Below is an article written by Dr. Salibo Some, Executive Director of the African Sustainable Development Council (ASUDEC). Shallowford Presbyterian supports ASUDEC through the Worldwide Missions Committee in its efforts to teach and implement sustainable development methods in the west African nation of Burkina Faso. Dr. Some explains his views on the value and efficiency of western efforts to assist Africa as well as his desire to broaden ASUDEC's impart. You can learn more about ASUDEC at
www.asudec.org.
Scale-up of ASUDEC Experience Throughout
Africa
A Concept Note
by
Salibo SOME,
Executive Director
Mismanagement, heavy reliance on changing
foreign generosity, corrupt national and international politics, deficient local
leadership, and imposition of development policies from abroad are the
fundamental causes of the premature deaths of Africa-born organizations. These factors cause the continued
defeat of development in Africa. Even African Unity did not escape this
reality. Over time, Afro-pessimism
has grown considerably, both among native Africans and within the donor
community, feeding polemic opinions around the world.
Pretending that African leaders
and their educated cohorts are globally inefficient and corrupt, some donor
organizations prefer to create their own bureaucracies on the ground in order to
ensure that their money actually goes to their target groups, and according to
their design. Delocalized western
NGOs can be classified into many categories. When they choose to collaborate with local partners, some of
them tend to impose their values and strategies. While
development requires a long time and appropriate strategies, most of these foreign
interveners often try and create immediate results for statistics, moral
relief, and/or fundraising. They
tend to follow academic approaches and dislike a sustainable presence within
the same communities, just as if development were a mathematical business. While some organizations show real
commitment, others seem to be involved in geopolitics or are on the hunt for personal
interests. Others simply organize for developmental tourism showcasing the African
poor and their development hardships.
One thing many organizations fail
to consider is that by owning and controling the development model, local
expertise is underused or undermined. The dignity and pride of the locals, as a
people, is ignored, making external development efforts look like a repeat of neocolonialism. While some successes have been recorded
here and there, the approach by international NGOs generally leads to considerable
waste of resources and energy.
Most importantly, this frustrates native Africans especially when facing
certain kinds of external opinions.
Like every people in the world, Africans have dignity and pride and must
be allowed to stand up and also say:”Yes,… we too, can do it!” In this regard, willing philanthropist
interveners should revisit their strategies in order to research and back
trustful and efficient local grassroots NGOs rather than establishing their own
external vision of the development of Africans.
Some native Africans see the delocalization
of foreign NGOs as inappropriate while local NGO categories continue to multiply
with conflicting interests and approaches. These include consulting offices that use tricks to avoid
taxes, political NGOs created by politicians to take advantage of bilateral funding to meet their
political objectives, religious NGOs which tend to favor handouts and/or to
recruit new followers, to name a few.
These conflicting interests and approaches create confusion in the minds
of the local populations, and have negative impacts such as the development of
a dependency mentality and multiplication of corruption. In some cases, NGOs contribute
and add to the continued defeat of local development.
Overall, development clearly supports the Burkinabe saying: “Humans are all the
same and a friend may be more helpful than a bother”. It also shows how humans are comparable to animals: In their competition or survival
processes they create misery, despair and death among their “likes” and
“unlikes”, becoming opportunities for personal and collective interests. … A tragedy of deficient spirituality! …
Most philanthropist interveners want to facilitate their efforts by hiring
“doer” international organizations. In so doing, they often miss the
point: Some of these doers are smart
business entities who have purposely organized to hunt for “indirect cost
rates” and “fees”. They over
compete with smaller NGOs without been more effective in the end. They are able to write great proposals
but do a poor job on the ground with implementation. More importantly when
there is a call for proposals, local NGOs are often disqualified or dismissed
because of their poor writing skills and/or because of their poor financial
base or insufficient management capacity. Successful grant writing has become more a question of having
money and skilled staff ready to write and compose while familiarity with local
situations, quality local ideas and personal contacts take a back seat. Therefore, best writer organizations with strong financial base and
reputation are favored, particularly when they are of same nationality as the
donor organization. Yet, besides an
ability to provide a good bibliography and references (handouts) many cannot
succeed in promoting local development.
As a result, grassroots NGOs who have a better knowledge of the field
watch funding travel between big organizations with little impact in the
field. Small local NGOs must collaborate
with western NGOs to be funded. The
past financial capacity of a grassroots development organization should not be
an indicator of its current field efficiency.
By passing funds through international organizations, critical resources
are wasted in air tickets, big salaries, hotel rooms and overhead. While all of this may be comprehensible
in some ways, in the 21st Century, good willing philanthropists should
revisit their approaches pertaining to the selection of their field partners. This has been outlined in the Paris Declaration
and the Accra Agenda. It is a
challenge, but it leads to susutainable impacts and grassroots development.
This analysis is often simplified by native accusers leading to the
conclusion that “Africa will develop only when the West will decide.” Although
this statement is despondent when referring to history, and to the current geopolitics
and human condition in Sub-Sahara Africa, engaged Africans must rethink the
development of their continent with a clear heart and mind, prohibiting anger and
revenge to see an unexpected opportunity to conceive and implement a model development
that is truly sustainable and characterized by a sound humanism and a saintly
spirituality. This endeavor should
be undertaken in concert with all willing persons, learning from mistakes and
successes from around the world.
It is sometimes possible to find unexpected beautiful and
useful things when one looks hard enough.
As a spiritualistic and pan-African organization, Africa’s Sustainable
Development Council (ASUDEC) intends to become one of these unexpected useful
things in the difficult development environment of Africa. Born from naught in
1998 and rising from this hostile developmental environment, ASUDEC serves as a
beacon and clearinghouse, harnessing funds, knowledge and technologies from
around the world to foster development in Africa. ASUDEC work on the ground is to help the populations to find
better ways of thinking and doing that would lead to abundance, equity, peace
and the well-being for all, while preserving diversity and the environment. By so doing all this, ASUDEC aims to
honor the Supreme Being.
Genuine innovative management has led to
important achievements for ASUDEC.
More importantly, critical lessons have been
learned to guide large scale future actions. At the current crossroads, ASUDEC must develop effective
strategies to strengthen its institutional capacity and to scale up its
experiences in Burkina Faso and to cover and expand to other countries in West
Africa. ASUDEC believes that the universe
is full of good things, among which are so many thoughtful good willing people
and organizations. With this in
mind failure cannot be envisaged, in any way. With support, ASUDEC intends to become a stronger, more
resilient authentic pan-African consortium of grassroots development
organizations that share its mission; that is, its vision, objectives and philosophical
foundation. Being a consortium
with mentor organizations and volunteer auxiliaries around the world, ASUDEC
believes that this facilitation will increase its fundraising efforts and will strengthen
its financial resiliency for a continued involvement in the continent’s
sustainability.
Philanthropist organizations or
individuals that are committed to have a long lasting contribution to African
development should find ASUDEC as most appropriate partner to work with. ASUDEC vision, mission, and approaches have
been well proofed. Its field
experience is extensive and rich in lessons learned and our integrity is
unquestionable. ASUDEC can serve
as national or regional representative, or as an independent project holder for
appropriate organizations or funding agencies. If positive impacts are the major aim of partners’ investments,
ASUDEC expects that its own principles and strategies will facilitate and
catalyze the development process working with partners to develop adaptive,
sustainable changes in the field.
By fostering ASUDEC into a strong
resilient African organization run by Africans, partners will contribute to
build an especially unique and sustainable development tool for the continent. Their contirbutions will foster
development with ASUDEC and they will be seen as “ASUDEC mentors”. Together, we will make history that will
honor the author of our being..
