Empress Market is a pretty well-known landmark in Karachi - not just because of its colonial history as execution grounds for native freedom fighters but its subsequent transformation into a marketplace by Queen Victoria. Over the years, small shops and vendors spilled out in the open space around the market, creating an urban mess of exotic animals, tea leaves and dry fruits.
Empress Market also used to be on my daily commute to work so I witnessed firsthand the brutal demolition of the bustling market to make way for the World Bank-funded Karachi Neighbourhood Improvement Project. Now the market is nothing more than a lonely monument, looking more like the execution grounds that the British Crown tried so hard to hide. The foreign aid may have meant to ‘improve’ this neighbourhood but it gentrified the space and excluded the locals who gave it life.
On paper, foreign aid to poor countries is meant to improve local living standards, eliminate poverty, increase education levels, etc, but how much of these goals do they achieve? This week in The Global Tiller, we take a closer look at how foreign aid flows around the world. We also zoom in on the Pacific where aid plays a unique geopolitical role. As new players enter the donor category, how will it impact the region and what can poor countries do to ensure their development happens organically, like it did in the case of Empress Market and not haphazardly orchestrated by the big players based on their warped understanding of what development looks like?
Even if rich countries are spending less than 1% of their gross national incomes on foreign aid and poor ones are receiving less than the same of their GDPs in aid, there are still billions of dollars flowing around the world mostly from the Global North towards the Global South. Sweden allocates the highest percentage of its gross national income (1.04%) for foreign aid, against the United Nations challenge of at least 0.7%. In absolute terms, United States and Japan are the largest aid providers in the world, with Afghanistan and India, respectively, being the biggest beneficiaries of their aid. So why doesn’t it work?
The global aid program has come under heavy criticism over the years for its failure to bring meaningful change in the countries it covered, especially across parts of Africa. In fact, the entire concept of aid has been dismissed as 'neocolonial' for perpetuating colonial practices and attitudes, where local expertise is overlooked.
Ongoing conflicts, institutional weakness and a failure to stand on their own feet are recurring issues in former colonies that are now inundated with aid programs that are supposed to bring positive change. It would be naive to blame it all on development aid but it certainly plays a role.
The Pacific Islands present, even more, a unique case in development aid as they are the most aid-dependent, when measured by aid inflows as a proportion of GDP. Between 2011 and 2016, it received an average of $2 billion in foreign aid each year, which was equal to about 6.5% of the region’s GDP. If you exclude PNG and Fiji from this calculation since they mark a huge chunk of the region’s GDP, this average rises to 31% of GDP.
Australia remains the largest donor for the Pacific Islands - making up 45% of the total aid given to the region, followed by New Zealand, China, United States and Japan. Even then, there is a lot of noise of China’s expansionist moves into the region making Australia and New Zealand sit up straight and take notice of their neighbours they take for granted. Or perhaps it shows that the real goal of aid programs isn’t to make these regions more self-reliant but to keep them as pawns in the larger game of chess being played by the big countries.
Will we see the small island nations use their geo-strategic importance as a negotiating tool to demand more of their donors and to push more for climate action? For countries already neglected by Western powers for so long, will switching loyalties to China finally improve their quality of life? If current trends of inward-looking policies continue in rich countries, how can the poor countries create a world where they are financially independent?
There’s a lot more to be said on the huge issue of development aid but for now, these questions are helping us rethink global practices and their utility. Do share your thoughts with us, we’d love to hear more about how development aid has impacted your community.
Until next week, take care!
Hira - Editor - The Global Tiller
If you’d like to read our previous issues, you can access our archives here.
…and now what?
“Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you’ll feed him for a lifetime.” But if you insist he buys the fishing rod from you, you’ll keep him under your spell for a lifetime too!
This quote reveals the big problem in itself. Eventually, you’re still the one providing so it’s not exactly what could be called 'empowerment'. You eventually provide some power but you organise the system in a way that people will eventually always have to come back to you. Not because they want to, but because they have to.
Aid is a tricky system, explained perhaps most clearly by this proverb: the road to hell is paved with good intentions. It’s hard to think about a problem you want to help solve and think about it by putting yourself in the shoe of the other.
Development aid is a direct consequence of colonialism. Out of guilt, good will or strategic planning, it still comes tainted with the idea that one will help the other because the other doesn’t know how to do it. Implying then that there’s only one 'how'. But there’s not. There’s a dominant 'how' but doesn’t mean it’s the only one, or the one most fit for every context.
In their book 'The Prosperity Paradox' researchers Clayton Christensen, Efosa Ojomo, and Karen Dillon explore this problem in a very compelling way:
Development is a complex process that involves multiple factors including cultural ones. Hence, copy pasting what you do in your country thinking it’ll work automatically and that if it doesn’t people are “lazy”, “incompetent”… is lazy thinking. If it was that easy the US would have by now an efficient social security system by copying what happened in Europe, Taiwan…
You cannot expect developing countries to comply with all developed countries on corruption, education, infrastructure while developing. It took France more than a century to settle after its Revolution, and read the story of William Magear “Boss” Tweed from New York to understand that the US used to be quite corrupt while developing as well.
Let people build their own fishing rods. They may even come with better designs according to their context. Building wells, sending free shoes or free glasses will prevent local creators and entrepreneurs to generate localised wealth that will then sustain infrastructure, administration structuring the economy to last and grow.
This book tells us one thing. When you want to help someone:
First: Ask if and how they want you to help. They may not be completely disempowered even if they look like it to you.
Second: Make sure you think about the way you help by understanding the person and its context. It doesn’t mean doing things like them, it means understanding how your ideas, money, tools will be received and thus how to adapt or explain them.
Third: Ask yourself if you’re here to help or here to stay. If you really want to 'empower', to partner, then do it as you’d do with someone who’s like you. When the US launched the Marshall Plan in Europe, they didn’t impose (too much) their system there. They influenced probably but, once they were asked to leave (especially by a tempered General de Gaulle), they left, letting Europe decide its own fate.
Aid is a problem of empathy, or a lack thereof. Empathy is not to aide, it’s mostly to share and interact. Empathy requires curiosity, love and the ability to always question yourself, your intentions and your values. It’s about being human through differences and preconceived ideas.
If we do it like this, we may even have the opportunity to make help go both ways and give everyone a chance to learn, grow and find new solutions from each other.
Philippe - Founder - Pacific Ventury