Are Aid Agencies Cheating Donors in the Name of South Sudan? A Response to Holy Crook and Jenny
Dear Jenny and Holy Crook,
By Dickens
I think you are both starting an important dialogue. Not all aid agencies are mismanaging funds in South Sudan, but some are, and not all South Sudanese have the same attitudes towards regular working hours that you’ve seen in Rumbek. Both yours and Holy Crook’s observations are based on real problems.
Everywhere there are articles about “millions of dollars contributed to X” or “thousands of dollars promised for Y”, but there are still many problems with roads and services, and especially unemployment in South Sudan, mainly because there are few businesses.
What businesses exist, and where all the money is, is mostly in (a) government positions; (b) foreign run hotels, restaraunts, repair shops, car services, etc., or (c) aid/NGO jobs. Those are fairly exclusive sectors, in that you have to already have connections or a good education or money, if you’re going to get in. They don’t help the rural communities, the farmers or the herders, and they don’t help the thousands who come to the larger cities in search of employment.
Although there is progress, it doesn’t seem to be happening fast enough, and part of that is because of overly high expectations, but a lot of it is because the money isn’t being used as well as it could be. Some of that is innocent mismanagement, some of that is the difficulty of starting a new country, but some of that is plain old corruption. It happens in the USA, and it happens in South Sudan.
Those are realities. It doesn’t diminish the sacrifices you and others make as aid workers, working on the ground. But you know yours was largely a thankless job when you took it on. And you know that the aid business, like any business, has people who take advantage of an environment where lots of money moves around. Maybe someone gets overpaid for a contract. Maybe money goes somewhere it wasn’t supposed to. That doesn’t change the fact that you’re personally doing good work for good reasons, but it doesn’t mean others aren’t less scrupulous than you.
But still, you have to keep in mind that this is their country. The South Sudanese fought for more than 50 years for the chance to be independent, and now they feel like they are still fighting foreigners for the right to control their own lives.
Now the big talk is about oil and minerals. The word from the US State Department to Juba was, more or less, “Just sign the agreement with Khartoum, start the oil wells, and then you’ll have money again.” But Jenny, if you are a Westerner, you know as well as I do that oil and mineral money doesn’t build communities, it doesn’t start small businesses, and it doesn’t create free markets or develop a strong civil society. Just look at Angola and Nigeria. Heck, just look to the North at Khartoum.
I think one of Holy Crook’s biggest complaints is that the biggest activity in South Sudan right now is aid work. It’s not wrong to deliver emergency food and medical aid. It’s not wrong for Kenyans and Ugandans to come to South Sudan to make a living – that’s wonderful, as long as they play fair, and South Sudanese don’t feel excluded from their own country.
The problem is that no one wants to be a victim and be dependent on aid.
The problem is that South Sudanese would rather be working and running businesses for themselves, developing their own industries, growing and selling their own food. And often it is hard to see how all the millions of dollars spent in South Sudan are helping people do that.
That’s the challenge for both South Sudanese, and South Sudan’s friends in the United States, Europe and elsewhere in the world: finding ways to bring investment, to help South Sudanese set up their own sustainable businesses, so that they can fully take charge of their own lives and their own country.
That’s what I want to see happen, and I’m going to try and help make happen, any way that I can.
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