BEYOND RELIEF

In September 2022, with great eloquence and conviction, several grand names spoke in the UK's House of Lords, saying that the world needed to do something about growing food poverty and the worsening of the physical environment. These are problems that will only get worse over coming decades. I humbly support what they said and the incontrovertible points they made. But the speeches, appeals, urgings and recommendations..........are all bananas!

Like everyone else, the peers appeal for understanding and compassion, quoting a common humanity, a common destiny, a common descent into hell (my words, not theirs). The point is that we all think we are doing something—but actually we're doing nothing to tackle the horrendous situation that the poorest people face. And this is simply for one catastrophic reason: we do not understand the enormity of the challenge and therefore we do not know how to remedy it. We do not know how to assuage the damage we—the rich world—are doing to the poor world. We are doing it every day, every moment, and we can't stop it.

The Problem with Current Approaches

I shall try to explain why the lords are wrong, not in their analysis, but in their conclusions. They urge us to be more concerned and give more to address the tragedy of global hunger. Millions of people in the UK donate money, clothing and other gifts in response to appeals in the media. The total value of donations in 2021 to charities that work overseas was estimated to be £11 billion. Like millions of others, I have for many years donated to different appeals, some in the UK and some in Africa. In the last few years (as I have a bit less money and a bit more time) I have started pay greater attention to the work of the organisations to which I and others have contributed.

This note is based on the practical lessons I have learnt in a long career as a development economist. I have been privileged to have worked for the best part of 56 years in 35 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, as well as in Pakistan, Indonesia, and Brazil. I have collaborated with a range of organisations—national and international, governmental and non-governmental.

When Good Work Goes Missing

Here is one example of how people are being misled by the communications of the organisations involved in Aid. A few years ago I read that the Anglican Diocese of Birmingham, which is sort of twinned with its counterpart in Malawi, appointed a link person between the Church of England and the Church of Malawi. I tried to reach him. No reply. I wrote to the Bishop of Birmingham. He did not reply—but passed me on to the same person who had already failed to reply.

A conference on food was held in Birmingham in July 2022 and as a satellite event there was a discussion on the issues of food in Malawi. This bloke was invited. He did not turn up. He didn't reply to their invitations, the organisers told me. But there was another group of people, from a totally different religious tradition, that had done good work with the homeless in London. They sent a great video of their activities in Malawi, giving a glowing description of their achievements and ambitions. So I tried to contact them. No reply. I asked a member of the same religious sect in London, who then contacted their community in Birmingham. They could not identify the group that claimed this sterling work. I was left wondering if any of it was true. Was it all a con?

The Reality on the Ground

I know quite a bit about Malawi and have observed that most donated money does not improve things for the people most in need of help. In the past 16 years of concentrated work in Malawi, with the help of a small organisation I set up, I sought out information on projects that respond to local people's demands. I tried to identify genuine voices. Not those of foreigners who work in the country, but genuine voices, especially those of women (the majority of poor farmers are female), ideally from groups that have been marginalised because they are small in number or because they follow different traditions.

I know that it is difficult to hear these voices, because, fundamentally, the aid business is a gigantic scam. It is conducted by all sorts of people, both in our parts of the world and in the Global South, who are targeting kind and generous donors who do not know any better, taking them by the nose and leading them astray. But, even more tragic to me is that within the Aid industry itself there are some very kind people who are also being led astray—but by their own beliefs.

A Case Study: The School Meals Programme

There is a small organisation with roots in the UK that has been raising funds to provide children in a district of Malawi with a daily meal before school. I know from experience in the UK that children who do not have a decent meal cannot study properly, cannot concentrate, and will fall asleep. This organisation was doing exactly what I would have liked to have done so I gave them a bit of money. Some years later, when I was in the area, I went to explore the benefits of this work.

The parents of the children were mainly very small farmers; they had been more than happy to be given a hand in raising their kids. The teachers had also been happy; the children would learn a bit more easily and not fall asleep on their desks. But the parents and teachers I talked to, with help from a Malawian friend, went on to explain to me that the work had caused problems. These were not directly related to the project itself, which they hoped would continue, but to the impact it had on the local economy. It had caused what economists call "externalities". These had arisen, I was told, by not including the views of the local people in decision making when managing the project.

The Unintended Consequences

One of these consequences was that the food that was donated to the kids was being bought only from the better-off farmers, because they could produce food more cheaply and of higher quality (they had larger farms, produced more crops and used better seeds). As a result, these slightly richer (relatively speaking) local farmers were no longer buying the little production surpluses of smaller and poorer farmers.

This led to a reduction of income for the poorest and the local economy had suffered. In the language of economics, if there is less money in a society, it reduces the level of activity in its economy. Conversely, if poor people have a bit of income, they will spend it on things that might be available locally. In a poor village, for example, one farmer might buy an egg or two; another will buy a better hoe; and a third one will buy a few more handfuls of better quality seeds from a neighbour. In the 1930s a great British economist by the name of Maynard Keynes helped us understand this. The more purchasing power that is put into an economy, he said, the more jobs and activities it will generate.

The Moral of the Story

The Aid interventions of the rich countries and their charities must be comprehensive—we need them to take into consideration not just what they think is the right path to follow, but also what the local people who are most in need think, and what the consequences will be to everyone in their community.

We do not do that at present.

I go into more detail and explain the problems in my book: THE GLOBAL FAMINE GAME; TOXIC AID, A WEAPON OF WAR, PERVERSE ECONOMICS.

Benny Dembitzer