In her provocative book, Dead Aid, the Zambian-born economist Dambisa Moyo, arrives at a damning verdict in her research. She writes: “one of the most depressing aspects of the whole aid fiasco is that donors, policy makers, governments, academicians, economists and development specialists know, in their heart of hearts, that aid doesn’t work, hasn’t worked and won’t work.
Even though Moyo’s book focuses more on foreign aid to governments, the painful and troubling question we need to confront is whether the factors identified by Moyo are at play in the funding regimes to civil society organizations engaged in peacebuilding and justicebuilding work in the global south. And, if some of the factors are at play, what are the possible alternatives to ensuring that external aid does actually contribute to the capacity of Africans themselves to take leadership and seize initiative in addressing the root causes of conflict in the continent? In short, how can we ensure that aid does not become a part of the problem?
The troubling questions, drawn from the central theses of Moyo’s books are: the decreasing sense in civil duty and responsibility; the apparent lack of creativity in peacebuilding; aid addiction; aid and corruption; and whether aid doesn’t work, hasn’t worked and won’t work. In some way, these are old questions which I intend to confront in light of recent experiences.
Decreasing in Civil Duty and Responsibility
Moyo argues that aid that foreign to governments has over the years led to less taxation. While on the surface less taxation may sound good, particularly in contexts of wanton poverty, paradoxically the net effect is that this has undermined the civic duty and responsibility of ordinary citizens. In other words, where ordinary citizens ought to ensure that their government is accountable, very little advocacy and resistance has happened when there is lack of integrity in the delivery of public service. Similarly, has foreign aid to civil organizations resulted in less civic responsibility on the part of ordinary citizens? Are civil society doing peacebuilding more accountable to their funders than to their very own people that they serve?
However, for the most part, the question of accountability has actually been actually been absent in many peacebuilding interventions. Many agencies design and implement peacebuilding programs with minimal participation or sense of ownership or even in spite of them. In fact, I am prepared to believe that community participation and ownership is deliberately avoided.
Lack of Creativity?
Moyo’s most damning verdict is that “aid engenders laziness on the African Policymakers.” Similarly has aid led to a lack of creativity and imagination amongst peacebuilders in the global south? It is with hesitation that I share this hypothesis.
In the past year, I have consulted for over 10 organizations and it is apparent that most peace workers in civil society are more concerned about adhering to the log frame “no matter what.” While it is clear that conflict cycles do not follow project cycles, peace organizations would insist in doing what is on the grant document, even when their donors were flexible enough to justifiable adjustments to work plans and budgets. No one wants to move out of their comfort zones.
For example, on numerous occasions when I worked as consultant, I have advised agencies against the rush to “bring communities” together following the post-election violence in Kenya. My view at the time was that communities needed time to heal and perhaps the agency needed to invest more on intra-community dialogues and introspection sessions rather than inter-community “reconciliation” meetings. However, the agency continued with the inter-community dialogues since they considered the activity to be of “high impact” in the eyes of the funders. To date, I am advised that while numerous community reconciliation dialogues have happened, the communities have retained their masks and the root causes of violent remain untouched.
As well, I have often been troubled by how defensive peacebuilders become when I ask why they think a particular activity would result in peace and social justice as stated in their grant documents. My take is that this comes from a point where we either have little passion or have no sense of our theory of change. Therefore, peacebuilding becomes another “project” that needs to be done in accordance with the log-frame, nothing more, and nothing less. So that when things go wrong, we tend to blame each other rather than ask ourselves what it is we can learn and how we can recover.
I want to linger on this point and return to my pet topic of “left brain” and “right brain” approaches. Decades of practice persuade me that most of the activities do not seems to work because they tend to be “left brain” approaches to peacebuilding. The left side of our brains, research tells us, is the more logical, analytical and objective. Most of the peacebuilding activities have tended to focus on left brain activities such as trainings, dialogues and roundtables where talking and analysis dominate the processes.
Yet, research tells us that hardly do human change when only their left brain is affected. In peacebuilding and justicebuilding, I have always held the view that in addition to left brain conflict resolution processes, we need to intentionally engage people in “right-brained” processes that are more intuitive, thoughtful and subjective. These are the processes that touch people emotionally, engage with their fears and tickle their sense of imagination.
In my view, attitudinal and behavior change happens faster when emotional intelligence meets cognitive intelligence. Put differently, many people leave workshops or dialogues when their underlying fears, tensions, needs have not been addressed.
From my experience, the right brain processes are usually less well understood and find little space in peacebuilding praxis. That is why we always wonder how easily people fall back into cycles of violence in spite of the many community dialogues we have invested in over the years.
Aid as addiction
“Africa” Moyo writes, “is addicted to aid.” She goes further to compare this addiction to that of any addict who needs and depends on “regular fix.” Are peacebuilding organizations in the global south also addicted to aid? From my experience, evidence of this is quite visible.
