Pragmatic projects make the best of foreign aid
A few years ago comedian Ross Noble described how Bono once addressed an audience of fans at a U2 concert. Peering into the darkness through his wrap-around shades, the singer took the microphone and clicked his fingers half a dozen times – “click … click … click …” – the caesuras between the snaps freighted with poignancy. Then Bono spake unto the multitude: “Each time I click my finger,” he intoned, “a child dies in Africa.” The awkward silence that followed was broken by a lone voice shouting: “Well don’t f*&@ing do it!”
There’s no doubt that the issue of aid, and of the general conferring of cash from Us in the West to Them in the Third World is one that is fraught with guilt, anger, self-congratulation and a host of similar reactions that occur when consciences are pricked. So it was almost with reluctance that I found myself writing about aid in Zambia – a country of which I know little, and, up until recently, cared less – since this article should have been about alcohol. This is partly because, compared to Zambia, I am better informed about alcohol, with which I have had rather too much of an acquaintance than I care to admit.
Zambia happened to pop up because the first stop on my research was a piece by Victor Mallett for the London Review of Books (December 8, 1988). It was entitled “Alcoholology”, and it includes a book review of For Prayer and Profit: The Ritual, Economic and Social Importance of Beer in Gwembe District, Zambia 1950–1982 (1988). Here was a title promising not range but focus on beer in Zambia’s Gwembe district, and from its review I learned of a peculiar rite. Apparently, some inhabitants of Gwembe placate their ancestors by pouring beer onto the ground in front of their hut doorways, while saying: “Be cool, as water is cool. Do not trouble the children. Let us all prosper. Here is your beer.”
Intrigued by this, I forgot about Zambia’s relation with booze, and wondered about the extent to which Zambians had fared in the two decades since For Prayer and Profit was written. Had “they all prospered”, as Gwembe’s beer dispensers had wished? The answer is no, and it not only applies to Zambia but to most of the Dark Continent and the Third World. Despite Bob Geldof’s haranguing of politicians, governments and the general public in the 1980s, and despite the diversity of “charidee” initiatives that remind us of our obligations to the less well off, it seems that foreign aid isn’t working. But not only does it seem to be ineffectual; a glance at some of the book titles in the burgeoning genre of “aid-lit”, gives a bleak perspective on some forms of humanitarian intervention. For example, we have Lords of Poverty: The Free-Wheeling Lifestyles, Power, Prestige and Corruption of the Multi-Billion Dollar Aid Business (1989) by Graham Hancock; The Road to Hell: The Ravaging Effects of Foreign Aid and International Charity (1998) by Michael Maren; and The Trouble With Africa: Why Foreign Aid Isn’t Working (2007) by Robert Calderisi.
I had only read reviews of these books, but they made me so dispirited that I was unwilling to pursue the matter. And then I came across a book, a restorative no less, which I’ve read from cover to cover, and which helps remind us that “hope springs eternal in the human heart”. In Encountering God in the Margins: Reflections of a Justice Volunteer (2010) scholastic philosopher and teacher Dr Aidan Donaldson describes his involvement with a Christian Brothers’ immersion programme in Zambia.
Initially sceptical about the value of such initiatives, he arrived in Lusaka and met Peter Tembo, coordinator of the capital’s St Lawrence Centre. The Centre consisted of a few run-down buildings but, as Tembo envisioned it, a lot of potential. When Donaldson had given him the benefit of “… a semi-lecture on debt relief … government corruption and a host of other issues …” Tembo’s reply stunned him: “Remember, you cannot change the world; but together you can help us change our world.” Since 2002 that is precisely what Dr Donaldson and his fellow Project Zambia (www.projectzambia.com) volunteers have been doing. As the book’s title suggests, Donaldson is a man of religious conviction, and he has stern words on subjects such as “Voluntourism” and on the practice of “slum safaris” for tourists, a phenomenon I had never heard of.
Although I don’t share his religious beliefs, his powerful and moving narrative made a profound impression on me and it seems clear that Africa needs more “Project Zambias”. But from Project Zambia to The Zambia Project. In Archives of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine (2011, 135: 215–219) Pagni et al describe “Virtual Surgical pathology in Underdeveloped Countries: The Zambia Project”, in which they outline the development and establishment of a telemedicine facility in a mission hospital in the Chirundu region of Zambia. For a country of 12 million people that is served by one surgical pathology laboratory it was encouraging to note that their results “… demonstrate a high correlation between telepathology and traditional microscopy and indicate that the project may be repeated similarly in other developing countries.” There is no denying that foreign aid can often exacerbate problems rather than solve them, but it is inspiring to read of people who can see past the log-jams, and look into the eyes of the marginalised and offer to “let me help to change your world”.
