Comments on Swedish aid 2013
17 May
Why aid and how to deliver it?
The underlying ethical issue
In my youth I was very concerned about the meaning of Life. Read many books by for example M. Gandhi, E. Fromm and A. Schweitzer. Alberts Schweitzer was a remarkable person and in 1922 he summarized his views with “Reverence for Life”. That was more than enough for me and decided to fight poverty. He was a Christian but the atheist Birgitta Forsman launched the same idea about a year ago in her book: “Ethics without God”. Her book impacted a lot on me and particularly her emphasis on rationality.
With more than 1 billion people living in utmost poverty is clearly unethical.
Next steps
In 1938 Sweden introduced a child allowance scheme. The money was paid to the mothers – so the men would not buy alcoholic beverages! Our experiences have been very good. In recent years several “developing” countries have introduced various schemes and all the research suggests that a child allowance scheme is a very effective way to reduce poverty and there are many additional benefits such as better health and education of the children and the families are more willing to test innovations.
There is a new proposal for Swedish aid elaborated by the Government and is being discussed. More will follow.
Our aid needs to be completely changed
One Swedish retired ambassador with former links to our aid organisation Sida questioned my motives for criticizing our aid programme.
Let me give some background. After having worked for the UN in Peru and Chile six years I resigned from my permanent post partly because I was disgusted with the UN work and partly because I wanted ton conclude my PhD thesis in economics.
Because I was fluent in Spanish, Sida contracted me in 1979 to co-ordinate the planning of the Nordic support to the agricultural sector in Mozambique. It was a very big programme, more than USD 60 million. It was a very frustrating experience because the economic policies would lead to major disasters and Sida ignored these facts.
As a result I did not renew my contract and returned to Sweden in 1981 very depressed over the fate of Mozambique. In 1982, I wrote an article in Sweden’s biggest newspaper, DN. The title was “Our aid lacks knowledge and a long-term perspective”. Sida’s Director General then stated that this was the case when I worked in Mozambique but my dark picture was not true any more.
Unfortunately I was right. To mention a few serious problems. The Civil War grew worse, partly as a result of the horrible economic policies. And the foreign debt had become unsustainable. Note, when Mozambique became independent in 1975 there was no foreign debt.
Since then I have mainly worked as a consultant in about 30 countries. The work has also included evaluations for various aid organisations. In total about 40 evaluations and most of them have been published. My views that aid has been a very inefficient method to eradicate poverty was confirmed by these evaluations.
A parenthesis, in the 60:s many young people were active to push the Sweden to give 1% of the GDP as aid. (U-aktionen and U-NU). It was then natural to consider that poor countries needed money. We were successful and our aid increased significantly and is now 1%.
A major part of the discussions in Sweden has focused on maintaining the 1% goal. There has been too little focus on the impact of aid.
Swedish NGOs has become increasingly important in our aid. To summarize: “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions”. BUT, Swedish NGOs play an important role in Sweden and they strongly articulate their views.
In the end, my article from 1982 did not have impact so I decided to work within the system. For example, Sida’s evaluations are often of low quality. There are hardly ever any economic analysis of the projects/programmes. Sida’s evaluation system has become less independent and the quality has deteriorated over the years. When I forwarded to senior officials at Sida a written instruction by an official to ignore gender issues nobody reacted.
The present aid structure in most countries needs to be completely restructured. As far as I know the Canadian aid organisation, CIDA, is being dismantled. Attempts by the present Government to improve the aid structure has utterly failed. Mainly because of all the vested interests in Sweden, not least our NGOs, very little has happened. Our aid lacks focus. What to do?
Some ideas will follow later.
19 May
My comments “More on aid” were sent to our Ministry of Foreign Affairs on 18 May.
18 May
To Mr. Evin Khaffaf, Press secretary at the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Hej igen,
Jag skriver på min Facebook om vårt dåliga bistånd och har retat upp mängder av särintressen.
Jag hoppas du får tid att läsa det jag har skrivit och skicka det vidare till någon som kan vara intresserad på UD. Vill du veta mer om mig finns jag här: http://web.comhem.se/t.alberts/
Det här skrev jag idag:
Some more on aid
Child allowance through mothers would be a very effective way to improve the living conditions for millions of children living under infra-human conditions.
On the bottom line there is a need for ethical/moral codes. Reverence for Life is a good point of departure and it also addresses the growing concern over the degradation of our environment.
In the 70:s economists close to the World Bank stated the need for “Redistribution with growth”. With the collapse of socialism extreme forms of liberal economics were introduced in many countries. With growing global income and wealth inequalities it is positive to note that recently even the World Bank has started to recognize the importance and effectiveness of money transfers to poor people.
In order to reduce the fragmentation of donor support most economists would argue that budget support is better than having each donor supporting different projects/programmes. The problem is that many countries have rampant corruption and in spite of donor efforts very little has been achieved to ensure that aid money is being used wisely. Suffice to read the report from Transparency International to appreciate the magnitude of the corruption problem.
Mobile phones could be a very efficient way to transfer small sums of money to millions of mothers. AND there has been talks of private/public partnerships. In practice I have seen very little implementation of this interesting idea. In the Nordic countries Nokia, Finland, is a major producer of mobile phones and Ericsson, Sweden, can provide the necessary infrastructure so that child allowance will also reach the rural areas. Why not involve these companies?
I have worked for some years for SAREC (Swedish Agency for Research Cooperation with developing countries). SAREC has been more concerned with scientific quality than the relevance of the research. Until 1995 it was an independent agency but was then merged with Sida and today very little remains of it.
Since leaving SAREC I worked for many years for the European Commission to evaluate big policy relevant research programmes proposals. Unfortunately academics have great difficulties in producing relevant policy research. AND to develop a good research programme for the child support scheme a multidisciplinary approach will be needed. Academics have in general great difficulties to do this. So there is an important challenge ahead.
It is my strong view that a child allowance scheme should have a strong research component so we can measure results and successively improve the system. Recent discussions here in Sweden has focused a lot on how difficult results monitoring is. It is possible to accomplish a lot. For example there are various simple indicators to measure the health of children.
I have also a dream. Thinking of Tanzania and Mozambique, major recipients of Swedish aid, both Christians and Muslims should be able to join efforts to provide child allowance. One of my students at the University in Maputo, Mozambique, was a protestant priest. After some exchange of ideas he found my idea interesting. Sida is doing practically nothing in this area. It would be good if our Ministry of Foreign Affairs at least started pilot programmes in these two countries.
Bästa hälsningar, Tom
_____________________________________________________________________________
Dr. Thomas (Tom) Alberts, Devpro AB
Nyckelvägen 4, SE – 169 54 Solna, Sweden
Phone + 46 (0)8 616 00 80; Cellular +46 (0)70 673 83 27
Best e-mail address: tom.alberts@comhem.se
WebPages: http://web.comhem.se/t.alberts
“Reverence for Life” Albert Schweitzer 1923. Nobel’s Peace Prize in 1952
E-postadress: tom.alberts@comhem.se
Meddelande: Efter att ha jobbat internationellt med utvecklingsfrågor, även forskning, i årtionden har jag kommit fram till några slusatser.
1. Vårt bistånd är fruktansvärt fragmenterat. Zambias strategi, som du har beskrivit den, saknar fokus.
2. När skall Sverige börja med barnbidrag genom mammor? Vårt barnbidrag infördes redan 1938. Det finns även forskning som visar att barnbidrag i utvecklingsländer har massor av positiva effekter.