More seriously, this “addiction” has led to a tunnel vision about funding. Most senior managers of civil society organizations do not want to explore other alternative sources of funding. For example, in Kenya, almost 5 years ago the law was amended to make contributions by individuals to charitable organizations tax deductable. To date, very few civil society organization have taken advantage of this law to raise resources locally. To the best of my knowledge, the movement to raise resources locally has been painfully slow.
Aid leads to corruption
Moyo hypothesizes that the “aid relationship tips in favor of the corrupt government. Almost to the absurd point where the donor has greater need for giving the aid than the recipient has for taking it.” Has aid exacerbated corruption in civil society in general and in the peacebuilding community in particular? I have no documentary evidence of this. But whenever of I have undertaken program evaluation by various agencies, I have often been told, off the record, of financial malpractices. Very recently, a Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Finance noted that Kenya loses almost a quarter of its total national budget to corruption.
Now, some people hold the view that civil society organizations are as corrupt as go vernment, then would a quarter of funding for peacebuilding and development be disappearing to corruption? Speaking from over two decades of engagement in civil society, I would firmly say there exists, undoubtedly, an undesirable deficit of integrity in civil society.
At the risk of sounding cynical, I have sometimes wondered this feeling is shared by a wider community of peacebuilders: that there is no point to seek long term solutions; that the purpose of “peacebuilding” is to engage in programs that do not address root causes but make funders believe in the effort we are making and ensure we last as long as possible.
Aid doesn’t work, hasn’t worked and won’t work
When I look back over the years and over the past one year, how would I respond to this troubling question? There are instances where I have seen foreign funded peacebuilding and justicebuilding interventions work.
I have seen colleagues working in various parts of the Motherland generate new knowledge, build confidence about what they do, and articulate clearly what is working and when something does not work, they work diligently to openly discuss and make changes.
However, a part of me feels that a considerable amount of aid has been “dead aid.” Inordinate amounts of time and money has been spent it activities and interventions that were not carefully thought, which in some cases, became part of the problem. I still feel that there is sheer lack of adventure, creativity and imagination in some of the “workshops” and programs being designed by civil society organizations. To be perfectly candid, it takes a while for me to read or hear of an initiative that makes me feel really excited.
Possible Next Steps: A Leap in Faith?
Moyo argues that if aid must be given, it needs to be systematic in approach and its intention should be to wean African from aid and promote other home grown alternatives. In Towards Financial Self-Reliance, Richard Holloway raises basic and fundamental question in this regard: “ [a]s CSOs look at the hard questions involved in resource mobilization and accept that there are alternatives to the approaches that they have been practicing to date, a leap of faith is required […] The credo is that if Southern civil society organizations pursue a mission and perform public functions that are valuable to society, if they communicate this well to the public, business and government, and if they undertake well thought out efforts to obtain resources needed to perform these functions, then, in most circumstances, such resources will be available.”
Holloway talks of a “leap in faith” that is required for partners to be able to raise local resources. A good point to start, I have always told friends and colleagues, is we need to affirm and document the non-monetary contributions partners make. For instance, funders in the north need to acknowledge that some partners indirectly contribute through their time and labor and occasionally in material form to the success of a program or project.
Instead of such contributions remaining hidden from the finance books – hence leading to “self-rewarding” – we need to be able to state them as part of our financial accounting. I have also seen cases where community members have contributed food or labor during peacebuilding events and processes.
Secondly, some funders are insisting on local contributions. This is important. My addition would be that in light of what we have discussed above, the definition of “local contribution” needs to be expanded to include time spent after office hours and weekends in preparations, labour and other material contributions. I would also add that as part of the fundraising process, partners in the south need to be encouraged to research and engage with legal framework that encourage local resources and local resources where available, and even resources from Africans in the Diaspora. Even if the funding does not come from those sources, they need to demonstrate knowledge regarding existing alternatives.
I have always wondered how did peacebuilding look like before the avalanche of foreign funding? Or, was there any peacemaking and/or peacebuilding? The answer is yes! In all cultures we find both a culture of violence and a culture of peace. In most of Africa, after every violent conflict, a peace process followed. Unfortunately, the British were more eager to document the violence of our ancestors and not the peace culture. I believe that there are many individuals and institutions who continued to do peace work without external resources or monetary rewards. Are these not the people, institutions and processes that we should be researching with a view to earnestly support?
I remain and optimist and, as such, believe that whereas factors that could lead to cases of “dead aid” have existed and continue to exist, the status of research indicates that opportunities exist for both partners in the global north and global south can do much better in enhancing regimes of funding to make them more systematic, thus breaking the cycle of dependency.
