Toolkit

Story: Blair opens up Commission for Africa online

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Africa-wide approach is too bland –the needs of Bangor (Wales) aren’t the same as Battersea let alone Brussels.
AIDS is a pandemic; the single biggest problem, but solving it will not solve Africa’s problems. Africa will still be left with orphans with no food and work.
Normal voting within the Commission will be outweighed by the have-nots, without accepting the need for “haves” even within Africa to which “have nots” can strive. Achmat Dangor, when head of Nelson Mandela Childrens Fund said to the effect that “spreading funding too thin doesn’t work; rather invest in a return that can expand and give further help than give hand-outs.”
South Africa is trying to get away from the begging bowl into the ‘teach a man to fish’ syndrome – but it will fail if bureaucrats are the decision-makers for economic return skills training.
South Africa is the role model of Africa – but is on the brink of more serious problems today than it was ten years ago.
60% of South Africa is under 25 years (45% under 20 years); 80% crime is committed by under 20 year-olds; 60% students leave school before Matric – most before even reaching High School.
86% (revealed October 2004) quitting Skills Development training before completing one year Learnership courses, wasting R1, 5 Billion (£125mil) p.a.
Bureaucrats assume they have all answers, spend years in talk-shops convincing themselves, produce ‘perfect’ models out of touch with on the ground needs.
Overseas donor agencies think they know what is needed in Africa – or don’t trust direct investment. Only fund domestic charities to invest in Africa; not direct to African charities.
Alternately, of late, Governments give to Governments and the funding gets bogged down with red tape and bureaucratic decisions that frustrate and kill off worthwhile end-users.
Example (my area): We started structured training at a Technical College, as an NGO, primarily for marginalised youth in all aspects of the Contemporary Music Industry. From donor funding we moved to become a Public-sector Skills Development Pilot. Got it right academically as well as commercially, to the point of being offered a Joint Venture Record Label with one of five multi-nationals. But the Quango withdrew, leaving part-training youth and us to survive on our own. We had to close. The Quango decided all that was needed were the business and technical aspects – a music industry without music; because they misread statistics.

Big Business does not have the answers for SMMEs (the birthplace of corporations like Microsoft); government doesn’t relate to SMME and NGO time-frames, loses momentum and projects die.

Answer: Get your hands dirty – fast-fund worthwhile projects, spending money putting in capacity building structures, rather than expect them up front. Yes, you’ll have some small failures – but so have governments had many big ones (see above). Work from the premiss of trying to help worthwhile situations happen – not put obstacles to trip it up. Africa needs help for a while to learn to work to eat for ever, not beg to eat now and the same for ever more.

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