LearnAsOne

My dad recently pointed me in the direction of Addicted to Aid, a Panorama programme featuring award-winning Sierra Leonean reporter Sorious Samura.

The basic question he asked was has the West got it’s aid model wrong? Billions of pounds have been pumped into Africa yet the number of poor people remains unchanged over the last 20 years. Has too little attention been paid to where the aid ends up?

Corruption, waste and inefficiency

Through a number of case studies he highlighted corruption, aid money being spent on the wrong things (e.g. building new schools in Uganda when what was really needed was to pay teachers to man them) and shops selling stolen aid supplies such as mosquito nets which were intended to be given to the local community for free, while the authorities turned a blind eye.

Hope

The final project however offered hope. A clinic set up to help amputees as a result of the bloody civil war in Sierra Leone. It was founded and is run by Dr. Mohammed Barrie who grew up in Kroo Bay, one of the poorest parts of the capital city Freetown. And it has proved to be amazingly successful with patients travelling from as far away as the neighbouring country Guinea.

Why has this project been such a success?

Well in the words of Dr. Barrie:

“We went straight to the community, we interacted with them, we tried to understand their basic needs and as a result they were very supportive in developing this project.”

One other thing really stuck out. Whenever Dr. Barrie got a cheque to support the clinic he photocopied it and make it easily accessible to his patients. They knew what money was coming in, so they could judge if he was spending it wisely.

What can we learn from this?

2 main things:

1) Listening to the local community is vital
They, and only they, know what challenges they face and where their needs lie.

So if you want to improve the standard of education in a community do you just build more classrooms? Or do sit down with the community and discuss their most pressing needs? Maybe the teachers in rural schools are leaving because the living conditions are really poor compared to the city. Or the children are failing to turn up to class because they need to work all day to buy food.

Both problems can be addressed, by building basic living quarters and through a school feeding program respectively. But these needs can only be successfully tackled by working alongside the community to identify these needs in the first place. And it goes without saying, that every community will be different.

2) Transparency is a must
Both between us and you as potential or current supporters. And the community, ourselves and our partners in Africa who manage the project on a day-to-day basis. It’s your money and you deserve to see how it is spent.

That’s why we are blogging and twittering about the behind the scenes stuff rather than just sticking a school in front of you and asking for money. When we get to Africa we’ll shoot videos, photos and interviews with the community and try to answer the questions you ask. And we’ll ensure there is a way for the updates to keep coming once we’re back home.

So does aid to Africa really work? We’ll let you be the judge of that.