Taking the ideas from the last two entries (about mistakes in development/ aid – wanting to help but making things worse) – I wanted to share a coule specific examples that are representative of many of the mistakes I have seen here in Uganda with ICT4D projects (Information and Communication Technology for Development).
Story 1
About 4 hours outside of Kampala, I drove with two friends to an area that was nick-named the “wireless village”. Essentially, in the middle of nowhere Africa, some people from the US (Inveneo) had spent a ton of money to create a way for 5 remote huts (in an area without even electricity) to receive wireless Internet access that the community could use for free.
The roads got so bad that we had to park the car and walk to the first “kiosk” location – actually a man’s home. Everything is powered by solar panels that the man of the house maintains, and works through high-powered antennae and satellites. And people from the community or rural areas come to access everything from market prices for goods to new farming practices to email access (email surprisingly was the least utilized, because most of the people they knew were in the villages). It was such a big deal that I was told even CNN came out to do a story on it, and (to my surprise), the people I talked with actually used it and really appreciated having it – at least for two years until about 6 months ago when one part broke and the whole system crashed. The part can not be found in Africa, and it seems like the American partners are less than responsive about coming to fix it any time soon. The village people now blame the local staff who were left in charge. The one person taught to maintain it has now moved on to a different city and job, the people continue to wonder if it will ever work again, and in the mean time the technology collects dust.
At the same time, children in a near-by refugee camp are dying at an alarming rate because of a lack of food, water, and inexpensive anti-malaria medication.
Story 2
I visited a similar telecenter and community radio project (with initial funding by UNESCO and other big boys), powered by huge solar conductors – and once it was set up the partners pulled out. Now the simple costs of Internet access (which are way more than rent) are forcing the operation to raise and sell pigs and produce on the side to try desperately to stay operational. And in the mean time, they also have a part that broke which they need someone to come out and fix before the Internet is up and running again.
Similar to the famous anthropologist Margaret Mead’s observation regarding development in the 1950s – people brought tractors to developing countries to increase their productivity, but quickly fuel would run out, or part breaks and no one could fix it – so this wasted technology cluttered the ground like an elephant graveyard.
The main problem
As I see it, perhaps this is because most of development (especially in ICT4D) seems to come because people develop a pet project (and/or technology) and in order to make themselves feel good (and sometimes in order to capture an untapped market) they try to find poor places in the world to inflict it upon. It isn’t really done for the people, but for the donor or volunteers (to feel good). They literally want to help in the worst way.
It is easy for us all to see the world (and the lives of the people we are intervening in) through the lens of our discipline, or academia, or our business industry, etc… & asking what we can do to “help” these “poor people” who are “less fortunate” than us through those myopic lenses.
Any better ideas?
In trying to think of better ways to be involved in the lives of other people, here is what I have come up with – but I am interested in what you think about it.
Instead of what I described above — why not try as much as possible to take off your predisposed lenses, and just see people in developing countries as humans first (not potential recipients of your specific pre-determined project/research – but humans, with hopes and fears and dreams as real as your own). If you want to be involved in their lives, before predetermining a project or specific outcome, why not first discover what their most pressing needs are (in light of your own as well) and see if there can be some synergy. Instead of you being the benefactor and them the beneficiary – why not try to build relationships where you try to listen more than speak and you each work together (a two-way flow) in order to synergistically create something better than either could on your own!
After all, what is the most valuable use of our brainpower, resources, time, network, energy? And at the very least, how can we do more good than harm?
I was thrilled to see your mention of Margaret Mead in this post. While I was reading through your stories I kept thinking, “So many of these problems could be avoided if these people would utilize the skills of anthropologists.” Perhaps I’m just thinking too highly of the skills my study of anthropology has given me. However, it seems like the projects you mentioned seem to be potentially successful, they just lack the understanding that would link them with these villagers and provide them with a service, not a shiny object that soon breaks.
So I guess my answer to your ending questions would be this: Take the time to understand the people you are trying to help. Live with them and try to understand why they do the things they do–or at the very least hire someone to do that for you. Then you can use what you have to truly bless the lives of those you are trying to help.
Thanks Heidi,
I think your point is well made. Often we rush into “help”, but do not really take the time to really get to know the people.
While I was interviewing some local people in Tanzania – asking them their perceptions of people from Europe and US who were come to help them, they said that they knew the white people come and go – and so they always know they will be leaving sooner or later (usually within a period of a couple months) so they agree with them while they are there (regarding whatever their particular project is), but secretly inside they know it is not really one of their own priorities, so they will not have to worry about it much and only have to agree with the aid workers for a short time until they are gone.
By just going in and giving “aid”, I think the situation too often sets up a situation of dependency (which I think deprives people of a lot of self-respect).
While I was on a “boda boda” (the motorcylces that drive you around in Uganda) a grown man drove up next to me and saw the equivalent of 50 US cents in my hand. He asked me for it, and I said no. I asked him if he could give me some money, and he said no.
Then he said, “You look money. Your color looks money”
So very often people think – “you are white, you should give me money.”
Soon I will blog about a cool experience at the TEDC 2008 conference that was very different from this.
I have been reading this book now, which is very related to this topic – and highly recommend it. It is William Easterly’s “The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s efforts to aid the Rest have done so much ill and so little good”. I haven’t totally agreed with all of his synthesis, but here are some quotes so far that I think go along well with the points we are making.
He shares data on the trillions spent on foreign aid and the little good it has done, he argues for more feedback for and accountability of aid organizations, less grand plans and more emphasis on local homegrown solutions which are accountable to the people they are supposed to serve, and he makes a distinction between what he calls planners and searchers.
“Planners determine what to supply; Searchers find out what is in demand. Planners apply global blueprints, Searchers adapt to local conditions. …A Planner thinks he already knows the answer; he thinks of poverty as a technical engineering problem that his answers will solve. A Searcher admits he doesn’t know the answers in advance; he believes that poverty is a complicated tangle of political, social, historical, institutional, and technological factors. A Searcher hopes to find answers to individual problems only by trial and error experimentation. A Planner believes outsiders know enough to impose solutions. A Searcher believes only insiders have enough knowledge to find solutions, and that most solutions must be homegrown.” (p. 6)
“The Enlightenment saw the Rest as a blank slate – without any meaningful history or institutions of its own-upon which the West could inscribe its superior ideals.” (p. 23)
“The most infuriating thing about the Planners is how patronizing they are (usually unconciously).” (p. 26)
“Although the West could help alleviate more of the poor’s suferings if it relied more on Searchers in aid agencies and those on the gorund…, the West cannot transform the Rest. It is a fantasy to think that the West can change complex societies with very different histories and cultures into some image of itself. The main hope for the poor is for them to be their own Searchers, borrowing ideas and technology from the West when it suits them to do so.” (p. 26)
“Acknowledging that development happens mainly through homegrown efforts would liberate the agencies of the West from utopian goals, freeing up development workers to concentrate on more modest, doable steps to make poor people’s lives better.” (p. 29)
“Searchers could think of mechanisms to let the poor themselves show what they want most and what they don’t. We will see that there is much scope for improvement just by having the West follow the rule ‘First do no harm’.” (p. 30)
“Searchers can gradually figure out hot the poor can give more feedback to more accountable agents on what they know and what they most want and need. The big plans and utopian dreams just get in the way, wasting scarce energies.” (p. 30)
Anyone who wants to come to Kenya and see some ICT4D projects in the field please contact me at crystal@voicesofafrica.org…