iPods vs. Bug nets

A combination of a weeklong rural fieldwork activity, Unicef’s wireless internet network breaking down, and bloggers’ block has prevented me from writing for a very long time. But let me paint you this picture of an event on Tuesday night:

I’m dragged towards the center of a spinning, bouncing, shouting mob of Malawian villagers by a young man named Jack as the sun sets. I finally emerge into a clearing in the crowd at the middle of the circle where there are three drummers beating their drums and looking towards the sky as if their minds are in another world. Six young men wearing hyena skins, chicken feathers, and elaborate head pieces dance violently within the center of the circle, their faces painted like animals. I’m taking pictures like a mad man, and the attention of the children in the crowd is split between the dancers and the uninvited white man. The drumming stops and I’m suddenly being pulled in two directions at once. Yanking on one arm is Jack and a few of his friends, while my host father and sister, Hastings and Lubia, pull in the other direction. Some shouting in Chichewa is exchanged but I am quickly whisked away from the craziness by my family. We walk away faster than I`ve seen any Malawian walk before.

If you`re satisfied with this account, good, it was buck wild. But if you`re looking for some context, then please feel free to ask away.

So that was Tuesday night; but I want to share some thoughts on something completely unrelated that I`ve been thinking about lately.

One word that often describes the work that I do over here is ambiguous. So I started thinking: why?

If you work for a private organization in Canada and you`re not in the development/aid sector, then you`re probably working for a company. Chances are that your company follows some sort of business model that is ultimately oriented to make a profit. This model is tried and true. Businesses compete by fine tuning their own model to outperform that of another company. As Canada develops, so does that business model, streamlining itself to suit the demands of the times. Even with varied business strategies amongst different companies, and the forever evolving environment in which these businesses operate, this model will always retain some key ingredients that make it what it is, and drive it towards profit. But what about a business model that is driven towards social change? Here is a model that is a relative newcomer to the world. (unless you consider antislavery movements, gender equality movements, and the like – but we`re talking about modern foreign aid) It is a model with ingredients that don`t remain unchanged, but instead are constantly changing, flipping, appearing, and disappearing. These ingredients are still being explored and the most basic recipe, quite frankly, is completely unknown. Perhaps that’s why my work seems ambiguous sometimes. Let`s compare some of the fundamentals of a regular business model with those of social change (ie. With those of EWB):

The Goal

Business model: Make more money. Improve value for your investors. Capitalize a greater share of the market.

Social change model: Alleviate poverty… What does this mean? When do you know you have succeeded? Improve education, improve water access, facilitate markets, build the capacity of leaders… the list goes on. It’s easy to get lost in this sea of goals that all fall under foreign aid’s umbrella.

Measuring Success

Business model: At the end of each quarter your company files a 10-Q. If the net gains are high, it’s good. If growth is increasing, it’s good. If you’re losing market share, it’s bad. If you’re share price is dropping, it’s bad. These things are rather black and white, and adjustments can be made to your company accordingly.

Social change model: How can you tell if a country is better off because of a project you’re working on? In Canada, you might send a survey by mail to everyone in a neighborhood to learn about water usage. In Malawi, the names of some villages might change just before sending a team of volunteers to take that survey. We have no idea how many boreholes there are here in Machinga.

Competition

Business model: Why do we have the iPod touch in the developed world? (ie. Why do we have a tiny little device that is a phone, a computer, a camera, a gyroscope, a tablet, and costs only $399) Because there are so many other companies vying for our money – cell phones will keep getting better and better.

Social change model: There shouldn’t be competition – that’s the problem. Aid agencies compete for donors’ money in Canada and then take that money and carry out their own projects overseas. Collaboration is unheard of and these projects intersect and overlap and nobody knows what the dillsprig is going on. It’s inefficiency to the max.

Accountability

Business model: The free market in the developed world is an amazing thing. When your product starts to suck, consumers stop buying it – they may even write letters to your office to complain. You improve your product based on that consumer feedback, and business continues as usual. Consumers control the product they receive.

Social change model: Poor people in developing countries have a tough time making their voices heard by the aid agencies from the West. There is rarely any means for the consumers (aid recipients) to give feedback to the companies. (aid agencies) They want roads but they keep getting trucks.

Investment

Business model: Investors want to make money, so they give some of their money to a company in hopes that the company can succeed and increase the investment’s value.

Social change model: Aid agencies need money from the rich public to operate. They send postcards to our houses with pictures of poor children in villages, and ask for our money. It becomes a sympathetic investment, rather than an investment for a cash return. Thus only those who are sympathetic enough invest in foreign aid, not those who want to make more money. As it turns out, there are more cash-hungry investors in the West, than sympathetic investors.

These are just a few of many, but it starts to become clear how unclear “development” work is.

Take er easy,

Ian