So my first day in Monrovia consisted of familiarizing myself with the community. I was expecting to bear witness to overwhelming poverty, a direct result of the catastrophic civil war this country dealt with for decades, and I did. What surprised me however, was seeing the detachment and almost parallel universe in which the development community (UN, UNDP, UNICEF, ICRC, ACF, WFP the list goes on) lives. I have never seen so much barbed wire in my life! The American Embassy’s property is the size of 3 world-class golf resorts, and yes, right on the ocean too. My Dutch friend who works for UNICEF lives in her office building and only leaves when she can borrow a giant white UN labeled Land Cruiser that has bench seats in the back like it was meant for troops.

We went for “Chinese” food (Fried Chicken Smooth) last night with a smattering of folks from the development community. Their acronyms, prejudices, and inside jokes seemed worn, maybe its because the English language only communicates so much between 2 Italians, a Swiss, a Dutch a Palestinian and me. Thank god we were speaking English…

It got me thinking about what good these folks are doing over here. Many of them seemed to go from “posting” to “posting” getting coarser as the list of posts under their belt grew. I suppose one has to learn to tolerate living in bitterly impoverished and war torn countries in some way, but I guess that is the point I am after. Is their presence really necessary? What if they had scooped up 1000 Liberians and brought them to Paris, Geneva, Rome, Brussels, New York, etc. and just trained them up for a month. Granted these are expensive cities, but surely this would not be as expensive as flying Europeans and Americans into foreign conditions, building up western infrastructure specifically for them and then paying them western salaries to work in these compounds and NGO ghettos.

These folks get 2 weeks R and R for every 2 months they work over here. How effective can they be? They have little understanding of the local issues, little investment in the country itself and their mere presence in a place as small as Liberia distorts the local economy dramatically. They barely even mingle with Liberians: official policies mean curfews and perimeters of mobility, and their western tastes keep them places Liberians can’t afford! I am no expert on this subject, and clearly there is a place for international peace-keepers in a country that experienced violent civil war, but as far as this foreign aid policy is concerned, how much good are these people actually doing?

What if all of the money spent on aid (I wonder what % is spent on western infrastructure / “experts” and what is spent on actual “projects”) was invested in local entrepreneurs? In a country with rich natural resources like Liberia, why not promote an entrepreneurial environment rather than a hand-out environment? I know these are complex subjects, but there has been a lot of discussion on the effectiveness of foreign aid recently and I guess I had a gut reaction to this encounter with these folks.

Additionally, I am reading a great book called “In The River They Swim” I have linked a review of it. It talks about enterprise solutions to poverty, rather than hand out solutions to poverty. Finally, here is an article in the NY Times today discussing corruption in Africa. It scares me to think that because foreign aid is so often government-to-government, corruption in many cases thrives in poor countries BECAUSE of the foreign aid. The quote “If poverty is your business, more poverty is more business” is chilling…

All this reinforces my work here in Liberia in microfinance. Microfinance deals directly with entrepreneurship, with people invested in the success of their businesses, lending groups, and communities. It has very little to do with government, and it encourages grassroots businesses, some of which will one day grow into the kinds of businesses that offer good jobs and good livelihoods to those who deserve them. That makes sense to me.