Africa: Business and Humanitarian Action - Overcoming the Language Barrier

analysis

London — A cloud of mistrust hangs over relations between business and the humanitarian community, the result of decades of mutual suspicion. Aid workers stereotype the private sector as profiteering and unscrupulous; business people write off international agencies as bloated and inefficient.

Even where both sides sense they might have something to gain by working with each other, a series of studies by the Humanitarian Policy Group at London's Overseas Development Institute, the ODI, shows that all too often they have no idea how to approach each other, no forum where they can meet and very little common language.

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