Reflections - NGOs

My recent trip home and subsequent return to Rwanda offered me some more perspective on my experience here, and gave me a chance to reflect on how much some of my ideas and the way I think about things have changed since I got here.

In reality, I’ve been influenced not only by my experience here, but also by a relatively new habit of keeping up with the blogosphere (Texas in Africa, Chris Blattman, and Tales from the Hood are must-reads for anyone interested in Africa, development, or humanitarianism), by some books I’ve read recently (namely Desire for Development and Dead Aid), and by a few extremely intelligent and insightful friends.

Since arriving in Rwanda, I’ve been appalled with NGOs for all the reasons I thought I would be, all of which were also reasons I was appalled by the State Department. As I’ve ranted before, NGOs waste an inordinate amount of money. I won’t get into it again, but the amount of money wasted, and the things it gets wasted on, is truly unbelievable. Then, there’s the level of bureaucracy: NGO workers are about as efficient as bureaucrats, at least at many of the larger organizations. It’s hard to tell if NGOs actually provide aid, or if they just push papers, fill out forms, enter data, and write reports. I fully recognize that monitoring and evaluation is absolutely crucial to any project, and I’m not suggesting it be ignored. However, I’m pretty sure some organizations invent paperwork to be filled out, just for giggles. And, these organizations are often phenomenally disorganized - papers and files are constantly lost, nothing is in order, nothing is where it belongs, things have to be done multiple times because the original is missing, all the information contradicts itself.

Next, people lie on reports to supervisors and donors. How many people did you train? How long did the training last? What topics did you cover? Projects look successful because the reports look successful. Many NGO employees, local and foreign, are concerned with keeping their job, but not necessarily with providing aid. So, they submit reports full of lies about the work they did, making them appear successful to their supervisors, when they haven’t actually done a whole lot. And it’s extremely difficult to prove that or to stop it from happening.

Finally, many of these organizations are far too out of touch with local realities to be effective. Projects are designed by Americans sitting in offices in Washington, D.C., decisions are made by people who work in air-conditioned Kigali offices and go home to sprawling villas in all-white neighborhoods, programs are improved by “consultants” who fly in and stay at the Serena for a few weeks. Nobody spends time in the communities where the projects will be implemented. Nobody lives according to local standards. Nobody puts in the time and effort to understand local systems, values, beliefs, needs, resources. How can you create an effective program when you know almost nothing about the community where the program will take place or the people you are trying to help?

Some counter-arguments to that last complaint, though, have merit, I think. People, generally, can’t indefinitely live the kind of lifestyle that would allow the kind of extensive understanding that is necessary. People burn out, they have families at home, they grow sick of sacrificing their personal lives. Besides, there certainly aren’t enough people to allow an in-depth understanding of every single community in which aid projects might possibly take place. So, where does that leave us? I’m not sure.

My view toward such organizations isn’t the only thing that’s shifted recently, but I’ll save my rambles about other things (namely related to the behavior of Westerners in Africa) for another time.