At the end of the day, peacebuilding and justicebuilding in Africa will tap into its true power when we recognize that such an important venture cannot and should not be substantially externally funded – we must invest in it ourselves, just like our ancestors did.
Even though Moyo’s book focuses more on foreign aid to governments, the painful and troubling question we need to confront is whether the factors identified by Moyo are at play in the funding regimes to civil society organizations engaged in peacebuilding and justicebuilding work in the global south. And, if some of the factors are at play, what are the possible alternatives to ensuring that external aid does actually contribute to the capacity of Africans themselves to take leadership and seize initiative in addressing the root causes of conflict in the continent? In short, how can we ensure that aid does not become a part of the problem?
The troubling questions, drawn from the central theses of Moyo’s books are: the decreasing sense in civil duty and responsibility; the apparent lack of creativity in peacebuilding; aid addiction; aid and corruption; and whether aid doesn’t work, hasn’t worked and won’t work. In some way, these are old questions which I intend to confront in light of recent experiences.
Decreasing in Civil Duty and Responsibility
Moyo argues that aid that foreign to governments has over the years led to less taxation. While on the surface less taxation may sound good, particularly in contexts of wanton poverty, paradoxically the net effect is that this has undermined the civic duty and responsibility of ordinary citizens. In other words, where ordinary citizens ought to ensure that their government is accountable, very little advocacy and resistance has happened when there is lack of integrity in the delivery of public service. Similarly, has foreign aid to civil organizations resulted in less civic responsibility on the part of ordinary citizens? Are civil society doing peacebuilding more accountable to their funders than to their very own people that they serve?
However, for the most part, the question of accountability has actually been actually been absent in many peacebuilding interventions. Many agencies design and implement peacebuilding programs with minimal participation or sense of ownership or even in spite of them. In fact, I am prepared to believe that community participation and ownership is deliberately avoided.
Lack of Creativity?
Moyo’s most damning verdict is that “aid engenders laziness on the African Policymakers.” Similarly has aid led to a lack of creativity and imagination amongst peacebuilders in the global south? It is with hesitation that I share this hypothesis.
In the past year, I have consulted for over 10 organizations and it is apparent that most peace workers in civil society are more concerned about adhering to the log frame “no matter what.” While it is clear that conflict cycles do not follow project cycles, peace organizations would insist in doing what is on the grant document, even when their donors were flexible enough to justifiable adjustments to work plans and budgets. No one wants to move out of their comfort zones.
For example, on numerous occasions when I worked as consultant, I have advised agencies against the rush to “bring communities” together following the post-election violence in Kenya. My view at the time was that communities needed time to heal and perhaps the agency needed to invest more on intra-community dialogues and introspection sessions rather than inter-community “reconciliation” meetings. However, the agency continued with the inter-community dialogues since they considered the activity to be of “high impact” in the eyes of the funders. To date, I am advised that while numerous community reconciliation dialogues have happened, the communities have retained their masks and the root causes of violent remain untouched.
As well, I have often been troubled by how defensive peacebuilders become when I ask why they think a particular activity would result in peace and social justice as stated in their grant documents. My take is that this comes from a point where we either have little passion or have no sense of our theory of change. Therefore, peacebuilding becomes another “project” that needs to be done in accordance with the log-frame, nothing more, and nothing less. So that when things go wrong, we tend to blame each other rather than ask ourselves what it is we can learn and how we can recover.
I want to linger on this point and return to my pet topic of “left brain” and “right brain” approaches. Decades of practice persuade me that most of the activities do not seems to work because they tend to be “left brain” approaches to peacebuilding. The left side of our brains, research tells us, is the more logical, analytical and objective. Most of the peacebuilding activities have tended to focus on left brain activities such as trainings, dialogues and roundtables where talking and analysis dominate the processes.
Yet, research tells us that hardly do human change when only their left brain is affected. In peacebuilding and justicebuilding, I have always held the view that in addition to left brain conflict resolution processes, we need to intentionally engage people in “right-brained” processes that are more intuitive, thoughtful and subjective. These are the processes that touch people emotionally, engage with their fears and tickle their sense of imagination.
In my view, attitudinal and behavior change happens faster when emotional intelligence meets cognitive intelligence. Put differently, many people leave workshops or dialogues when their underlying fears, tensions, needs have not been addressed.
From my experience, the right brain processes are usually less well understood and find little space in peacebuilding praxis. That is why we always wonder how easily people fall back into cycles of violence in spite of the many community dialogues we have invested in over the years.
Aid as addiction
“Africa” Moyo writes, “is addicted to aid.” She goes further to compare this addiction to that of any addict who needs and depends on “regular fix.” Are peacebuilding organizations in the global south also addicted to aid? From my experience, evidence of this is quite visible.
