Cash handouts - the solution for West Africa or another way of keeping the aid circus running?

IRIN (Integrated Regional Information Networks), which is part of the UN but supposedly editorially independent, recently published an article about aid and cash handouts, entitled “West Africa: Do high food prices warrant a cash response?”

Experts say many of the right conditions are in place across West Africa to make cash distributions work in the current global food price crisis.

IRIN, 3 September 2008

When we refer to the “right conditions” for cash handouts, are we then referring to when such an approach would be considered “politically correct” according to the general public? The answer, according to the article, seems to be that they do: the high food prices do indeed warrant a cash response. Michael O’Donnel, head of hunger reduction for Save the Children had the following to say:

The current food price crisis could be an opportunity for governments to work with NGOs and UN agencies to provide cash transfers to build up stronger social protection systems for the chronically poor.

Michael O’Donnell, Save the Children

According to IRIN, CARE International started distributing cash in the region of Tahoua in southern Niger earlier this year, “giving US$100 in the ‘transition season’ from January to April, and a further US$40 directly following the harvest in September and October in the hope that when food stocks are high, families will invest the cash.” Vanessa Rubin, Africa hunger adviser for NGO CARE International UK, thought cash transfers could work well in West Africa in the face of food price hikes.

This is a slow-moving crisis, and it is in these situations where cash can be most useful. We give cash in Niger for instance, to prevent the problem of food prices turning into a potential acute malnutrition crisis.

Vanessa Rubin, CARE International UK

The Red Cross is also active distributing cash handouts in Niger:

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies needs more than Euro 11.5 million (Euro 11,642,754) to help more than half a million people (532,000). To date it has taken the following actions:

* Provided food and other aid to over 600,000 people throughout the Sahel Region.

* Set-up a pioneering cash distribution programme for 90 villages in the Tanout region of Niger. This is the first time that cash has been distributed as an emergency response and its effectiveness in giving people the means to pay for food and grains themselves, will be evaluated as a future response to disasters.

International Red Cross & Red Crescent Action in Niger and the Sahel Region

Copyright Eden Foundation 2008

All the mentioned organisations above still claim that Niger suffered a severe food crisis in 2005 that affected millions of people:

A lethal combination of drought and locust infestation triggered severe food shortages in 2005, affecting 3.6 million people in the Maradi and Zinder regions. The underlying cause of the crisis was poverty.
Food crisis in Niger, Save the Children International

AUGUST 2004: Food shortages push 3.6 million people into emergency
Niger food crisis, Care International

With almost 8 million people threatened by severe food shortages in Niger, Mali, Mauritania and Burkina Faso, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies is launching an emergency appeal for around €11.5 million to assist international efforts to avert widespread starvation in the Sahel region. […] The situation is especially serious in Niger, where 3.6 million people, or 28 per cent of the population, are affected by food shortages, caused by a combination of drought and last year’s invasion by swarms of locusts.
Red Cross Red Crescent to launch appeal in response to Niger food crisis

In 2005, Niger experienced the second worst food crisis in its modern history, and a third of the population was threatened by famine. The UN gave warning that 150,000 children could die.
IRIN -> Country profile -> Niger -> Food Security

We all know that that cash handouts is only a temporary solution, if it can even be called a solution. No governments in their right mind will hand out free cash to its unemployed, thinking it will in any way boost their self-confidence or commitment. The only thing cash handouts is going to do for West Africa is to enforce the perception that West Africans are poor and that the West is rich, and it is no more than right that the West should be supporting them.

If the goal, however, is NOT to see the poorest of the poor achieve a sustainable life independent on outside help, I would be the first to understand the inclination of the Western giant aid forces in wanting to impose free cash distributions throughout West Africa. For cash distributions create dependency, and the aid industry needs people who needs them, or they would simply run out of business.

For what would happen to aid as we know it if Africa become independent? What would happen if African children no longer died in front of the cameras? Where would the media vultures go and how would one go about to generate enough incomes for the aid circus to carry on? I do not wish it for any other continent in the world to have to bear the burden that Africa has had to bear on the international aid politic market, but I long for the day when Africa will be free and allowed to develop in its own pace, and in its own direction.

But as professor Alex de Waal of Harvard University says in the documentary the Famine Scam:

Well, Africa doesn’t answer back. We don’t hear the voices from the villages in Africa, saying this is really what happened.

Alex de Waal in The Famine Scam (2008)

I think Petter Eide put it so well after Bergens Tidende on April 28th somewhat controversial chronicle “Apologize, Egeland”, when he said:

…what the researchers must understand, is that we need to finance our work. We use a lot of resources to raise money.  […] All journalists think that it is better to write about an aid campaign rather than what is being done to prevent the crisis. It’s a dilemma, for we depend on attention to get money.

