NGOs Do More Harm than Good
on Anthony Lovat in Bolgatanga (Ghana), 12/Jul/2011 21:41, 34 days ago
According to GhanaWeb, there were about 320 NGOs operating in Ghana in 1997 - both local and foreign. In 2005 there were perhaps 1500 and by 2009, 4463 NGOs were registered with the Department for Social Welfare. This exponential increase shows no sign of slowing. Everyone wants to be an NGO - even TangaCulture (my musical group) want to register as an NGO. The only sector that has shown a comparable rise is the evangelical church industry (the African Religious Union had an unbelievable 7897 different registered churches in 2010– how many more may be unregistered?). NGOs are either multinational or local entities. Both, I believe, do more harm than good. The multinational NGOs badly distort the fragile economies within which they work. To take one example, I know an NGO that supports small manufacturing businesses– in this case carpentry. The NGO flew (business class) an advisor from Holland to offer his advice, expertise and, of course, money. The carpentry shop was, with the NGO money, able to buy new machines, signboards and display platforms. The entire building has been entirely revamped. Unfortunately, however, the owner of this small business is not doing the right thing. If he pays his apprentices anything, it’ll never be more than 2GHc per day and delays passing the good ones out because he wants to keep them working in the shop. He has stolen much of the NGO money to restock his other business – selling cloth in Bolga market. With all his competent apprentice carpenters moving to other masters, his furniture is actually quite ropey. In a normal market economy, bad businesses run by bad managers producing a bad product should be allowed to fail (unless you’re a ‘too big to fail’ bank, of course- in which case you’ll be awarded a fat bonus). Multinational NGOs that support small businesses completely distort this basic principle. Bad businesses are allowed to limp onwards – not only draining the resources of the NGO but also undercutting andundermining the good businesses that are in competition. Businesses that succeed are no longer the ones that produce the best goods and services but are the ones that are most adept at attracting multinational NGO support. This is bad for consumers (Ghanaians), bad for the donors and bad for the local economy and, I would argue, Ghanaian society. Has anyone heard of any VSO volunteers sent to prop up a badly run and apathetic local business, cooperative, association or NGO? I have.The big multinational NGOs have an even more seditious effect on the state sector– especially education. The heinous use of T&T (‘time’ and ‘travel’) is endemic. I know of workshops organised by foreign NGOs where all civil servants were given 100GHc T&T. I understand the situation is far worse at top-level NGO functions in Accra. By making this‘motivation’ so generous, NGOs are doing more than supplementing income – they are subverting the concept of a salary. T&T is systemic bribery and all multinational NGOs are guilty. What’s more, the bribe inevitably comes with strings attached. Educationalists must follow an agenda that is dictated from abroad. It is colonialism conducted through an NGO – much as the British East India Company operated outside of governmental control as they colonised India during the 18th century (and they had plenty of ‘local partners’). Many of the agendas espoused by T&T toting multinational NGOs may appear worthy to our ears– gender equality, human rights, advocacy etc. Similarly, the evangelism of Christianity and all its virtues sounded worthy to 18th century European ears. I enjoy this thought experiment: Imagine if an oil-rich Saudi Arabian sheikh funded an NGO in London to promote gender equality. A Saudi definition of ‘gender equality’ may be quite different to mine. I imagine them giving out an ipod to any girl who wears a headscarf. It highlights how multinational NGOs force the values of the donors onto the ‘beneficiaries’. The psychological effects of these multinational NGOs operating outside of government control in Ghana are more difficult to pin down. Does it foster a dependency? Does it encourage a‘European-man-knows-best’ mentality? Does it devalue native initiative and effort within the public (and private) sector? Does it lead to a Ghanaian inferiority complex – at least within the education sector?Talking of inferiority complexes, multinational NGOs actually have an active interest in promoting the illusion that Africa is a continent full of starving, incapable people just waiting for the£15 a month that will magically teach them how to catch their own fish. The propaganda machine is so sophisticated because the multinational NGOs rely on it. Any big NGO without an expensive glossy website, magazine, pushy call centre and team of marketing experts is not going to survive. They pushevery emotional button, pull on every heartstring and only accept direct debit. They are selling a product – guilt relief – and, in the process, need to promote the guilt itself. This has an unhealthy effect on Europe as well as Africa. Europeans have a false impression of what Africa is like –dangerous, desperate, dirty. Even the broadsheet newspapers are infiltrated. Instead of investigative journalists seeking the truth through unbiased eyes, big multinational NGOs fly journalists to an exotic yet poor location and have their public relation’s officer treat them to a guided tour, anice hotel room and a cultural display. In return for this free holiday, the journalist will write a glowing report in the Guardian / Telegraph / Times about the great work that Wateraid / Care International / VSO are doing and, in doing so, emphasise the terrible state Africa is in and how, if onlythe loyal reader could donate £15 a month to this particular NGO, poor Africans could become richer in body and soul. Watch the donations roll in from that NGO investment – banking on the goodwill of ill-informed, generous and busy Europeans. I listened to a documentary about Sirigu – just upthe road from Bolga – on the BBC sponsored by World Vision about the belief in Spirit Children. Sirigu is a lively little town with a regular market, lights, a senior high school, running water, church groups (an order of nuns run the baby rescue home), community groups, (including SWOPA, a very successful local NGO that markets local pottery and painting – the family that set up the NGO live in a big house on my road in Bolga, own several cars and a massive satellite dish). Although poor, Sirigu is nowhere near the edge of the world. I barely recognised the portrayal given on the BBC. Almost everyone in this area of Ghana believes in spirits but the editor, who only went to Sirigu for a few hours, made it sound like the place was a haven of devil