Ethics in giving to the poor in Africa, and elsewhere ...

Two interesting reads on the same day, from two different perspectives, and both adding to the increasingly loud arguments on why financial aid to the poor, especially in Africa, might be more harm than good--at least in the way we have been doing it.
First, from an NGO field worker/volunteer, Andrew Morgan (ht to you-know-who-you-are for the link):

“I was shocked when I saw my family not digging,” my Ugandan friend Joseph said. “It was the start of the rainy season. ‘What are you doing?’ I asked them when I saw them sitting at my mother’s hut. I asked, ‘Why aren’t you preparing your fields?"
He stared out at the black ribbon of asphalt ahead of us, a narrow road that connects Gulu to the nation’s capital, Kampala. We had a few more hours to go before reaching home, and with a busted radio in the car, words were our only comfort. I waited for him to continue as he dug through the memory.
“You know, they had just returned from life in the camp. For ten years plus they were receiving food from the World Food Program. One of them said to me, 'We are not foolish. We decided not to farm. We are still waiting to meet the right NGO that will help us with food.’ Tssssssk! Can you imagine?”

Yet, despite such ground-level experiences, Morgan writes:

Sure, my money could end up reinforcing negative stereotypes on the ground. And some of it might even be used to line the pockets of a local government official somewhere. But despite this, I made the donation because I still have faith in giving. I am still convinced of its potential, its ability to catalyze opportunity.
I keep this faith even though I don’t take charity at face value anymore; I’m more critical now, and this, I think, is a good thing.

I suppose at an individual level this might be ok.  We make lots of decisions in life that are faith-based.  How much ever those decisions might come across as "irrational," well, those are the individual's decisions.

Now, add up all these individuals, and we get an entire country.  When the country has to decide whether or not it should allocate some of the common money to such causes, then it cannot act merely on faith, can it?  In democratic societies, most resource allocation decisions have to go be justified, and we hope that notorious wastes like the Bridge to Nowhere are in the minority.

Collective resource allocation requires, and rightfully so, evidence-based decisions not faith-based.  Then it is the Dambisa Moyo kind of people that appeal to me, who point out that aid in its old format is a colossal waste..  To add to that growing list is the "Dutch journalist Linda Polman, who draws on decades of experience of reporting from wartorn disaster zones" whose book War Games has been reviewed in Spiked. 

The question Polman wants to raise – and the one she urges aid workers, journalists reporting on aid operations and the governments and individuals who donate money and resources to ask – is if Doing Something is always that good when attempts to do right can go so wrong. War Games suggests that international non-governmental organisations (INGOs) have exacerbated tensions, poured money into the coffers of war lords and rebels, prolonged conflicts and contributed to entrenching an image of the ‘Third World’, particularly Africa, as a basket case for the wealthy nations.

Later, even while bursting a few bubbles in the book, the reviewer writes:

Aid is indeed Big Business today. Since the end of the Cold War, the number of INGOs has mushroomed. In the 1980s, around 40 were active in Cambodian refugee camps set up by the Thai border. Today, by contrast, the ICRC estimates that each major disaster attracts around 1,000 national and international aid organisations. In 2004, some 2,000 organisations descended on Afghanistan.
It is the somewhat luxurious job of journalists to raise tough questions without having to provide any solutions. But considering how willingly journalists generally go along with accounts of war and famine provided by INGOs, and how much they have abandoned their job of investigating, questioning and interrogating the complexities of conflicts, then we should welcome the publication of Polman’s book, or at least parts of it, as an example of when Doing Something is very worthwhile.

I can already imagine the shocked expressions of most of my students when I respond with all these and more ammo to their remarks in favor of more aid.