

Are Charities Killing African Entrepreneurship? - cwan
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2010/08/are-ngos-killing-african-entrepreneurship/61045/

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patio11
_I'm conscious that in this scenario, I am biased towards the seen harm,
rather than the unseen--I'll never identify the people who might have been
pulled out of poverty if we hadn't screwed up their economy, so my tendency is
to discount them._

Recognizing and counteracting this cognitive bias is one of the Big Ideas that
I took from economics classes. (See also Predictably Irrational.)

Here's a hypothetical discussion between an environmentalist and an economist
that brought it home for me. The topic is whether to pave over something
pretty to make a parking lot.

Environmentalist: If we pave over the prairie, we'll lose the prairie forever.
Even if you might want to have the parking lot, you can always get the parking
lot tomorrow. Don't pave!

Economist: If we don't pave over the prairie _today_ , we'll lose _the use of
the parking lot tomorrow_ forever. There will never be a tomorrow in which
we'll have the parking lot. Pave it!

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ThomPete
There is one thing and one thing only that would help Africa and that is the
dismantling of the trade walls between Africa and the US+EU.

Africa's current financial ecosystem is deeply flawed as there is no way or
very little way to spiral outwards instead of inwards.

The current scenario is like saying to Microsoft that they can only sell their
products internally in the company. It creates an inward spiral that have very
hard terms for growth and is deeply depending on money from the outside.

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CapitalistCartr
"On the other hand, I'm not sure I'm quite willing to walk up to a woman dying
from malnutrition to tell her that I'm sorry, we'd like to help, only
unfortunately it would distort the local economy and so I'm afraid you'll need
to lean into the strike zone and take one for the team."

That isn't the only, necessary alternative. There's nothing wrong with charity
done right. Just because the NGO's methods are work doesn't mean one has to
abandon their work altogether. If the doling out of aid is done by local
entrepreneurs, and the causes of poverty are being attacked by entrepreneurs
funded and overseen by NGOs, the results could be far different.

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dnsworks
NGO's have methods besides getting drunk and flashing their 1st world salary
around in the 3rd world?

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nostromo
Dambisa Moyo has given talks and written a book about how aid is harming
Africa in a big way. I hightly recommend people check it out. Here's a short
version of her talk: <http://bigthink.com/ideas/21626>

She does a good job of distinguishing between emergency aid (think Katrina or
the Indian Ocean Tsunami) which she supports and permanent aid which she says
supports corrupt governments and creates a culture of dependency.

~~~
lutorm
I believe she also drew a large distinction between NGOs and government, to
make clear that she was not talking about NGOs.

~~~
cwan
Not entirely true. She has been as critical as many NGO interventions - "The
types of aid that I’m talking about, I’m not talking about humanitarian or
emergency aid, sort of the aid that goes for tsunami, for example. Nor am I
talking about NGO or charitable aid which is relatively small beer. I myself
sit on the board of a number of charities. But I think it’s important where
charities are concerned to understand what they can and cannot do. So they can
provide Band-Aid solutions. So we can send a girl to school for example, but
they cannot deliver long-term economic development growth and growth or
alleviate poverty on the level that we want to see across the continent."
([http://www.kendallharmon.net/t19/index.php/t19/article/21352...](http://www.kendallharmon.net/t19/index.php/t19/article/21352/))

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notahacker
Removing the NGOs from the equation wouldn't solve the fundamental problem of
African entrepreneurs having little probability of significant rewards. You
have to consider the possible upside of NGOs offering the ambitious an easier
path to money as well.

What if instead of learning English and working for an NGO, these brightest
and best learned English and emigrated?

What if the individuals who work for NGO, learn skills and earn cash (paid for
by foreigners) that encourage them to think much bigger when it comes to
enterprises in future?

