How Foreign Aid Hurts Africa

[ola.]

This may come across as a stupid question but bear with me.

I've been following Uganda's story regarding its homophobic laws and it came up in a discussion at my workplace. Some of my colleagues basically went about comparing the US' stance towards gays with Uganda's so as to say "And we thought we had it bad," (as if comparing the social development of an industrialized superpower to a war-ravaged, impoverished country even seems fair or accurate) -- and then came the debate of whether aid should be cut off from Uganda.

From what I know, in very, very basic terms, our aid happens to hurt the African continent by keeping it dependent on its first world donors who simultaneously proceed to take advantage of the continent's immensely rich resources while the inhabitants of said continent do not. I know its obviously far more complicated than that and that this is very poorly explained which is why I was wondering how people on here would explain it better than I can. How exactly does our aid negatively impact Africa?

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

This may come across as a stupid question but bear with me.

I've been following Uganda's story regarding its homophobic laws and it came up in a discussion at my workplace. Some of my colleagues basically went about comparing the US' stance towards gays with Uganda's so as to say "And we thought we had it bad," (as if comparing the social development of an industrialized superpower to a war-ravaged, impoverished country even seems fair or accurate) -- and then came the debate of whether aid should be cut off from Uganda.

From what I know, in very, very basic terms, our aid happens to hurt the African continent by keeping it dependent on its first world donors who simultaneously proceed to take advantage of the continent's immensely rich resources while the inhabitants of said continent do not. I know its obviously far more complicated than that and that this is very poorly explained which is why I was wondering how people on here would explain it better than I can. How exactly does our aid negatively impact Africa?

Interestingly, in the specific case of Uganda, it was the meddling of right-wing Christian development agencies that lead to the country's anti-gay laws.

Which points to a broader phenomenon - "aid" isn't a no-strings-attached deal where Joe on the street in Goma gets unfettered access to capital. It's a political tool wielded by neo-liberalism, as a way of maintaining a specific type of dependent relationship with elites.

[blake 3:17]

The main things those of us in the First World should be pushing for is debt forgiveness. I'm not up on the current debt situation re: the IMF and World Bank. I believe a lot of it has moved to private trans national corporations. This is one helpful resource: http://cadtm.org/English

There are aid projects which provide completely sound and helpful relief. There are some which do more harm than good.

As a concrete example, there's the problem of used clothing donations being dumped in bulk in Africa. A lot of charities in Canada do this and has extremely dubious trade ethics at best.


Why Sending Your Old Clothes to Africa Doesn't Help

Last week, I saw a street kid walking down the dusty road in Bukoto Markets. He was selling mangos from a bucket and wearing a Carleton University shirt. He stood there, in the midst of the dilapidated market stalls, surrounded by squawking chicken in cages and boda drivers calling out to walking passerbys, wearing the t-shirt of my alma mater. At that moment, the world seemed quite small. Maybe absurdly so.

It wasn't the first time I'd seen a Carleton shirt in Africa. In 2009, I was in Rwanda on an internship program through the university. We went to visit the Gisozi Genocide Memorial in Kigali, and in one room there were the shirts of the genocide victims on display. Some of them were torn, ripped or stained with blood. Some were unrecognizable. But there was a Tim Hortons shirt. And one was a Carleton University t-shirt. We stood there, students from far away in that grim and unfamiliar place, looking at the familiar red and black t-shirt. Did the student who picked it up at the Carleton University bookstore ever imagine that the shirt would end up as part of a genocide memorial?

These two shirts are a miniscule part of the long established first world impulse to send their cast-off clothes to struggling countries such as Uganda or Kenya. So widespread is this practice that over the past two decades serious controversy has been generated around the impact this "charity" has had on African industries.

While these campaigns tug at your heartstrings ("I can save a life with little effort"), the campaigns are often devastating to local industries. During the 1980s, the Kenyan textile industry boomed; it employed 30 per cent of the labour force. But the introduction of liberalized trade policies led to mass importation of donated clothing and devastated the textile industry. The imported textile industry has exploded to $1 billion since 1990.

Over 12 countries have banned imports of textiles in order to protect their own national industries. It's not hard to see why: In 2011, over 13,000 tonnes of textiles were imported to the Ivory Coast, which is miniscule compared to the nearly 80,000 tonnes to Ghana.

A significant reason why countries like Uganda, Nigeria and Haiti lag behind developed countries is because of a combination of a lack of infrastructure and the difficulty in creating formal employment opportunities. A thriving textile industry that produces cotton in Africa contributes to the economy in many ways: It creates a formal workforce (thereby creating economic stability), it pays taxes which can then be invested in infrastructure and education, and it moves countries away from a state of dependence on aid.

Organizations that want to clothe street children should buy clothes from local industries; if adults are paid decent wages, they can send their kids to school and break the "cycle of poverty." Buying locally produced and marketed goods also won't deflate prices of local goods; competition is hard when homegrown businesses cannot even begin to compete with the artificially cheap, imported clothing.

Aid and development are deeply complex and there are no easy answers. But what can be said with some certainty is that the physical donations of goods, be it food or clothes, often have negative impacts on the local economy.

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/mariah-griffinangus/africa-charity_b_1623561.html

[Dodo]

I was going to read two articles from ISJ but I cannot seem to access website now. Both were about the troubles with aid but I have not read them.
Aid comes in many different forms to Africa and it is not just the "dependence" that is the problem.

A lot of the aid came in the form of SAPs which have created a lot of debt-cycles and poverty traps within sub-saharan Africa.
Additionally, SAPs were, as GDU said, tools of neo-liberalism which have not been welcomed at all due to results after a while. IMF/WB had a lot of prestige saving to do after their failings.
Though there are other kinds of non-IFI aids as well that come through NGOs.
Its not all necessarily bad.
But there is indeed tendency since a lot of aid actually goes to make sure "extraction" economy to feed core countries is functioning well. After all, a lot of products from Africa are a necessity for global capitalism.

