Pitfalls of charity

As Christmas approaches the major charities have launched themselves into a frenzy of fundraising.

But how effective is charity when it comes to tackling poverty? Is aid, and ever growing appeals for more of it, the answer?

Critics say huge amounts of aid is wasted and that aid can even have a detrimental effect on development.

Billions pour into the poorest regions of the world, Africa in particular, and it has little or no effect, they say.

Amsterdam Forum wades into the aid debate this week, pitting a prominent critic and a leading proponent against each other.

A participant from Vancouver in Canada Commented:
"I'm put in mind of the saying that foreign aid consists of taking money from poor people in rich countries and giving to rich people in poor countries."

Robert Guest, the Africa editor of The Economist and author of The Shackled Continent: Power, Corruption and African Lives, debated with Anne Pieter van Dijk, the co-ordinator for humanitarian projects in Africa for the Dutch branch of the charity Oxfam.

Robert Guest, asked if there was any truth in this, gave an example of Zambia.

"Because it's such a nice country and it's peaceful, generally donors have always been attracted to giving money to the place and they've tended not to notice the fact that governments that you've had there have been corrupt and very foolishly socialist and spendthrift," said Mr Guest.

"What's tended to happen is that the very generous aid that's been given to Zambia over the last four decades has tended to prop up the very people who were making the country poorer, which is to say, the government."

"It made it so they haven't had to make difficult choices with reform - they haven't had to privatise things or cut the number of people in a bloated bureaucracy," he added.

Anne Pieter van Dijk hit back saying he thought it was important to state that it was true a lot of aid could be better targetted, but that didn't mean aid was a waste of time.

"We are all too aware as Oxfam that aid is not always reaching the poor and improving the human capital which Mr Guest is referring too, but we should also say as well there are very many good examples, and that is a bit of a problem with the approach of Mr Guest," he said.

It is also important to make the distinction between providing aid to governments in countries and non-governmental organisations, according to the Oxfam co-ordinator.

A decision may be taken that a government is corrupt and not worthy of aid, but that doesn't mean aid should stop to non-government groups within a country trying to effect change, he says.