More seriously, this “addiction” has led to a tunnel vision about funding. Most senior managers of civil society organizations do not want to explore other alternative sources of funding. For example, in Kenya, almost 5 years ago the law was amended to make contributions by individuals to charitable organizations tax deductable. To date, very few civil society organization have taken advantage of this law to raise resources locally. To the best of my knowledge, the movement to raise resources locally has been painfully slow.
Aid leads to corruption
Moyo hypothesizes that the “aid relationship tips in favor of the corrupt government. Almost to the absurd point where the donor has greater need for giving the aid than the recipient has for taking it.” Has aid exacerbated corruption in civil society in general and in the peacebuilding community in particular? I have no documentary evidence of this. But whenever of I have undertaken program evaluation by various agencies, I have often been told, off the record, of financial malpractices. Very recently, a Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Finance noted that Kenya loses almost a quarter of its total national budget to corruption.
Now, some people hold the view that civil society organizations are as corrupt as go vernment, then would a quarter of funding for peacebuilding and development be disappearing to corruption? Speaking from over two decades of engagement in civil society, I would firmly say there exists, undoubtedly, an undesirable deficit of integrity in civil society.
At the risk of sounding cynical, I have sometimes wondered this feeling is shared by a wider community of peacebuilders: that there is no point to seek long term solutions; that the purpose of “peacebuilding” is to engage in programs that do not address root causes but make funders believe in the effort we are making and ensure we last as long as possible.
Aid doesn’t work, hasn’t worked and won’t work
When I look back over the years and over the past one year, how would I respond to this troubling question? There are instances where I have seen foreign funded peacebuilding and justicebuilding interventions work.
I have seen colleagues working in various parts of the Motherland generate new knowledge, build confidence about what they do, and articulate clearly what is working and when something does not work, they work diligently to openly discuss and make changes.
However, a part of me feels that a considerable amount of aid has been “dead aid.” Inordinate amounts of time and money has been spent it activities and interventions that were not carefully thought, which in some cases, became part of the problem. I still feel that there is sheer lack of adventure, creativity and imagination in some of the “workshops” and programs being designed by civil society organizations. To be perfectly candid, it takes a while for me to read or hear of an initiative that makes me feel really excited.
Possible Next Steps: A Leap in Faith?
Moyo argues that if aid must be given, it needs to be systematic in approach and its intention should be to wean African from aid and promote other home grown alternatives. In Towards Financial Self-Reliance, Richard Holloway raises basic and fundamental question in this regard: “ [a]s CSOs look at the hard questions involved in resource mobilization and accept that there are alternatives to the approaches that they have been practicing to date, a leap of faith is required […] The credo is that if Southern civil society organizations pursue a mission and perform public functions that are valuable to society, if they communicate this well to the public, business and government, and if they undertake well thought out efforts to obtain resources needed to perform these functions, then, in most circumstances, such resources will be available.”
Holloway talks of a “leap in faith” that is required for partners to be able to raise local resources. A good point to start, I have always told friends and colleagues, is we need to affirm and document the non-monetary contributions partners make. For instance, funders in the north need to acknowledge that some partners indirectly contribute through their time and labor and occasionally in material form to the success of a program or project.
Instead of such contributions remaining hidden from the finance books – hence leading to “self-rewarding” – we need to be able to state them as part of our financial accounting. I have also seen cases where community members have contributed food or labor during peacebuilding events and processes.
Secondly, some funders are insisting on local contributions. This is important. My addition would be that in light of what we have discussed above, the definition of “local contribution” needs to be expanded to include time spent after office hours and weekends in preparations, labour and other material contributions. I would also add that as part of the fundraising process, partners in the south need to be encouraged to research and engage with legal framework that encourage local resources and local resources where available, and even resources from Africans in the Diaspora. Even if the funding does not come from those sources, they need to demonstrate knowledge regarding existing alternatives.
I have always wondered how did peacebuilding look like before the avalanche of foreign funding? Or, was there any peacemaking and/or peacebuilding? The answer is yes! In all cultures we find both a culture of violence and a culture of peace. In most of Africa, after every violent conflict, a peace process followed. Unfortunately, the British were more eager to document the violence of our ancestors and not the peace culture. I believe that there are many individuals and institutions who continued to do peace work without external resources or monetary rewards. Are these not the people, institutions and processes that we should be researching with a view to earnestly support?
I remain and optimist and, as such, believe that whereas factors that could lead to cases of “dead aid” have existed and continue to exist, the status of research indicates that opportunities exist for both partners in the global north and global south can do much better in enhancing regimes of funding to make them more systematic, thus breaking the cycle of dependency.
At the end of the day, peacebuilding and justicebuilding in Africa will tap into its true power when we recognize that such an important venture cannot and should not be substantially externally funded – we must invest in it ourselves, just like our ancestors did.