Petter Eide of the Norwegian People’s Aid

This to me is the tragic reality of aid today. It seems that it is not the needs of the recipients themselves that stand as base for the fashions of new revolutionizing (or as the Red Cross puts it: “pioneering”) aid solutions, but the needs of the organisations, or no aid organisation in their right minds would be handing out cash transfers and proceed to call it a sustainable solution. If the general aid industry intends to bombard West Africa with cash handouts, or “cash transfers” as they call it, it would be better for the population of the continent if they did not “aid” at all.

One of the consequences of the Famine Scam in Niger 2005 that have pained me the most (in which many of these giant aid organizations share responsibility for consciously entertaining such a view) is the beggar-mentality that have developed in Niger since the past aid invasion, where the previously to Niger-inexperienced aid giants rushed into the country and started rummaging about without any knowledge of the local ways and attitudes or the possibilities available in Niger that would enable people to live a sustainable life.

When we went to Mirriah the last time (the village where Hilary Andersson claimed that thousands of people had died and where many aid organisations have since been busy distributing free things) the following ladies with their new outfits and fine jewelry changed direction as they saw us, and headed straight into our zone of intimacy, giggling nervously as they claimed they were suffering and that we should give them money.

My heart broke when seeing them sell themselves short that way, and I am distraught by any efforts to promote such tendencies.

In an DerSpiegel interview from July 2005, Kenyan economics expert James Shikwati stated that “Aid to Africa does more harm than good.” I completely understand him in what he is saying and I sincerely recommend reading the interview in full, as well as the DerSpeigel article entitled: Choking on Aid Money in Africa.

It’s been over a year since I wrote my first cash handout post, and seeing the direction that the latest aid fashions have taken, I presume it will not be my last. The same set of questions however apply today:

What do we really think will happen when the people who have gotten accustomed to Westerners distributing free cash (at a slight cost of one’s dignity, of course) one day have to stand on their own again?

We all know that we cannot adopt the adult population of poverty stricken areas and feed them indefinitely, so if we really do want to help the poor, we need to give them the resources to rise and stand on their own feet.

Esther Garvi, Cash Handouts are not Helping! (May 2007)

I love my work in Niger, because Eden’s solution is simple and totally adapted to their own means, which has boosted a previously apathetic population into seeing the possibilities rather than the restraints. But in order for us to help them, they have to be motivated and that charge lies on them. They sow, they care, they protect - and then, they harvest! There is often a 10 year investment behind the success stories we see today - children who are busy collecting and selling Eden fruits, because their parents made a commitment almost a decade ago.

Copyright Eden Foundation

We are often asked by others within the aid industry how Eden manages to work with our farmers without “paying them” for their troubles, as if this would be something exclusive and outstanding. But the truth of the matter is, that with all these cash handouts / transfers going on, that is exactly where aid as we know it is heading. The people of West Africa know what they are worth in the ongoing aid circus and they want their cut. That is understandable, but does in no means help the people who really need to be helped, and who long for a sustainable, respectable and valid life.

I end this post with Eden’s own conclusion of the impact of the Famine Scam:

The media hype of 2005 did not help us in our work, as our goal is to help the poorest of the poor achieve a sustainable life. Short-term help only makes them dependent and strangles their motivation to do something about their own situation, which we cannot see as an achievement. Unfortunately, few organisations work long-term and they are eager for quick results. But results at what price? You cannot force people to become independent, but you easily make them dependent by bringing in free food and cash. Sadly, the dignity and motivation lost in the effort is not easily rebuilt again.

What Niger saw this summer was not a sudden catastrophe, but the harsh reality of everyday life. Some may argue that the recent media attention of Niger’s alleged famine – focusing primarily on emaciated naked children drawing their last breaths in front of Western cameras – was a necessary step to draw international attention to the poorest country in the world in order to improve its situation. However, temporary relief programmes can never solve an endemic situation, regardless of how much money is invested. Hunger and malnutrition are simply symptoms of much deeper structural problems, which Niger desperately needs to see resolved. In a country where the vast majority of Nigeriens are living off agriculture and animal husbandry and depend on the natural environment for their sustenance, desertification is a huge threat to the coming generation and can only be battled on a long-term basis. Niger’s future lies in an improved environment and in the ability for the poor to produce their own agricultural products, which they can through Eden’s methods.

 

Habiba Abdu of Karakai with Eden fruits harvested from her own field (February 2006)

Eden Foundation, When Endemic Malnutrition is Labeled as Famine