NGOs' "'help' is just no help at all"

Publication date: Thursday 07 December 2006

Foreign aid: This kind of 'help' is just no help at all
Michael Holman, The Africa Report October 2006

The multi-billion dollar aid industry has largely failed in Africa. Not only have they failed along with others in the aid industry, most nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have become part of the problem. Not that they will admit their failure. They refuse to share the blame for the grim record. Instead they have closed ranks - along with UN development agencies and bilateral agencies - and all sing from the same hymn sheet: 'Aid works', they claim. 'Give us even more money and we will complete the job…'

They would say that, wouldn't they? The alternative is far too uncomfortable. The rapid growth of NGOs dealing with Africa has given them enormous power, but they have been slow to adapt to their responsibilities.

Increasingly, NGOs are becoming the spending agents of government development agencies, and are losing their independence. One consequence of their increasing role in Africa has been the atrophy of the muscles of the State in Africa, which in turn erodes loyalty to the State - and I think this goes to the heart of the problems that beset Africa, from corruption to low domestic savings.

The growth of the foreign NGO movement (as distinct from local NGOs) began in the 1970s, and has expanded from a few hundred to tens of thousands today.

It was a response to Africa's deepening crisis - debt, disease, war and disaster. Initially it was a humanitarian response, literally 'first aid'. It soon widened to broad development assistance: from helping to run railways to supplying health clinics, and staffing policy-making teams in government.

But the type of NGO aid, and the attitudes attached to it, reflected ideological battles - socialism versus capitalism, to put it crudely - that NGOs had lost at home and instead fought abroad in states such as Tanzania and Zambia.

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