When the Poor Speak about Aid and Development

Lessons for Aid Effectiveness from Poverty Hearings

Aid works when people talk and work together. On poverty there is no effective dialogue. Everyone is doing their own thing.
Poverty Hearings Commissioner, South Africa

Highlights
• If delegates insist on talking to themselves rather than to the poor or those who can amplify their voices they become ignorant of the very lived realities of those they are purporting to help
• Poverty Hearings currently being conducted in a number of African countries demonstrate that despite some positive outcomes, aid leaves the majority of the poor untouched, making aid commitments all talk and zero walk
• There are many respects in which aid or the “un-earned” government revenue has created serious democratic deficits
• African Monitor calls on the delegates of the Third High Level Forum to take the opportunity of holding the Forum in an African aid recipient country to:
 work together towards understanding of the deprivation as well as the contribution of the poor to building a just Africa
 Mandate regular monitoring of aid and its impact on grassroots communities
 Adopt continental hearings on aid and development effectiveness
 Prioritise the needs of the poor in aid and development delivery

A High Level Forum in an aid recipient country- opportunities not to be missed

The Third High Level Forum on aid effectiveness will do well to listen to stories of Sodom and Gomorrah, those slum areas in Accra that share the same name with the twin biblical cities that were destroyed with fire and brimstone because of their waywardness. Sodom and Gomorrah, a well-known slum area in Accra, is not far from the venues of the September Third High Level Forum on aid effectiveness taking place this September. Like other slums and poverty-stricken areas in developing countries, Sodom and Gomorrah has its attendant health hazards, is associated with crime, has a lot of migrants from the poorer parts of the country and every once in a while the police conduct swoops to rout bad elements who take cover in the slum but who are fellow human beings who see life pitched against them, with poverty grinding some to a lessening of their humanity and without hope of change for the better.

We know that every developing country has its own Sodom and Gomorrah. Take for example the case of a young man in Free State, South Africa who tells how his sisters have resorted to prostitution because they have no other source of income. The same young man confesses that since he had been out of work for an extended period, crime had become an attractive option for him. Every young person has a dream but many dreams are being shattered, lives wasted ending in “a bottle of beer”, crime, prison and ultimately premature death.

With all the attention given to High Level Forums on aid effectiveness, it is easy to lose sight of the simple fact that after all aid effectiveness is not about the effectiveness with which aid is delivered, managed, aligned or harmonised such as how much comes through budget support versus project funding; but the positive impact it makes on the lives of the people at the grassroots such as those of Accra’s Sodom and Gomorrah and South Africa’s Free State which at best remains subtle. The Accra High Level Forum, taking place as it is in a developing country for the first time, should be an opportunity to focus on the lived realities of the people at the grassroots, those in the informal sectors, subsistence farming and unemployed youth, abused women, the majority of whom tend to be outside the purview of aid, and to whom the Paris Declaration is largely unknown or is meaningless. And it should do so not just by participants talking to themselves but by effectively listening to lived realities of those to whom aid is supposed to benefit and for whom meetings such as this become all talk and little walk both literally and metaphorically.

The High Level Forum which takes place in Accra from 2-4 September is being held in a typical African city with disparities between the rich and the poor, with an incremental trend in which the gap between them, their wealth and health, and the inequalities in power and voice is ever increasing. The rich fence themselves off from the poor because they are a security risk to them as desperation often breeds violence or “makes crime attractive”. Likewise there is a danger that the HLF3 will end up behind closed doors of very well secured official venues, with delegates talking to themselves and forgetting the fact that the lived realities of the people in most developing countries like Ghana is far from what is discussed at a Forum like this.

The African Monitor implores all participating officials, whether government, donor or civil society to work together towards a deeper understanding of the plight and contribution of the poor to building a just Africa and becoming architects of authentic solutions to their plight.

Participants should be interacting with fishing and farming communities, unemployed slum dwellers and immigrant plantation workers. They should be talking to the many young girls and women who have become head porters (locally known in Ghana as ‘kayayei’) at the market centres of Accra, Takoradi, Koforidua and Kumasi. We should be asking them about their take on aid effectiveness with a hazard warning: As we interact with them, we dare not share a meal with them, or drink the water they drink. We dare not use their washrooms. It is pathetic out there!

