POLITICS AND AID

The recent threat by the US to withdraw funding to WHO has shown how much politics can determine funding and aid. Many governments tend to support projects that align and propagate their political agenda. There are many situations where funding is attached to the political ideologies of the donor.

How can an organization insulate itself from such manipulations by donors?  Every time a new government comes to power in most donor countries, donations, aid and assistance have to be restructured and align to the priorities of the government of the day.

To survive such manipulation, the administrators of the funds should play professional at all time and to play a silent card when it comes to championing certain ideologies. There are cases when the donor requirements and the beneficiaries’ needs are in conflict. This is not only restricted to politics but also other affiliation. One which usually plays out is the religious beliefs. When religious NGOs try to move in and assist in areas where another religion is dominant, conflict always arise. This can be in levels even to forcing the NGO to withdraw.

Another challenging situation is when assistance has to be delivered to political induced IDPs and the government responsible is still in power, it creates a conflict especially when the government downplays the problem and wants to cover up on its failures. Another bone of contentious is on reporting the figures. It still goes down to the government contracting the figures to lessen the severity of the problem. Donor funding is always based on figures, figures, figures. Most donors are not interested with the narratives and compositions but on numbers. If you cannot relay the correct numbers especially in terms of target beneficiaries then you risk the problem of underfunding and meager deliveries of the outputs/objectives. An underfunded project is catastrophic in that it might be implemented half way and thus become a white elephant which also affects the reputation of the organization.

Pushing and negotiating with governments to agree on the numbers is a tall order but it’s something worth pursuing if you want to be in good books with the donors.

When developing a project these are some of the issues to take up during stakeholders’ consultation and risk analysis exercise. This can impact a project in scales even to extend of not taking off.

Some of the recent political changes that have affected the aid work included the ascension of power by Donald Trump in Jan 2017 and the formation of Chinese aid agency CIDCA (China International Development and cooperation Agency) equivalent of USAID, the Brexit among others.