Disclaimer: The contents of this blog are my own and do not represent the views or opinions of the Peace Corps or the United States Government.

I recommend reading the quotes, then what I’ve written, and then reading the quotes again.

“The history of Africa, like the history of mankind as a whole, is really the story of an awakening. The history of Africa needs rewriting, for up till now it has often been masked, faked, distorted, mutilated, by ‘force of circumstance’ – i.e. through ignorance or self-interest. Crushed by centuries of oppression, Africa has seen generations of travellers, slave traders, explorers, missionaries, governors, and scholars of all kinds give out its image as one of nothing but poverty, barbarism, irresponsibility and chaos. And this image has been projected and extrapolated indefinitely in time, as a justification of both the present and the future.”
—J. Ki-Zerbo, Unesco General History of Africa, Vol. I: Methodology & Pre-History, p. 1.

“Money, it’s a crime”
—Pink Floyd

“Developed countries and multilateral donors now pour more than $5 billion per year into AIDS-related programs in developing countries.”
—Malawi Diffusion and Ideational Change Project (MDICP), now called the Malawi Longitudinal Study of Families and Households (MLSFH).

“Foreign businessmen who once regarded Africa as offering high-risk but high-return opportunities now saw it as a place of even higher risk but low return. Foreign aid was needed to fill an ever-widening gap and in some cases became a substitute for government. In 1980 official development assistance constituted less than 4 per cent of black Africa’s overall gross domestic product; by 1989 it had grown to nearly 10 per cent. Measured in real terms, foreign aid doubled during the 1980s, growing from $7.6 billion a year to $15 billion. In addition a total of $6 billion of debt was cancelled. But at the same time that public finances had become highly dependent on donor support, the lack of progress in Africa was precipitating ‘donor fatigue’.”
—Martin Meredith, The Fate of Africa Since Independence, Chapter 22

“Zambian economist Dambisa Moyo has written a popular book, Dead Aid, claiming that foreign aid is responsible for the divergence, and that all assistance to Africa should be eliminated. Along with wasted time and wasted funds ($1 trillion, by her estimate), she blames outside-in decision making for the continent’s woes. Her logic—and accounting—has been roundly debated. Defenders of aid point to the great impact of humanitarian assistance in addressing public health crises like HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria. It’s true that without donations from abroad, many millions in Africa would suffer. But she’s right about the design flaws. Most forms of aid to Africa come attached to foreign agents. Most international NGOs still depend on a model of external funding that can pervert incentives. Wealthy nations that deliver foreign assistance to Africa sometimes add an exploding caveat: the appropriation must be spent to purchase goods and services from the donor. In many situations, earmarked aid leaves the recipient country soon afterward, in the form of salaries, per diem allowances, and “hardship pay” for employees of the World Bank, JICA (Japan), DFID (Great Britain), SIDA (Sweden), SNV (the Netherlands), Norad (Norway), or the rest of the alphabet soup.”
—Dayo Olopade, “Stuff We Don’t Want,” The Bright Continent.

“Survey after survey confirms that nearly everyone in SSA [Sub-Saharan Africa] understands how HIV is transmitted. People know how to prevent infection. They know the symptoms. And they also know how AIDS impacts those infected with the virus and their survivors. These high levels of knowledge have been observed across SSA for quite some time. In Malawi, knowledge of HIV was estimated at 98% in rural areas as early as 2001, long before media coverage and formal prevention programs proliferated. Many in the West find this hard to believe. We presume “they” must not know. Otherwise, why wouldn’t they pull out all stops to put an end to the epidemic? The assumptions that Africans don’t know and that what they need is more information drives both secular and religious donors to fund public service announcements, drama teams that go from one market town to another putting on AIDS-related shows, the ubiquitous pamphlets and posters, and other programs designed to disseminate knowledge about HIV.”
—Jenny Trinitapoli and Alexander Weinreb, Religion and AIDS in Africa, pp. 50-51

“In a continuation of wartime central planning and efforts to raise commodity production and to mobilize labour, colonial states became increasingly ambitious, ‘developmentalist’, and intrusive into everyday life. The impact of what has been called the ‘second colonial occupation’ was complex: widening opportunity and the expansion of health, educational, and welfare provision for many Africans – admittedly, often from a very low base – but also growing unrest on the part of both peasant farmers and urban workers.”
—John Parker and Richard Rathborne, A Very Short Introduction to African History, p. 116

“All that glitters is not gold.”

