Africa: Local Skills Boost Development, Says Foundation Head

IRIN
Women carrying cartons of oil to the distribution site an IDP camp in Uganda: Current discourse on aid raises the question of when such distributions of food from international organizations stops being helpful and starts being destructive.
4 August 2009
allAfrica.com
interview

Lloyd Pierson of the U.S. Africa Development Foundation (USADF) rejects claims that foreign aid has had little impact in Africa. He says aid is most effective when programs are well defined, have proper oversight and get directly to the people they are aimed to help. Pierson is president of the USADF, a government foundation that provides assistance to the most marginalized people in Africa.

Could you tell us a little about the foundation's assistance and how you think it is most successful at delivering aid?

Looking at where we operate - with the former slave population in southern Mauritania, the blind in Senegal, widows of genocide in Rwanda, Masai women in Tanzania - I think one of the differences between us and the way other organizations work is that our programs in Africa are run entirely by Africans.

We are in 20 countries and we have one American overseas. We have staff from here [the U.S.] who do oversight, but we rely very much on African skill and expertise. We also do our programming in a very participatory way. We want to listen to the communities. I'd say 90 percent of our portfolio is in job creation and enterprise development.

I feel good about what we're doing. There are different kinds of models that can be used, but the ability to work in the most underprivileged, underserved populations, listening to them, I think is a very good model and it has been a very successful model.

Do you sense any shift regarding current thinking about foreign assistance to Africa?

There is a lot of discussion.There is certainly a lot of dialogue in the administration [of President Barack Obama]. There is a lot of dialogue on [Capitol Hill], in Congress, in the House and the Senate, trying to find out what are the best ways, what are the best models. I'm not sure anybody is going to wind up with only one model that is the perfect way.

My focus is on what we do and making our foundation the very best.

Again, we're the smallest. Formerly I was the administrator for Africa at USAID and they had a budget, just in the Africa bureau, of just over a billion dollars. We have an annual appropriation of 30 million [dollars] so obviously [there is] a huge difference in the way you operate and the way you carry out assistance. I think even though we're very small we have a huge impact.

What is the impetus for the increased discussion on foreign assistance ? Is it because of the new U.S. administration or a general looking inward?

I think it's a combination of factors. Everybody I know wants to do the best job they can. Anyone involved in foreign assistance is trying to make sure they have results and part of those results is how do you help individuals in impoverished or very poor areas have a better quality of life?

In the broader context of quality of life that means health, nutrition, better education, job creation, peace and reconciliation and democracy.

I don't know that the discussion is centered in any one place. It has been around a long time but I think the administration is very much a driving force at taking look at what's the best way to use U.S. taxpayer funds.

Looking back, in what sense do you think aid has been most successful in Africa and why?

It is most successful when it gets directly to the people The way that we provide foreign assistance is that it goes directly to the population we serve. You want to minimize the amount of corruption that is involved - you are dealing with U.S. taxpayer funds. Part of the responsibility is results in the field but also making sure that the monies are used for the purposes intended.

On the other side of that, where do you think aid has gone wrong and why?

I'm much more on the side that overall it's been very successful. I'm very optimistic. I lived in Africa for a little over seven years and I've got a much more positive view than many. So I see it much more as having gone right than having gone wrong.

Certainly there are lessons from the past where things have not gone according to plan, where there was wastage of money, for example. How might that be rectified?

I think you've got to ensure that you've got the oversight that you need. First of all, before you even get into oversight you've got to define what your mission is.

Once you have done that and clearly defined what the mission is, you look at your delivery systems and how you monitor and evaluate. You want to make sure that you minimize, hopefully even to zero, any corruption level that is there.

I think you've got to be very careful on your overhead, make sure that the majority of your funds don't go to staff. You want to get them in the field. Personally, I've tried to minimize the number of consultants that we have. We're in 20 countries and it's all African staff. We have one [consultant] overseas that might fit in that consultant category.

Sometimes you do need specialized help. There's nothing wrong with that but I would say perhaps at least always try to define the mission, ensure that you have maximum effectiveness but the lowest possible overhead. The main criteria for me is making sure the assistance gets right to the people you want to serve.

In Dambisa Moyo's book Dead Aid, what do you make of her assertion that aid to Africa largely has not worked and that trade and investment are better answers for Africa's challenges?

I've been in virtually every country, literally in thousands of villages, and I've seen a lot of places where I think foreign assistance works. So I don't share a belief at all that it hasn't worked. What I've experienced on the ground, in some of the toughest times, is enormous appreciation in the villages, for the assistance that's been provided.

There are different models for how that is but I think foreign assistance that's carefully targeted, monitored and gets right to the people, is what I've seen and what's worked. Anybody that says it doesn't - I'm not with them on that.

I think trade and investment are absolutely wonderful. It's part of what we do. Out of Tanzania, for instance, we have ornaments that are purchased by Hallmark in the United States, mangoes that go to the Middle East. In Rwanda, the widows of genocide sold 35,000 baskets to Macy's.

Ninety-five percent of our portfolio is in income generation. We have a cap of 250,000 dollars per grant and the lifetime of that may be three, four or five years. We're looking for results. You always hear the term sustainability. I don't know if we use sustainability as much as we use profitability.

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