Ineffective.

Harmful.

Courtesy of KleinPictures

Those are the adjectives the Klein family uses to describe much of the aid that goes to the African continent. Their documentary What Are We Doing Here? traces the journey of three brother and a cousin who travel for 6 months from Cairo to Cape Town, talking to NGO workers to child to parents to government officials, to learn about charity in Africa.  We were lucky, at Swarthmore College, to have Tim Klein present his film on January 22, 2010 to an audience of over 200 people and answer questions from the audience after the showing.

The film and the event Swarthmore’s Global Health Forum helped Americans for Informed Democracy organize were created to spark discussion about foreign aid.  As the film asks, why has the situation in so many places that receive aid not improved? Wouldn’t you expect that aid should alleviate the poverty it targets?  The film shows that there are various answers for why much of the aid has not helped.  Moreover, it illustrates how aid is often harmful.

Here are some key and disconcerting points the film makes:

Aid to Africa is a multibillion dollar industry. The rice that serves as food aid comes from U.S. farmers, so it hurts farmers in African countries who cannot compete and who themselves become dependent.  As one man says in the film, “What has been accomplished has been to effectively put many African countries on a life support system.”  Much of the foreign aid does nothing to help people in the continent help themselves.  That is the main problem.

When you sponsor a child, that money does not actually go to a child.  Rather, the money goes to building programs and longer term initiatives that will improve children’s lives and futures.  In principal, that use of money is actually more beneficial than giving the money just to one child.  Why do organizations have to misled people to get money?  Why isn’t it understood that true aid means helping people help themselves?

Another problem, the film argues, is that governments are not held accountable by their people.  The relationship between government and people is often non-existent.  People go to aid organizations directly instead of to their governments.  State building where the government acts for the people is not happening.  Aid organizations are not helping either, because they serve an inappropriate role as intermediaries between the government and the people.  Sometimes, as in the case of the Rwandan genocide, they even give aid to people who are harming others.

Some Africans think the best thing is for other countries to leave them alone.

For me personally, watching this movie and seeing the beautiful lush land on the continent really drove home the idea that external interference has been harmful.  Its not a coincidence that with so many natural resources the poverty continues.

We need to change the way aid works.  To join in on these efforts, obtain the movie, or to learn more visit www.whatarewedoinghere.net.

This post was written by camilia.kamoun

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