worshipping and that World Vision are the only people there fighting ignorance and poverty. Counter-productively, the continuing stream ofnegative images from Africa to Europe help bolster the right-wing European reaction against immigration – look at the swings towards racist anti-immigration governments in Austria, Holland, Italy, Germany, France and Britain – the electorate fearful of a continent full of poverty, fed on a dietof negative images supplied and nurtured by multinational NGOs.A 2009 USAID report recognises the fact that rich Ghanaians contribute negligible amounts to NGOs and to charitable organisations generally. As a proportion of income, rich Europeans donate far less than their poor comrades. A 2001 study in the US found that households earning less than $25,000 a year gave away an average of 4.2% of their incomes while those earning over $75,000 gave away just 2.7%. Multinational NGOs, as a result, make very little effort to foster local support for their work. For whatever reason, the dewy-eyed, guilt-tripping magazine articles don’t appear in Ghanaian publications. In fact, the rich Ghanaians very often are the multinational NGO workers themselves. When sourcing their money, NGOs target the lower socio-economic groups in developed nations. Note how magazines and TV programmes in Britain for the well off demographic tend toadvertise expensive watches and BMWs whereas the Big Issue and TV programmes such as Big Brother are targeted by multinational NGOs because they know that the poor are more generous. Charity fundraisers on UK high streets are trained to avoid expensive suits and to target the young, poor studenty types. Multinational NGOs siphon money from the poor in the developed world to the rich in the developing world.The rich in the developing world are disgustingly rich. Money goes a long way. There is a man in Bolga who lives in an opulent mansion and drives a spotlessly polished Bentley. I wonder how much he gives to charity.So much for the multinational NGOs. Local NGOs are usually set up by the young and aspirational middle class. Although technically defined as‘not-for-profit’, most small NGOs are set up with that distinct objective. An NGO in Ghana does not have to pay tax.When done well, micro-finance organisations can be wonderfully effective and sustainable tools for kick-starting a cash economy. Many small micro-finance NGOs in Ghana, however, operate as loan sharks– charging extortionate interest, capitalising on the poor education of their serfs and threatening severe consequences for lack of payment all whilst hiding behind their NGO tax-break. I know a teacher who owed money to a local micro-finance racket and she was genuinely frightened.Multinational NGOs are well-oiled revenue-earning machines but they usually sub-contract the dirty work to small local NGOs– known as ‘local partners’. For a small NGO, being sponsored by a multinational NGO is a lottery windfall. £4.5 million of Comic Relief money was given to VSO (who, if you listen to Tanko describe the dragon’s den pitch to the Comic Relief people, treated this sponsorship as a lottery win)for the TENI project. VSO then sub-contract to Link International who then sub-contract to GES and other ‘local partners’ such as PTAs, chiefs, schools, churches etc. Each layer of this administration is chopping some of the money – either legally through perks such as cars and generous (by Ghanaian standards) salaries or illegally through cooked books, false receipts and kickbacks. By the time the money and benefit filters down to the genuinely poor, there is little to get excited about and the harm done to the way society is structured through the NGO economy is immeasurably greater than the small good that the poor ever see.Talensi Nabdam has a population of 94,650, Lawra 85,442 and West Mamprusi 115,015 (2002 figures) giving a total of just over 180,000 people. Comic Relief are donating 60GHc for every man, woman and child in these three districts. We must remember that the average earnings in northern Ghana are less the $1 per day. 60GHc represents a lot of money– more than you could earn in 2 months. For a family of 4 (most families are, of course, much bigger then this), the Comic Relief donation represents 240GHc. They could use this money to motivate teachers, repair buildings, start businesses, buy seeds or cattle, anything! Instead, most of the Comic Relief money will go to… T&T. Workshop budgets are dominated by T&T and feeding. Anyone know how much Vice President John Mahama was paid for speaking at the official opening in WaleWale in May last year? Even the elected representatives of this nation are poodles within the NGO economy.Every NGO worker can supply good anecdotes. I have several of my own– teachers I have skilled up, students I have tutored and businesses I have supported. Anecdotes do not constitute a critical analysis but quantifying the effects of the NGO economy is not easy. Unsurprisingly, most NGOs, including VSO, like using the ‘bums on seats’ methodology. Most projectsare judged based on the ‘numbers of beneficiaries’. NGOs like to use this measure because it is the easiest to manipulate and sounds the most positive. TENI press releases talk of “building the capacity of 2000 teachers, including 500 national volunteer teachers, to support children to learnand to mentor them. In addition, the capacity 237 head teachers and circuit supervisors will be enhanced to support and mentor teachers in 80 percent of basic schools in the three participating districts”. Impressive as this all sounds, I know it is bullshit. Exam results are a more effective measure of teaching quality and, in Talensi Nabdam at least, BECE results have plummeted since the TENI project began. Why? Teachers, disassociated as they are from the NGO economy, are paid far less than NGO officers and their ‘local partners’ – especially now that the officers, chiefs and politicians have had their incomes boosted by the TENI T&T windfall. Teachers still can’t buy motorbikes, laptops or books – essential items to enable them to improve their work. How motivational a factor is this gulf in income? NGOs are currently doing more harm than good.At the risk of sounding too negative, I believe that, with a few changes to the system, NGOs could be made to do more good than harm. A strictly independent regulatory body should monitor and audit all NGOs that operate in Ghana. All NGOs should be registered before being allowed to operate. NGO projects should be judged by meaningful criteria– such as those outlined in the Millennium Development Goals. The regulatory body should have field staff with high standards that report and monitor the work as happening on the ground and should be able to apply harsh sanctions on NGOs that are shown to be doing more harm than good. That’s what I think, anyway.