...I Don’t Know...

The Set-Up:  A long-standing partnership is straining at the seams due to the local organisation’s inability to find sufficient additional funding.  It is debatable whether this is due to shady business practices or a true inability to generate overseas interest in a vital peacebuilding effort. 

The Argument:  “But I don’t want to be the one to end this relationship.  If we pull funding, local employees will be laid off and we will break ties with a hardworking community unique in its field.  Anyway, we’ve been close to them too long to back out now.  Besides, maybe this time will be different; they’ve been going through a difficult socio-economic situation.  What more can you expect?”

The Counter-Argument:  You can expect that if this happened in your home country, the organisation would be shelved pending a restructuring and clarification of its practices, mission, and strategic plan.  You can expect to be regretful, but hopeful that this focus on the proper means to achieve realistic goals will result in more effective future intervention - which will better serve vulnerable populations – rather than continuing on a tightrope of polite omissions and great expectations.  

“No one gets Brownie points back at head office for closing down a program or putting a relationship with a client government on ice, even if this was, in fact, the most constructive course of action.  Humanitarian organisations may talk about making themselves redundant, but their annual reports rarely boast about offices closed or staff laid off.  Organisations’ internalised incentives all work in the opposite direction...”  (Wrong 189)

“[Edward Clay, the British High Commissioner in Kenya] had also been responsible for Rwanda and Burundi, two small countries, he’d been confidently told by his Foreign Office bosses, he could expect to occupy just 1 per cent of his time.  The Rwandan genocide... began within weeks of Clay presenting his credentials in Kigali...  ‘[O]ne thing I’d absorbed in my previous African posting was the costs of not speaking up.’ ”  (Wrong, 196)

The Set-Up:  A project is not using allocated funds as outlined in its work plan and budget.

The Argument:  “But I don’t want to be the bad guy.  If the donor finds out, they’ll pull funds, which will mean the end of this organisation and the good work it does.  Anyway, the donor should have taken a better look at the budget and questioned it.  Besides, these people haven’t been paid in months – can you blame them for skimming 25-50%?  Everyone else is doing it; what more can you expect?”

The Counter-Argument:  You can expect that if this happened in your home country, the organisation would be shut down and its employees prosecuted.  You can expect to be horrified that an organisation would use buzzwords and a marginalised population for embezzlement.  You can expect that ‘a little bit of corruption’ is not what the vulnerable nor communities deserve.   

“[Ory Okolloh, a female graduate of Harvard Law School] and [Conrad Marc Akunga, a blogger on Kenyan affairs] decided to set up www.mzalendo.com, a website aiming to make Kenya’s parliament more answerable to voters.”  (Wrong 153)

“Talking to [Caroline Mutoko, a radio DJ], one sensed a roiling, restless fury, a huge impatience finding expression after years of control...  Like Mzalendo’s founders, [her courage] lies in her awareness that Kenyans, through their passivity, have contributed to their downfall.  ‘Half our problem... was that we self-censored.  You self-sensor and then you wake up one day and realise the way things are is your fault.’ ”  (Wrong 156-157)

“...Mutoko, Akunga, Okolloh, and their ilk were taking on an entire school of political thought about Africa.  Their convictions challenged those cynics who dismissed John Githongo’s anti-corruption efforts as a naive projection of inappropriate ‘mzungu’ values onto an African nations where they were doomed to fail.”  (Wrong 158)

The Set-Up:  A project is doctoring numbers, resulting in discrepancies between proof and official reports.  It is unclear whether this is to inflate the problem and demand more funding or due to miscommunication with field staff. 

The Argument:  “I don’t really know the situation here; maybe there are this many victims, possibly more.  If the donors find out, they’ll pull funding, which will mean the end of this organization’s reputation and eventually the end of the good work it does.  Anyway, the discrepancy has already been going on for months – likely years; donors probably know the truth of statistics better than I do.  Besides, no one is likely to question these numbers as long as the reports look good, and the bottom line is that some people are being helped.  What more can you expect?

The Counter-Argument:  You can expect that if this happened in your home country, the organisation would be suspended and its employees questioned.  You can expect to be shocked at the idea that the contextual analyses, target populations, and strategic plans of major aid programmes may be built upon a network of false statistics that magnify minimal to non-existent problems while ignoring vital realities.  You can expect that reporting official lies about the vulnerable does not justify the end of securing aid for some and a permanent career in an aid agency for others.      

“The World Bank and the IMF’s raison d’être, their members argued, was to fight poverty, not corruption – which was a political, not an economic issue...  But with the passage of time came the growing realisation that financial transparency, human rights and institutional checks and balances mattered more to the quest for prosperity than had previously been recognised.”  (Wrong 184)

“The idea that donors can immunise their projects in a corrupt country is absurd...  When there is no integrity on the part of the leadership, no systematic approach to governance, civil liberties, rule of law, donor aid is simply wasted.”  (Wrong 207)   

From what I understand from the book, the foreign community was so eager to see change in Kenya as a sign of the turning of the entire continent’s fortunes that it knowingly blinded itself to the presence of corruption in the highest echelons of the new ‘democratic’ government.  Ironically, it was this willful ignorance and staggering levels of aid that eventually resulted in the ethnic violence after the elections in 2008.  I often hold dearly to a ‘slippery slope’ argument, and while this is part of my nature as a reincarnation of Cassandra, it is distressingly proven true:  While foreign donors may think that a certain level of theft is acceptable in the grand scheme of things, the implicit message this benign megalomania encourages in local populations is that they cannot and should not expect more either.  Another implicit message is that crime is acceptable, even rewarded, as long as it is covered in a veneer of respectability and official reports and makes liberal use of the words women, children, rape, marginalized, vulnerable, poverty, empowerment...    

“If you pump money into a system where there is leakage, you are effectively rewarding leakage and disincentivizing those trying to stop it...  Change in Africa can only come from Africans, who are fighting against terrible odds.  On the whole, they fail.  They end up in exile or come to a sticky end.  If you don’t, as a donor, support people like John, you are counteracting their fight for change.”  - Paul Collier (Wrong 326) 

Part I
Part III

Works Cited

Wrong, Michela.  It’s Our Turn to Eat – The Story of a Kenyan Whistle Blower.  HarperCollins, 2009.