Sara Elizabeth Williams

Here’s a big, awkward question: does foreign aid do more harm than good?

Most Westerners admit to being comfortably seated in the view that foreign aid is one of the least-bad things we can do about bad problems. But does that make it good? Neutral? Is that even enough?

It’s a difficult question to discuss, but it’s an even harder question to ask… which is why I’m saluting (on Canada Day, no less) Canada’s Munk Debates for asking it. Organised by Rudyard Griffiths and Patrick Luciani of Salon Speakers Series renown, the Munk Debates “seek to provide a lively and substantive forum for leading thinkers to debate the major issues facing the world and Canada”. Good on you, guys — the world needs more debate like this.

Funding comes from the Munk family’s Aurea Foundation (remit: spark debate and spur development in public policy) and the debates themselves take place at the Royal Ontario Museum (seats are $30) and play out on CBC radio and in Canada’s national daily, The Globe and Mail.

an all-star cast

Debate three took place on 1 June 2009. (Debate one addressed global security and the US election and debate two, the ethics of humanitarian intervention.) On the for side were innovator, thinker and 2002 Nobel Peace Prize Finalist Hernando de Soto, and the darling of the development world, charismatic iconoclast Dambisa Moyo. On the against side, Canadian hero Stephen Lewis, a global name in the spheres of HIV/AIDS and African development, and Paul Collier, author, economist and development guru.

The Munk Debates package offers two audience readings – one before (39% for and 61% against) and one after (41% for and 59% against) so the follow-on reader can get a sense of the mood of the night, and the pull the speakers had with the crowd. You can also read the arguments and watch the video, which I did.

my view (not quite a verdict)

Before the debate, I was an on-the-fence against: developed countries are throwing a LOT of money at Africa (for example), and although the progress and change coming out of the same region is decidedly little, at least it’s something. This may not be revolutionary thinking, but it’s logical: put me in a sinking ship and I will bail even as the water creeps over my knees.

But pulling me in the other directions are the more nebulous moral issues of foreign aid. Setting aside for a moment the meta-issue of ‘white man’s burden’ (even typing that makes me uncomfortable), there’s still plenty to discomfit about — like why donor countries ‘donate’: aid is often used (abused?) as a foreign policy tool. Further, a lot of aid is tied — comes with conditions, such as free trade policies and/or other criteria that benefit the donor country — a point our for duo did not hasten to belabour.

But even looking at the small(er) flow of untied aid, if this were looked at as an investment, it’s unlikely it would fly. This change costs too much. Something is fundamentally wrong with the way we (all participants) practice foreign aid. But still, for me, saying this is a ways off from throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

The question is, how much water are we going to pour down the drain, and how many parasites are going to allow to get fat off our giving, before we readdress the very principles and dynamics of what we are doing? Are the gains (and how do we measure them?) worth the costs (not strictly financial)?

Post-debate and after a good deal of thought, I’m still on the fence. But I’m ready to leap to the for side just as soon as I can see a viable place to land.

I’m no economics rock star and I haven’t got a quiver full of newer and better ways to practice development — if anything, as a child of the eighties who collected money for Unicef at Hallowe’en and came into her own consciousness in the same culture that celebrated Live Aid and cried over starving children in Ethiopia, it feels wrong to say foreign aid is wrong. But doing this the way we always have… it doesn’t feel right, either.

and on a technical note…

This wouldn’t be a social media/social change blog if I didn’t hit up the medium as well as the message (it’s Canada Day, let me have that one for Marshall).

I applaud the thinking behind these debates and the doing that makes them happen, and I feel all tingly and proud when I consider the Canadian connection… but (you knew that was coming) while I believe the Munk Debates concept does a lot, I don’t think it goes quite far enough – not yet anyway.

community matters

These debates rekindle that vital community fire that makes societies great by creating space for a town hall style meeting to debate issues that matter to all of us. Yet the concept stalls out in terms of its (lack of) forward momentum. And in this uberdigital world, there’s no excuse for that.

Communities are not only measured in bums on seats. And while it is great to see these debates hearkening back to that more literal interpretation of community, this cannot be at the cost of what else community means – the other ways we define community.

… yes, that means digital communities, too

So where’s the media strategy? The online chat? Twitter presence? Blog of what’s coming, the meta-stories around the debates? The crowdsourcing activities for the next debate, for the fallout to the last debate, for the public’s take on what we should be talking about? Looking at the site itself, why is coverage buried at the back of the site? Video of the latest debate is prominently featured but what about the follow-up? What happened next?

This is my community… but because I can’t be there physically, should I be so limited in the degree to which I can engage with these issues and this discussion?

what’s next?

Forthcoming debates are entitled Religion is a force for good in the world and More free markets and less government regulation is the answer to our economic woes. Expect colourful language, indeed.