Page 188 - Volume 1_Go home mzungu Go Home_merged with links

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20 century 'zuŋ u 'not for profit' empires
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"Veni, Vidi, Vici ",Steti - ego adduxit amicis meis

(And to anyone who doubts this as a common practice, I refer them to my time in Malawi where a
discussion topic at a small business convention was the need to keep private spending separate
from business - and in particular not to use business cash to pay for their childrens' school fees!)

And this sort of thinking all too quickly lends itself to further distortions such as the
'Cambodian Orphanages' , where local people use children from poor families to extract
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'gifts' from tourists, and which they use to fund their own living costs. All to the detriment

of the children, many of whom have at least one parent, and few of whom will be taught
anything but a cute 'performance' designed for the tourists.

(And to anyone who doubts that Cambodian Orphanages only happen in Cambodia, you couldn't
be more wrong)
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Nathan Nunn and his colleagues published a study that, having dissected the USA Food Aid
programme, showed that the real value of USA Food Aid was a lot less than the official

figure. I can't see a parallel study into the informal aid sector. Perhaps the very nature of its

fragmentation makes it impossible. But I wonder just how much of the value of informal
aid is siphoned off by the various players in the INGO industry. And yet the government

department that oversees UK International Aid does virtually nothing to address this. (DfiD or
FCOD. It makes no difference. Think about that)

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A stronger UK regulatory framework for INGO has the potential to optimise the

impact of INGO through greater overall co-ordination and efficiency and also remove the
adverse impact of the unqualified do gooders, parasites & bad actors and reduce the

siphoning of genuinely given donations to the myriad of businesses that now inhabit the

aid business swell the formal ODA budget

Stronger leadership from FCDO than was ever apparent from DfiD can, if ODA

programmes are channelled through a meaningful partnership with the African Union (AU),
can promise a far greater aid impact than can ever be expected from the current

fragmented, self-interested aid sector.

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