“Malawi benefitted to the tune of 100,000 pounds from Britain’s Colonial Development and Welfare Act of 1940, an imaginative measure designed at once to stimulate the economies of the poorest colonies and to stave off American anti-imperial pressure. But with internal revenues increasing only slowly, funds for development remained very tight…these new sources of imperial funding had disappointingly meager results. Even the passage of a new Colonial Development Act in 1945, with its promise of a further 2 million pounds to Nyasaland, failed to bring the transformation required.”
—John McCracken, History of Malawi: 1859-1965, p. 241.

“We are now reaping the harvest of the parsimony of the past forty years…and it is obvious that the neglect of forty years cannot be repaired in a matter of months. The years that have passed have produced an attitude of helplessness and frustration among a considerable proportion of the Service. Standards here are definitely lower than in Nigeria.”
—Sir Geoffrey Colby, shortly after taking over as governor of Nyasaland (present-day Malawi), in a letter to C.E. Lambert on 13 December, 1948.

“There were good reasons for seeking to develop the production of flue-cured tobacco in the Kasungu District, but not when the contribution of African producers was systematically ignored. The Colonial Development Corporation’s capital-intensive scheme started early in 1950, with the large scale use of bulldozers in order to clear the land. It quickly ran into difficulties. By the end of the 1953 season, 193,000 pounds of capital had been invested in planting 500 acres with tobacco, yet losses stood at some 54,000 pounds. Costs of production were estimated at 46.5 pence per pound, more than twice the price at which Kasungu tobacco was actually selling…the CDC’s schemes between 1948 and 1954 incurred overall costs of at least 1 million pounds, not much short of the entire internal revenue for Nyasaland in 1947…it could no longer be claimed that the north was starved of funds although it was difficult to see what northerners had gained from them.
—McCracken, History of Malawi, p. 245

“Kupatsa ndi kuika.”—Malawian proverb, rough translation: It’s impossible to waste anything by keeping”—essentially the equivalent of our “to give is to receive,” but with a much stronger mandate to give.

“[Malawians] were critical of the CDC [Colonial Development Corporation] because it acted for its own benefit, did not train Africans, and employed a growing army of European supervisory workers.”
—Michael Cowan, “Early Years of the Colonial Development Corporations: British State Enterprise Overseas During Late Colonialism,” unpublished paper written in 1983.

“In fact, it amazes me how little the world thinks of Africa. I mean this in terms of time and of reputation. As a first-generation Nigerian American, I have personal reasons for paying attention; but what we all think of Africa when we do is very revealing. In 2010, the United Nations celebrated the tenth anniversary of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)—eight ambitious targets, from fighting HIV transmission to improving education around the world. To mark the occasion, the UN sponsored a poster design competition. The winning entry juxtaposed power (leaders of the Group of 8) and poverty (young Africans in line at a refugee camp). The work may be clever graphic design, but the tagline is heartbreaking. “Dear world leaders: We are still waiting.” A panel of UN judges validated the biggest lie in modern history: that poor and passive Africans exist only in the shadow of Western action. If you’ve read other “development” books, it’s easy enough to get that impression. Even as popular discourse begins to question the logic of foreign assistance to the region, the conversation remains focused on how “the West” can improve its performance. Familiar voices on the development beat write prescriptions for everyone from the leaders of the G8 to the infantry of the World Bank to the heads of landlocked countries like the Central African Republic. Though many have spent decades examining the various ruts and bottlenecks in economic growth, it is rare to hear about what ordinary Africans are already doing to help themselves.”
—Olopade, “Orientation,” The Bright Continent

“Mlandu suola”—Malawian proverb, rough translation: Wrongs cannot be forgotten.

“Some of the agency people in Nairobi felt bad they couldn’t help. Others got angry and went in search of things to blame: ‘It’s because of the US Patriot Act and the OFAC sanctions that criminalize us for paying fees to al-Shabaab,’ they said. Headquarters didn’t appreciate the compromises that had to be struck in order to work in these areas. Or, ‘It’s because of Haiti – the world can’t cope with more than one disaster at a time.’ Or, ‘It’s because the industry is geared around disasters, a famine averted doesn’t generate profile.’ But the cynical ones didn’t bother to find excuses, for they had heard it all before: early warning was a waste of time – there would have to be people dying on television before the money from rich governments would flow. And when it finally did, it would come in a flood. And the markets for the local farmers would collapse entirely. The same thing happened every time.”
—Ben Rawlence, “A Friday in Nairobi,” City of Thorns: Nine Lives in the World’s Largest Refugee Camp

Some cynical questions that I hate that I ask myself almost daily:

• With all the aid poured into these countries since decolonization, why haven’t things improved more?
• Why did it take so incredibly long for Africans themselves to actually be included in the decision-making and management processes involved in aid?
• Have all or even most of the development agencies active today shifted to include African leadership at not only a grassroots level but even at the top?
• Does the World Bank know what’s best for most or even just some African countries? Does the IMF?
• Did colonialization ever truly leave the continent behind? Or did it just change faces and vocabulary?
• Is Africa really as poor as the world makes it out to be? Or are our own perceptions stuck in the past?
• Who am I, a white Western female, to make any sort of judgment on these issues?

