Page 211 - Volume 1_Go home mzungu Go Home_merged with links

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

and international NGOs working there, and cited population figures that ranged as high
as one million residents.

Recently, however, the results of Kenya's 2009 census were released: according to the

official tally, Kibera has just 194,269 residents.

***
Questionable figures of another sort are to be found in reports on the United Nations

Millennium Development Goals, a series of targets on poverty reduction and other
measures of well-being. UN and NGO officials routinely describe Africa as failing to meet

the goals, and the press routinely writes up this failure.

But some experts, among them Jan Vandemoortele, one of the architects of the MDGS,
have expressed concern that the goals are being misused. He wrote in 2009 that the

MDGS were intended as global targets,but have been improperly applied to individual
countries and regions.

"It is a real tragedy when respectable progress in Africa is reported as a failure by

international organizations and external observers," Vandemoortele wrote, voicing the
suspicion that particular measurements have been selected "so as to present Africa as a
failure, solely to gain support for a particular agenda, strategy, or argument.”

Columbia Journalism Review (April 2011) 207
Karen Rothmyer
*****

Distortion of national and local governance, elitism ?
“ Since the 1980s, international financial institutions like the World Bank and

International Monetary Fund, have forced indebted African states to reduce public
expenditure. This has encouraged the flourishing of non-state actors like NGOs.

While both local and international NGOs have benefited from this move, African states

have been less able to access international aid. This undermines their sovereignty and
places African people at the mercy of donors.

*****
NGOs are also criticised for their focus on technical solutions to poverty instead of the
underlying issues. So, for example, an NGO might provide water tanks for the poor

without addressing the power imbalances that resulted in some having water while
others don't.