Poverty Hearings

In the last two months, the African Monitor (working with partners ) has been going around South Africa’s different provinces giving people of all walks of life an opportunity to talk about their lived realities in what we call “Poverty Hearings”. This is a follow up of a similar exercise that was conducted ten years ago when the Founder and President of the African Monitor, Archbishop Njongo Ndungane was a Commissioner on the Poverty Hearings Commission. So far 1900 people have participated in four of the nine provinces by giving testimony of their experiences of poverty. What we have found is pretty shocking:

• Not much of aid and development resources reach poor communities
• Poor people do not have access to basic services
• Youth unemployment is causing a lot of damage among communities including increasing the crime rate
• Unemployment among men is leading to social erosion and community tensions such as the recent xenophobic outbursts in parts of the country
• Many households depend on the income of women pensioners with the same women also being targeted by criminals when they withdraw their meagre pensions
• Overcrowding in shacks is widespread as is lack of access to such services as treatment for HIV and TB
• Recent increases in food and fuel prices have increased vulnerability
• There is increasing frustration with the sense of hopelessness and powerlessness among the poor

If at this Third High Level Forum delegations cannot go out and meet such people, they should more intentionally listen to those who bring their voices into the meeting. In the least participants should do role plays to try to imagine what an ordinary person would say about the various themes that have been identified for the Forum. Suppose they played the role of a leader of a faith community, what would be his or her lived reality? What about that of a youth in a township in South Africa, Uganda, Nigeria or Ghana?

African Monitor has more of these voices and is in the process of gathering some more in South Africa and through partners across Africa, culminating in an international Poverty Hearing at the United Nations Headquarters in New York later this month. While generally the story of aid is that of inadequacy of resources or of aid under-dose where too little often comes too late, sometimes, we may be shocked to find that it is not about lack of money but the way it is channelled to those who deserve it. Some governments, like South Africa have set aside a well-resourced youth fund (Umsobomvu) but for the youth who testified at the Poverty Hearings in the Free State, these funds have not been accessible. Therefore while, at an aid-effectiveness forum, the South African Minister of Finance would be feeling pleased, and quite rightly so, that he has provided for his country’s youth, on the ground this is not the reality. Various other initiatives and funds are available for Africa’s development – the Infrastructure Development Fund, the Alliance for a Green Revolution (AGRA), and so forth. The real challenge is that little of these resources actually reach the grassroots communities. As one of the poverty Hearings Commissioners aptly put it, “A country works when people talk and work together. The relationship of those in positions of power, such as lawyers, civil servants, elected representatives, with the poor must be changed and made more equal” 

In other assessments, it has been found that aid, or what one could refer to as ‘un-earned’ government revenue, (as opposed to taxes) can alienate developing country governments from their people because, irrespective of what we say regarding country ownership and citizen participation, aid does not necessarily require the state apparatus to interact with the masses who in turn cannot hold their governments accountable. In that sense, aid has created serious democratic deficits.

Tracking Commitments on Aid

African Monitor was formed as an independent catalyst to monitor development funding commitments, delivery and impact on the grassroots and to bring strong additional African voices to the development agenda. Its formation was inspired by the deep concern that Founder and President, Archbishop Ndungane had gathered over many years about the ineffectiveness of development delivery. On a trip to London a cab driver paused a searching question to him on why Africa should remain a worthy recipient of aid from the West: “All that money” he said, “wouldn’t it have been better off in the hands of British pensioners”? But the cab driver was equally deeply concerned about whether donors were keeping their promises.

The Archbishop became even more determined that African civil society should do more in holding donors and their own governments accountable for the commitments and pledges they make, and providing independent monitoring of the extent to which development promises were being effectively implemented on the ground. African Monitor’s first task was to develop monitoring tools to deliver on this mandate.

To gain an in-depth understanding of all the commitments made by donors and African governments to support development in the continent, African Monitor developed a baseline matrix of development support promises and delivery to Africa, the Development Support Monitor. This comprehensive catalogue provides a listing of all the promises and commitments made in the recent past and becomes a benchmark against which to measure the fulfilment of these commitments. We plan to track progress on an annual basis as a basis for our advocacy efforts, calling on donors and African Governments, as a constructive friend, to effectively implement their commitments both in terms of quantity and quality of implementation and how it changes lives at the grassroots.

It is common knowledge that conventional mechanisms for measuring local development are deficient. This means that decision makers have all been using measurements that only give a general picture. It is time to measure local development in more precise terms. To this end, African Monitor is in the final stages of developing a Grassroots Focus Index (GFI). With faith communities that permeate most of our African societies providing our most significant partners, we are pressing for timely, efficient and effective implementation of commitments to Africa and ensuring that they are delivered in ways that bring tangible and lasting development outcomes at the grassroots level. Through the GFI and in combination with other well-known indices, such as the Human Development Index, stronger and more informed voices will be catalysed and the community spirit invoked.

A call to Action

• African Monitor calls on the delegates of the Third High Level Forum to take the opportunity of holding the Forum in an African aid recipient country to:
 work together towards understanding of the deprivation as well as the contribution of the poor to building a just Africa
 Mandate regular monitoring of aid and its impact on grassroots communities
 Adopt continental hearings on aid and development effectiveness
 Prioritise the needs of the poor in aid and development delivery

Africa can ill afford ending at just acknowledging the presence of poverty and making glorious declarations which at best have subtle substance.

African Monitor, 2008