In all my years of writing, I have been tempted only once, in 1995, by the little siren that whispers, �you, too, can write a poem.  Go ahead, do it.�   Mercifully for all of us, I don�t have a copy of that poem; it has disappeared to the ether of the internet.  But the subject of the poem is still relevant: NGOs.  Or, more accurately, the inefficiency and false piety of many mega NGOs.  It is always good when one�s intuition is backed up by hard evidence; more pleasant still when one�s sense of inferiority is refuted by compelling evidence.  Today�s Alnahada is about right intuitions and false prejudices.  And the source is one book: Jeffrey D. Sachs� The End of Poverty.

About The Author & The Book

Jeffrey Sachs is an economist who has achieved the status of secular sainthood. Mother Theresa used moral arguments to shame people into helping the poor; Sachs uses statistics and the laws of economics to convince rich countries that it is in their interest to help poor nations.  He had a hand in repairing the economies of South American countries (like Bolivia) and former Soviet Bloc nations (like Poland, Czech Republic) and Asia (like India.)  He is a consultant to Secretary General Koffi Anan and one of the prime movers behind the Millenium Development Goals (MGD), a covenant between donor nations and developing nations, where each has pledged to change to bring about a quantifiable goal, such as halving extreme poverty by 2015.  He is, in short, the antithesis to John Perkins, author of Confessions of Economic Hitman, a man who spent a lifetime ripping off poor countries.

The book, as its title suggests, argues that it is quite possible to bring about the end of poverty or extreme poverty in the world.  This is possible for two reasons (1) technology and (2) income gap.  The rich are so extraordinarily rich and the poor are so heart-breakingly poor that all that would be required is for a transfer of wealth of only 124 billion, a puny 0.7% of the income of the twenty two nations who make up the Donor Assistance Committee, to lift all people up from extreme poverty (can�t meet basic needs) to poverty (can meet basic needs, but no more.)   The author laments that despite pledges made by the donor nations, the goals are unlikely to be met because

Today�s situation is a bit like the old Soviet workers� joke: �We pretend to work, and you pretend to pay us.�  Many poor countries today pretend to reform while rich countries pretend to help them, raising the cynicism to a pretty high level.

The main thesis of the book is to draw attention to the need of direct foreign investment and donation to poor countries, specially in Africa.  The argument is: if a vehicle is stuck in the mud, it will never move, unless it is given an external push.  This may or may not be persuasive to you (depending on your ideological bent); what is undeniable is that he has persuaded many people, including those most inclined to say, �pull-yourself-up-by-your-own-bootstraps� to commit to help.  To the shock of many, Bush committed to provide huge funding to assist Africans with AIDS, England committed to forgiving the loans of many countries and all donor nations, at least on paper, are committed to the MDG.

Curing The Complex

This is not a book review, so I will stop there and let you judge The End of Poverty for yourself.  What I want to do instead is to try to provide excerpts from Dr. Sachs books as alternative answers to the disturbing ones given in response to this question: why are we Africans lagging so far behind the world in everything?   The disturbing answers, whispered or taught are: it is their culture. They are corrupt. They are lazy. They are badly-governed. Many of these explanations are actually internalized because for example, every government in Africa, including our own, is �fighting corruption� keysaErere.

1.  What Culture?

In 2006, an African is told to feel inferior; a Moslem is told to modernize his religion and a Moslem African...well, he better lock himself up at his home and wait until he is told it is safe to come out:-)

Thankfully, everything we are told turns out to be wrong. In The Case For Democracy: The Power of Freedom To Overcome Tyranny & Terror, Nathan Sharansky chronicles how many Western experts used to erroneously argue that the East cannot handle democracy because of their �culture.�  It turns out that the same bogus �cultural� argument used to be made about the East and how it will never develop.  The experts had predicted, for example, that Japan would never develop because of its people�s �love of indolence and pleasure.�  This was, they explained, due to Buddhism or Confusian values, whatever those are.  Then, when one East Asian country after another actually began developing and amassing wealth, �Asian values were invoked as the explanation for success, turning the argument on its head.�

In a paper he presented, Mr. Zemehret Yohannes, one of PFDJ�s shining lights actually argued that our values and culture is communal and therefore we have to modify capitalism and democracy to fit our culture.  What culture exactly prevents us from developing or self-governing?  He did not elaborate.

But the �culture� argument is used for everything and this book demolishes most of them.     For example, let's take a hypothetical Muslim country and we were to say that there was a revolution that resulted in that country being governed entirely by Islamic law.   What prediction would you make about (a) population growth in the country and (b) female school attendance at the country?    I will go first: I would say the population would explode because birth control is frowned upon in religious societies and female school attendance would decline, because religious societies tend to be traditional societies.

And I would be wrong on both counts, according to Professor Sachs, if we take the case of Iran.  Child fertility (a high contributor to poverty) was reduced from 6.6 in 1980 to 2.5 in 2000.  And female student attendance increased �tremendously� because, argues Sachs, �religiously conservative fathers had more confidence in sending their daughters to school after the revolution.�

While on the subject, a lot of the debates in the Eritrean internet are completely based on emotion, fear and prejudice, no doubt influenced by Western "cultural" explanations of Islam that it is irrational, fundamental, etc.  "Yet some of the fastest growing economies in the world in the past decade have been Islamic...Bangladesh, 3.1%; Tunisia, 3.1%; Indonesia, 2.3%."