I would not jump into these blames without a prper empirical analysis. There are good and bad things to aid. It has to be throughly analyzed before we make a strict judgement here. And as always, it "depends" for what particular scenerio we are talking about.
You cannot generalize aid's consequences.

[ckaihatsu]

I was going to read two articles from ISJ but I cannot seem to access website now. Both were about the troubles with aid but I have not read them.
Aid comes in many different forms to Africa and it is not just the "dependence" that is the problem.

A lot of the aid came in the form of SAPs which have created a lot of debt-cycles and poverty traps within sub-saharan Africa.
Additionally, SAPs were, as GDU said, tools of neo-liberalism which have not been welcomed at all due to results after a while. IMF/WB had a lot of prestige saving to do after their failings.
Though there are other kinds of non-IFI aids as well that come through NGOs.
Its not all necessarily bad.
But there is indeed tendency since a lot of aid actually goes to make sure "extraction" economy to feed core countries is functioning well. After all, a lot of products from Africa are a necessity for global capitalism.




I would not jump into these blames without a prper empirical analysis. There are good and bad things to aid. It has to be throughly analyzed before we make a strict judgement here. And as always, it "depends" for what particular scenerio we are talking about.
You cannot generalize aid's consequences.


I agree here, and I'll note that the article is from the Huffington Post, which is a *liberal* publication. The article argues on behalf of 'the economy', which is *not* the same thing as 'the people of the economy-regime'.

Yes, we can criticize economic colonialism for systematically shunting off the real needs of Africans (etc.), but, at the same time, if people are being directly assisted -- in a limited way -- as *consumers* by super-cheap, or free, items, then that's a real benefit that can't be ignored.

Under capitalism there's an inherent contradiction between the dynamism and prowess of its productivity (as even to Third World areas), and its ravaging of those same areas for cheap labor and natural resources.

[Slavoj Zizek's Balls]

The main things those of us in the First World should be pushing for is debt forgiveness. I'm not up on the current debt situation re: the IMF and World Bank. I believe a lot of it has moved to private trans national corporations. This is one helpful resource: http://cadtm.org/English

There are aid projects which provide completely sound and helpful relief. There are some which do more harm than good.

As a concrete example, there's the problem of used clothing donations being dumped in bulk in Africa. A lot of charities in Canada do this and has extremely dubious trade ethics at best.



Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/mariah-griffinangus/africa-charity_b_1623561.html

Some comments are critical towards that article.

One user on the Huffington Post website stated:


This article neglects to recognize that the majority of clothes that end up on the streets of Africa were never donated to Africa. They were donated to Canadian and US organizations such as Diabetes Care and Salvation army. These, in turn, don't end up selling in Canada at second hand shops and are sold by bulk to different markets around the world. A major recipient of this trade is Africa. Once they arrive in Africa, small business people will bid on bulk weights of the clothes and either shredded to create filling for some other industry or resold in markets in Africa.
This is a completely legitimate trade and usually not based on anyone feeling charitable. The author should familiarize herself with how business is actually done in most of Africa rather than simply picking up stories from the genocide to get Canadian's attention. The genocide was a long time ago in Rwanda and nothing to do with this story.

What do you make of this? At first glance it appears to negate much of the original article, relegating charitable provisions to the sidelines and thus the significance of its effects.

[adipocere]

Some comments are critical towards that article.

One user on the Huffington Post website stated:
What do you make of this? At first glance it appears to negate much of the original article, relegating charitable provisions to the sidelines and thus the significance of its effects.
It doesn't negate the article, but that person you quoted has a point, as he brings up the business of charity like the Salvation Army and so on.

We should keep in mind that charity and aid is, first and foremost, a capitalist enterprise and poverty is the industry.

[brigadista]

Aid comes with conditions

[blake 3:17]

Some comments are critical towards that article.
...
What do you make of this? At first glance it appears to negate much of the original article, relegating charitable provisions to the sidelines and thus the significance of its effects.

Ok, I think get what you're saying. There's the question of intent -- in that the garments aren't really being donated to Africa -- and the question of effect -- they are being traded as commodities.

The main objection would be that the imports undermine local, regional, national attempts to develop a textile industry.

There's been a couple of good exposes on this trade, much more thorough than the HP piece I posted, but I couldn't source them. Will take a look.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

Interestingly, I've just started reading Umair Muhammad's Confronting Injustice which is focused significantly on challenging notions of "charity" and "aid" as means of creating positive social change.

There's a lot of interesting examples in the book, but I just wanted to throw this out, because it stuck with me:


As of 1998 the developing world was spending $13 to service its debt for every dollar it received in grants. Much of the debt accumulated by poor countries is odious. The borrowed money did not benefit the people who are now being forced to pay it back. At times it was used by tyrannical governments to make war on opposition groups and the common people. A large amount of the money simply left the developing world soon after it was borrowed, finding its way into the private bank accounts of corrupt government officials and other well-connected individuals.
Leonce Ndikuma and James Boyce estimate that between 1970 and 2008 for every dollar that was received in foreign debt by countries in sub-Saharan Africa, about 60 cents left as capital flight in the same year. Those providing the loans are not, or should not be, unaware of the problem, as the money frequently ends up in the same banks that lent it. The authors conclude that "Sub-Saharan Africa is net creditor to the rest of the world in the sense that its foreign assets exceed its foreign liabilities." For the 33 countries they look at, the total stock of capital flight was $944 billion in 2008. In comparison, the external debts of these countries amounted to $177 billion in the same year. Rather than being a "bottomless pit", Africa seems to be a well-spring of riches from which only foreigners are benefitting.