PEACE THROUGH DEVELOPMENT: Samantha Power on tackling Migration

Is MIGRATION a PROBLEM?

If you think about it clearly, MIGRATION is the SOLUTION for the migrants. They would love to stay at home, if they were not terrified by violence (whether by the police, army coups d’état, drug gangs, kidnappers, jihadis, cattle thieves …) Or they leave home because they are unable to make ends meet, feed their children, or imagine a future with jobs and incomes for their youth.

THE SOLUTION: make their lives better at home!

And yes! There are plenty of things that the rich countries could do to make life better in the poor countries, if we would think “food and health and education” instead of “guns, soldiers, repression” and taking resources out of poor countries to make ourselves richer.

Just one example: when you buy a bar of chocolate, did you know that just 5% of the price goes to the farmers growing the cocoa? The rest of the money is taken by corporations.

I am writing this on 10th June 2021, at the very moment when the G7 – the richest leaders of the richest countries – are meeting together in Carbis Bay, in Cornwall, beside Hayle-St Ives.

I JUST WROTE A LETTER TO THE NEW ADMINISTRATOR OF USAID

AMBASSADOR SAMANTHA POWER

who was formerly President Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations

TO: Samantha Power

USAID Administrator

June 9th 2021

Dear Samantha Power

Congratulations on your appointment to head USAID.

I worked for USAID in West Africa. From experience, I know what works.

I would like to suggest that short-term projects are a waste of money, with little or no impact. If you were to introduce one single innovation, I recommend committing 60% of USAID funds in every country to 15-year (or even 25-year) development programs so that USAID staff can see and measure the impact of their work. ‘Results’ are often an illusion, sometimes even nefarious: believe me, I have witnessed American consultants counting and reporting desks and books, without ever measuring the educational impact of stuff they have distributed. By definition, the educational ‘project cycle’ is 12 years: the time it takes for a student to graduate, provided they do not have to repeat a year.

The most successful USAID project in Mali was the Haute Vallée du Niger which lasted 25 years and transformed the lives of farmers and women in a whole region – including the introduction of cooperatives, functional literacy so that farmers could manage their cooperatives, successful maize cultivation which was a completely new crop in Mali, its transformation through small, value-adding cottage industries, building access roads and a host of spin-off benefits like village schools funded and managed by the communities.

The Haute Vallée success was almost by chance: funded every five years, it closed down several times and then, somehow, was continued or re-started. Until it managed 25 years of impact.

The second most successful USAID project in Mali was called PVO Co-Financing, which I ran. This $50 million civil society program was evaluated twice in 1994 and in 1995, receiving the highest grades every received by a project in Mali. In 1996 it was discontinued: directors changed and USAID has no record of building on success. Like many organizations, corporate memory is poor: it is quite likely that no one in USAID Mali today knows anything about Haute Vallée or even PVO Co-Financing (although a couple of my interns are still working there).

I tip my hat to Dennis Brennan - the USAID Director who created the program - and to George Thompson who was GDO and my direct boss.

After we both left USAID Mali, Dennis and I worked on peace and disarmament in Cambodia and his wife Barbara died. Later, in 2018, he married in Louisville KY the historian Joan.

Here is the happy couple at their reception.

PVO Co-Financing funded American PVOs to work in specific areas (health, small business, environment, urban renewal and with women) with three conditions:

1) We only funded PVOs with a commitment to work for at least 15 years in Mali.

2) We required each PVO to have Malian CSO partners, in order to build civil society capacity.

3) Co-Financing was required from other sources (I think it was 15%).

Our objective with this program was the exact opposite of most USAID projects, which use contractors: we wanted the projects to be designed by Malians with locally-based Americans in PVOs committed long-term to Mali’s rural or urban development. The typical USAID project is designed by expats sitting in an office, then executed by American “Belt-Way Bandits” flying in for five years to execute USAID instructions and to make a profit.

In their NYT article entitled “Guatemala can help fix America’s immigration problem” (June 8th), Anita Isaacs and Jorge Morales Toj describe Latino migration motivations that echo my experience in West Africa, and they suggest some strategies for President Biden’s administration. They write, “the United States needs to break a pattern in which foreign assistance is channeled through government contractors with too little transparency, too much overhead and scant connection to community priorities. We should seize the opportunity to work directly with local communities to fund sustainable development projects.”

I agree. Civil society organizations are not all perfect; but they are more representative of the population than either USAID contractors or indeed local government officials – all of whom have a rentier relationship with local communities. Provided a CSO has genuine grassroots participation, then it can be a genuine partner for sustainable development, and a genuine development intermediary between USAId and the communities. Provided, of course, that USAID does not insist that they reapply every two or three years through competitive bidding, which reduces local groups to a form of serfdom. A fifteen-year commitment will overcome this: CSOs with guaranteed 15 year-funding to achieve long-term objectives, will become true partners of USAID and of the communities they serve: provided, of course, that their accounting, reporting and impact measuring (M&E) are competent.

I divide the West African economy into three parts: imagine a triangle composed of the public economy, the private economy and the social economy (the base of the triangle). Only in the social economy do we find conditions that allow women and rural communities to express themselves and create wealth. CSOs work in and with the social economy. If you can impose 15-year programs working in the social economy, your impact on women and communities will be immeasurable. Better still: it will be measurable!

Yours sincerely

Robin

Robin-Edward-Poulton, PhD

USAID Mali contracted PVO program manager 1989-1996

International Consultant in development and disarmament 1996-2016

Managing Partner, EPES Mandala Consulting Ltd 2000-2016

Professor of International Studies (affiliate) VCU Virginia Commonwealth University

Senior Research Fellow, UNIDIR United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research

poultonrobin@gmail.com