There is one question (more often in the form of a demand) that I receive at least twice a week. When I first arrived here it happened closer to everyday. If the question comes from adults, no one will just come right out and say it (Malawians, culturally, have a very indirect communication style). Usually, it begins with an almost forceful display of hospitality and welcoming, followed by the phrase “ticheze pang’ono [let’s chat a little bit],” and being led off to discuss what appears to be a serious matter. Then the adult might list off a long litany of problems that they are experiencing, often related to a lack of material goods. And then you can suddenly see where this is going.

Children, who have not yet learned how to be quite so indirect, often do just come right out and say it: “Azungu, ndipatseni ndalama!” or “Azungu, mundipatse ndalama!”—“White person, give me money!”

Sometimes the only thing that children know or believe about white people is that they have money. America is like a mystical land far away with a paradise of abundance. When I tell people I am from America, the most common response I get is “Muzititengeko”—“You should take us there.” People are often shocked when I tell them that white people aren’t the only race in America. People are also often shocked when I tell them that America has just one language (Malawi has about 10, although Chichewa is sort of a lingua franca for all of these). But no matter what I tell them about America, their infatuation seems to be impossible to dissuade, even in the slightest.

America has problems as well, of course, especially at the moment. But it’s hard to conceptualize problems you have never seen or experienced yourself. And so what remains in the image of many people that I encounter in passing or on the road, who may have never met an American before, is one simple stereotype—he has money. Before coming to site, our Malawian Peace Corps Supervisor for Education told us: “When they see you, they think one thing—money. How do you change that?”

Indeed, how do I change that? I don’t blame the people who ask me this. It’s always people I barely know. People that I’ve talked to and gotten to know, know enough about me at this point to know that I don’t have money and won’t give money. The people I blame are all my predecessors in development, starting right from the colonists (if what they did can be called “development” in any justifiable sense”), up to the arbiters of what is often called the ‘second colonial occupation,’ to the ubiquitous presence of donors, government organizations, non-governmental organizations, aid agencies, and the whole laundry list of development schemes who came in the past, prior to the age of sustainable development, who created a culture of handouts and unsustainability that hurt more than it helped in the long wrong. Every time a child (or adult) comes to me, without knowing who I am, sees the color of my skin and demands money (sometimes forcefully), I feel a twinge of anger, not with them, but with all the actions that led up to this cultural moment in time, where the assumption was made. But still, I have to take a few seconds to calm myself before taking the anger out on the undeserving inquirer. And then I try to explain, in the only way I know how, that I am with an organization that does not give out money and that I try my best to live as people here live, and that I can offer only my skills and service.

It’s not that they ask because they assume I’m from a wealthy country—that perception would exist true regardless of what happened in the past. It’s the boldness to ask, and to ask expectantly, that comes from generations of foreign development being poured into this country, often by groups who stayed little more than a month (thus enabling their vast resources to appear infinitely more vast in their short time here), and just giving resources and/or funding to people on the ground.

Now, that isn’t what development is like now. And the tone of this whole post is more cynical than I would like it to be. I have internal answers to every single cynical rhetorical question that I have listed above. Although on the surface I may be cynical about aid, I know that it is helpful—if done well. Malawi’s (along with several other countries in sub-Saharan Africa) HIV rates have been in rapid decline since 2003. And this is largely because of responsibly handled aid, given to Malawian leadership.

But what development was like before has sometimes made it difficult to do what development is like now. If a meeting is hosted here by an American, there is often an expectation that the people who go will receive some sort of cash at the completion of the meeting or course. Sometimes this assumption is held by people who don’t go to the meeting and can lead to hostile relationships between people who have gone and people who haven’t. Even my simple appearance as a visitor at a church I don’t usually go to can signal to the majority of the congregation: “here is a potential donor who can buy us all of this material that we have long wanted.”

This mentality hinders (sustainable) development. Yet it is ironically the consequence of the original form of development. So how do we change it? That’s an answer I am still searching for. But I don’t think I can find it. The oversight and largest mistake of organizations in the past was the failure to include or even consider Africans themselves in their own development schemes. That shift in mentality may begin from the outside, but ultimately it will spread and grow from within—not from anything I could say or do.

So money will always be around, and it’s worth it to push through the occasional awkward exchange of asking me for some, if in some way my presence has the possibility of assisting at least a few kids in learning English so that they could go on and help their own countries in ways far superior to that which a few thousand dollars could do.