[afro-nets] The new aid giants (6)

["Peter Burgess" <peterbnyc@gmail.com>]

Dear Alison

Are you the Alison Katz that wrote the open letter to WHO's Dr. Chan last January?
http://phmoz.org/wiki/index.php?title=Katz_Open_Letter

If so great ... if not, we seem to be on somewhat the same wave, anyway. In fact, I take considerable encouragement from the fact that there are a lot of people who are thinking about the issues and coming up with pretty much the same conclusion.

The challenge is not only to do the analysis and get the right answer ... but also to figure out how to do something that is effective.

I am trying to make a contribution to this by developing a web-based platform that will bring community information into play ... with performance metrics about community as an alternative to the prevailing macro-metrics that are favored by governments, the World Bank, UN et al. Macro-metrics do not really tell very much about anything except that there are huge problems and essentially failed development. Tr-Ac-Net's community performance metrics on the other hand address small things locally and help to get modest progress rapidly and at minimum cost. Data provide a starting point ... then relevant assistance can be pulled in as the community identifies its priorities.

In addition to community performance metrics that is geographical, we are also looking at the metrics of malaria. The donors are very proud of the increase in commitments, the increase in disbursements, but are rather quiet on the results being achieved other than some selected anecdotal stories that are not meaningful metrics in the accounting sense of that word. The primary malaria performance metric is a time series showing the reduction in the socio-economic burden of malaria, reduction in mortality, reduction in morbidity, reduction in the prevalence of malaria parasite in the human host and prevalence of malaria parasite in the mosquito population as well as the cost of the mosquito and malaria control interventions used to achieve the results.

Not surprisingly, most of the established organizations in the international malaria sector are not at all anxious for this sort of performance metrics and the associated accounting and accountability to be established ... but it will facilitate much improved performance, and I am sure we shall prevail in due course.

Sincerely

Peter

--
Peter Burgess
The Transparency and Accountability Network: Tr-Ac-Net in New York
http://www.tr-ac-net.org
IMMC - The Integrated Malaria Management Consortium Inc.
http://www.IMMConsortium.org
+1 917 432 1191 or +1 212 772 6918  
mailto:peterbnyc@gmail.com

On Nov 17, 2007 3:58 AM, Alison Katz <katz.alison@gmail.comwrote>:
I much appreciate this comment. I expect you have heard of or read Thomas Sogge "Give and Take. What's the matter with foreign aid" (Zed ..books, 2002). This book is full of valuable facts and observations. Essential reading. It confirms (as Susan George said 20 years ago), international aid is part of the problem.

We are fighting for the right to health or the right to food ? emphatically NOT for charitable efforts to provide these temporarily,unreliably, and incoherently. International aid is at its very best "charity" and at worst (and most of the time) it is another arm of  foreign policy aimed at continued capacity to exploit human and  material resources of poor countries.

Effectively assisting poor countries towards emancipatory development  is the last thing that is wanted by powerful donor countries.  Weakness, dependence and confusion (as to real motivation and real  interests) however are qualities to cultivate and in this aid has  been very effective indeed.

Alison Katz
mailto:katz.alison@gmail.comwrote