased to simplify complex issues? Or biased to gain something? Probably all of the above. Jeffrey Sachs would be out of a job if he proved his job was useless. Bono would be less inspiring if he displayed a modicum of a plan. As for me: I leave it to you to determine how and why this essay is biased.
I am, at the moment, directly funded by three organizations: one Canadian, one English, and one Tanzanian. For every dollar I spend, maybe 60 cents come from Canada, 15 cents come from England, 15 cents come from Sweden, and the final 10 cents come from a medley which includes most of the G8 and a few other countries. (These are mere guesses; but does anybody in any organization know the real numbers?) I may not be writing in my office with USAID-branded pens quite yet; but if I carelessly lost the pens I brought with me from Canada, I would have no problem finding foreign aid for new ones. What is my motivation to keep track of my pens?
For that matter, what is my motivation to do any work at all? I am not Tanzanian: I will never see the outcome of my work. One of my employers seems to take for granted that I am simply resume-building. To whom am I ultimately accountable?
Welcome to the aid industry. Are you feeling overwhelmed? Relax. You will do fine here, as long as you keep quiet about one taboo topic: where are all the poor people?