Missionaries, Mercenaries and Misfits: An Anthology

Journalist Rasna Warah has selected 15 essays by “development cynics”, who present indictments on the aid industry in Africa. Most of the contributors are based in Nairobi and range from correspondents and researchers, to artists, development practitioners and private sector professionals. Warah offers the collection as a much-needed African perspective on aid but avoids any suggestion for ways forward. After an introduction on “The Development Myth”, the essays in Part I examine “Development in Action”, Part II gives various insiders’ perspectives on “The Development Set” and Part III focuses on “The Politics of Aid”. These underscore the challenge of transforming the development industry, with African practitioners and governments frequently exhorted to rethink their relations with donors.

The essays highlight aid agencies’ failings as well as the prevailing dependency on donors. A consultant and columnist for Kenya’s Sunday Nation newspaper, Sunny Bindra, notes that the “…aid habit is hard to kick” but believes Africans can achieve greater self-reliance (page152). Victoria Schlesinger’s “Journey to Nowhere” is a lengthy exposé of the Millennium Village in Sauri, showing donors’ empty rhetoric and meagre results throughout the ambitious project. Perhaps most disquieting is the essay entitled “A Charitable Apartheid” by former BBC correspondent, Lara Pawson. She examines the two-tier system between international and local aid workers in Africa, with several anecdotes revealing expatriates’ discrimination towards African staff. In “UN Blues”, a former consultant, Isisaeli Kazado, criticizes the United Nations’ “…culture of sycophancy, mediocrity, inefficiency and corruption” (page 100). Kazado also explores the unequal yet complex relations between donors and Kenyan officials, who sought to ensure that UNEP did not relocate from Nairobi in 2007.

Meanwhile, NGOs are criticized for pursuing donor-driven agendas. Playwright Bantu Mwaura deplores “NGO theatre”, which capitalizes on donors’ interest in participatory approaches but only generates mediocre plays on AIDS and other development topics. Issa Shivji and Firoze Manji argue for NGOs to catalyze meaningful change and re-examine their complicity in neoliberal development agendas. Onyano Oloo, national coordinator of Nairobi’s World Social Forum in 2007, similarly argues that NGOs should reject donors’ dictates and instead collaborate with grassroots social movements. The volume ends with an acerbic piece on “The Power of Love” by Binyavanga Wainaina; an essay on Mumbai’s World Social Forum in 2005 by Achal Prabhala; and historical discussions by journalists Philip Ochieng and Parselelo Kantai.