Olopade chapter 4 - Stuff We Don't Want

Question 1

Stuff We Don’t Want meaning

Answer 1

Abbreviated to SWEDOW: refers to poorly reasoned development planning (often)external contributions to the African continent) that has little/no/harmful impact in reality

Question 2

Textile donations to Africa

Answer 2

• Example of SWEDOW. Free clothing flooding local markets put tailors, clothiers and textile labourers out of work.
• Nigeria from 1997-2003 went from 137.000 to 57.000 employees within textile.
• Resulted in protests, bans in wearing second hand clothes (Ethiopia and Eritrea), massive cotton industries not producing any clothes themselves (Mali)
• The problem is not a lack of clothes, but a lack of money to buy them. Help lies in permanent employment - structural over short term useless solutions

Reinforces notion that the less fortunate cannot provide for themselves.

Also why on earth would the “less fortunate want something that the fortunate does not?” Knips knips

Question 3

Daily reminder

Answer 3

Dala what you must fr

Question 4

“Dead aid”

Answer 4

• Zambian economist claiming that foreign aid should be eliminated due to its harmful impacts and inefficient use
• Outside-in decision making = failure
• Wealthy nations sending foreign assistance to Africa does this through a reciprocal obligation to purchase goods and services from donor country
• Earmarked aid leaves recipient country after as salaries to employees (???)
  CRITIQUE:
  -Aid has been crucial to address HIV, tuberculosis and malaria
• More people suffering without aid

ALSO
-Implementing “helpful” measures from a country outside is usually inefficient - they do not know what is like and what helps locally.

Question 5

White Saviour Industrial Complex

Answer 5

a nobody can come from Europe/America, go to Africa and be a godlike saviour or have their emotional needs covered. Also linked to “White Man’s Burden”
Another type of SWEDOW

Question 6

Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)

Answer 6

1) Designed from an outside-in point of view
2) Reliance on formal indicators is impossible in countries where informal or inconsistent income is normal
3) An statistical increase towards one goal does not translate to its successful implementation - eg higher enrolment in schools does not translate to more educated people (lack of teachers, lack of learning due to sickness, hunger, dropping classes etc)
4) Fails to incorporate agricultural growth
5) Deductive planning misses the interconnnected nature of progress everywhere
NUMBERSONLYTELLHALFTHETRUTH
and
MONEYISNOTTHESOLUTIONFOREVERYTHING