AFRO-NETS> Lets end "Competitions" and start doing some real work

[Peter Burgess <Profitinafrica@aol.com>]

Lets end "Competitions" and start doing some real work
------------------------------------------------------

Dear Dominique Sindayiganza,

I may not have all the facts..... but my immediate impression is that 
the planned "Online competition on youth and HIV/AIDS" being organ-
ized by Baobabconnections is typical of the misallocation of re-
sources that prevails in the modern paradigm for international devel-
opment and humanitarian assistance.

I would like to know how many person-days are going to get "invested" 
by Dutch youth and by African youth in order to participate in this 
competition. And I would like to suggest that a much better use of 
this investment of person-days would be actually to do something that 
would go straight to the heart of the problem.... delivering hope and 
help to people struggling with the problems of the health and HIV-
AIDS crisis in Africa.

For some reason "competitions" have become a preferred form for allo-
cating scarce resources. They are a tragic outcome of the NORTH not 
having much idea and understanding of the problem and how development 
problems can be solved. Baobabconnections is not the originator of 
the idea. The World Bank has been using a similar approach in its In-
foDev initiative. The process may work for Baobabconnections and the 
World Bank....... but it has very sad results in places where the na-
ture of the risk and reward related to participation in the "competi-
tion" is not well understood.

So when we get the answer to how much person-days are going to get 
invested..... and how much is going to be paid out as reward..... we 
will see that this is a terrible mis-use of scarce human resources 
that should rather be being given maximum encouragement to do practi-
cal work among those that are struggling with the crisis.

I use this AFRO-NETS posting as an example of a prevalent prob-
lem..... that is not specific and unique to Baobabconnections...... 
but is actually rather common in the design of programming throughout 
the NORTH.

Please..... it is time to change the paradigm..... and start to use 
scarce resources for maximum tangible benefit.

Now..... maybe I am absolutely wrong..... and if so I would like to 
see some "facts" to change my present viewpoint

Sincerely,

Peter Burgess
mailto:Profitinafrica@aol.com

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