People around the world are the same: they want a better life for their children than the one they have. 

2. Laziness

Forget Western biases for now, even our own intellectuals believe it.  In �We and Our Region�, the inimitable Fessehaye Woldu quotes Zanzibar�s Abdulrezak Gurnah for describing Africans as �men sitting under a tree waiting for the mango to ripen.�     Don�t know about Zanzibar but when I was 8 years old, not only did I know that the best way to accelerate the fruit-ripening process was to bury the fruit in a sack of flour but to deny any knowledge of it when the forgotten spoilt fruit ruined the flour. 

But that is not scientific.  But seriously, are we Africans lazy?  Here�s an interesting poll mentioned in the book: The World Values Survey asked the world if it is �specially important for children to be encouraged at home to learn hard work.�  Here is the tally of how the world answered the question in the affirmative:

                             Americans               61%

                             South Africans         75%

                             Nigerians                 80%

                             Tanzanians              83%

And Eritreans?  The pollsters for World Values Survey were arrested for working against Eritrea�s national security.  I am kidding.  There is no data on Eritrea.  (The book is full of maps and charts and almost everything about Eritrea is "not applicable.")

3. Corruption

This is a relative word and, Sachs argues, corruption is directly linked to poverty and not to culture or values.  �Africa shows absolutely no tendency to be more or less corrupt than other countries at the same income level.�   This would suggest that the best way to fight corruption is not, as all governments in Africa do, by waging a campaign against it (or, more typically, using it during campaigning season for purely political purposes) but to actually work towards improving the quality of life of their people.  In other words, poverty is not a result of corruption; corruption is a result of poverty.    But all African politicians who have failed in improving the life of their citizens find it easier to blame corruption than their failed policies which have impoverished their people and brought about corruption.

4. Lack of democracy

One thing those of us who harp on democracy need to acknowledge is that there is no direct relationship between development/wealth and the presence or absence of democracy.  Intellectual honesty requires of us to admit that one of the economic marvels of the world, China, is no democracy.  Capital is indiscriminate; it flows to wherever system provides the best returns.  It is clear that we cannot argue for democracy on the basis of economics.  But it is also clear that the absence of democracy is not a pre-requisite for economic development�as many closed, almost-failed-states have repeatedly demonstrated.    

NGOs

My mercifully-lost poem was unkind to NGOs�which many criticized as an uninformed and emotional diatribe.  I was referring to the gigantic NGOs and international agencies like the World Bank and IMF who provide no real help, and then blame the poor countries for their disastrous policies.  Sachs describes it in a dramatic manner:

Contrary to popular perception, the amount of aid per African per year is really very small, just $30 per sub-Saharan Afrian in 2002 from the entire world.  Of that modest amount, almost $5 was actually for consultants from the donor countries, more than $3 was for food aid and other emergency aid, another $4 went to servicing Africa�s debts, and $5 was for debt relief operations.  The rest, $12, went to Africa.   

This is even more dramatic in my adopted country, the United States, which, using the same calculation, provided 6 cents per African but has a whole battalion of think tanks and opinion-makers who complain about how foreign aid is a complete waste in Africa because of their �culture� and �corruption.�

At some level, at some non-cerebral, stubbornly-Eritrean, probably-irrational level, I confess that I, for nano-seconds, think the eviction of NGOs from Eritrea is a good thing, whenever it is announced.  It is the abrupt way it is done, my conviction that there is probably no good alternative, and my total lack of faith in the PFDJ that makes me question the decision.

All Eritreans, pro or anti-government, help their families in Eritrea which will continue to make remittances one of the highest sources of income for Eritrea.  (There are, curiously, economists who celebrate this when, in fact, all it means is that there is no functioning economy in Eritrea.)  But beyond our immediate families, those of us who are withholding support to the poor in Eritrea, on moral grounds�based on a belief that the government, which insists on being the broker, most likely will use the money for causes we are opposed to�or to NGOs�based on a belief that it is an inefficient and corrupt method, really are torn by a sense that we are not doing our share to alleviate the pain of the needy.   

One solution is provided by Dr. Sachs�the reform shouldn�t apply just to the governments of the developing countries but to the NGOs themselves.

But now, there is an innovative and exciting solution which I hope will eventually find application in Eritrea: an Internet service, modeled after the online dating service.

Here�s how it works:  there is a farmer in, say, Hagaz.  He needs, say, an ox.  Or fertilizer.  You go to the Internet, see the picture of the farmer and, using Pay Pal, send your money.  He uses the money, buys his ox or fertilizer, and improves his life.  There is no middle-man, no administrative fee, no consultant fee. Every penny goes to the farmer. You sleep with a clean conscience; he sleeps with his fed children.   Some American volunteers came up with this idea�a great one, until the NGOs and governments take it over.   

Isn�t it time for us "the educated Eritreans" to come up with something like this�without the pro-PFDJ Eritreans thinking it is an insult to the PFDJ and the opposition supporters actually thinking it is a distraction from the campaign to bring change in Eritrea?

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