What do you think of when you think of Africa? Starving little children, rib cages and swollen bellies horrifically prominent in desolate, dusty villages, surrounded by flies? Or maybe corrupt military leaders living on a diet of conflict diamonds and caviar while their citizens starve? What about nations in a perpetual state of civil war thanks to tribal conflicts which have lasted generations, or entire populations laid to waste by the seemingly unstoppable onslaught of diseases such as HIV/AIDS and Malaria?

Meanwhile, at home, we’re being implored to ‘Feed the World’, ‘Adopt a Child’ ‘Save Africa’, and even, by a certain Mr Geldof, to “give us your fookin’ money!”, while a stint in one of these nations digging wells or cuddling orphans is likely to factor into the plans for one’s future gap year. Indeed, it would seem that Africa is a terrible, backward sort of place, full of destitution and despair. The natives are diseased, the people need educating, their conflicts need peacekeeping, their children feeding and their streets cleaning, tidied up and equipped with nice chain stores – all of which they are wholly incapable of doing by themselves.

Of course, as worthy as these efforts may be, with the best of intentions, and often the most worthwhile of results, is this a helpful or even accurate image? Funnily enough, little over 100 years ago, our great and great-great grandparents were saying similar things, this time to justify the occupation of nations such as India, Iraq and indeed much of Africa, too. Much of European thought rested on the idea that the ‘natives’ of such lands needed the paternal hand of Western, civilized thought to guide them down the path of enlightenment, and that through colonization, exploitation, commerce and, in it’s most extreme expression, slavery, such things could be achieved. Many famines, natural disasters, wars and rebellions later, we’ve quite rightly moved out of that business, and yet the idea seems to persist that those less economically well off than ourselves are inherently incapable. As healthy, materially wealthy and, at home at least, peaceful people, safe and secure in our cul-de-sacs, we reason, ‘we’ have everything to give, and ‘they’ have everything to learn, with our wallets alleviating our consciences accordingly.

On the other hand, while it’s easy to be critical of that approach, nobody denies that somebody needs to ‘stop the rot’. It’s no myth that literally thousands die every day due to malnutrition, AIDS, dirty water, and that hundreds of thousands lack access to basic healthcare and education. If we let things stay as they are, the current trends will simply continue. Clearly, things need to change. The question is, when working to solve these problems, why do we do it? What is our role? Who do we do it for? Is it out of altruism, or a paternalistic desire to watch out for those who, as if by nature or magic, happen to be less-well off than ourselves? We want to help, but who are we to tell others the ‘right’ way to live? In short, are we, our government, The G8, Bob Geldof, Oxfam, the Red Cross, Christian Aid or anybody else the right people to ‘Make Poverty History’?

I was tackling some of these fairly fundamental questions at a workshop on ‘Attitudes and Beliefs’ at the Oxfam Assembly in June 2006. Every two years, individuals from across the international development organization and its partners across the World get together to discuss its future direction, to question the directors and trustees, float ideas, and find out more about the work of others. As a delegate of Oxfam GB’s ‘Youth Board’, I was there along with three of my colleagues to represent the interests and voice of young people, and in the UK in particular, within our work. Sitting opposite me in one of the smaller groups we had broken into was Dilma, a regional manager in Brazil, to my left, Bibash, a project coordinator from north Sudan, John Carlos, from Mexico, and to my right, Killanga from Vietnam. All except Dilma, who made use of a Portuguese interpreter, spoke English, and together, we were engaged in lively debate, sharing out experiences of the way in which Oxfam was seen in our respective constituencies, and the kind of attitudes which assisted or obstructed our work there.
“We are not beneficiaries; I wish they would stop referring to us as such”,
protested an indignant John Carlos,

“Yes”,
agreed Bibash,
“We are not your beneficiaries”,
he said, smiling as he turned towards myself and the other group members, pausing for emphasis,
“We are your colleagues; programme participants, working with you for the same things”
Killanga nodded, as I ventured,
“So really, we need less of a focus on this idea of the helpful helping the helpless, don’t we?

This idea seemed to meet with approval from John Carlos and Bibash, and, after a perhaps a brief struggle to translate my wordplay, Dilma too, who explained how she felt that in Brazil, they needed more freedom to shift the focus of campaigning to the problems they specifically faced in her community. As the discussion continued, Bibash pointed out that,

“We need a greater sense of self-responsibility”,

an idea which I was fairly used to, myself continually arguing for the need to create a sense of shared responsibility for the World amongst you, my fellow ‘youth’ here in the UK.

For Bibash, however, it meant local people in Northern Sudan taking responsibility for themselves. He explained that in one village, an aid agency had come in and built a well with little consultation with local people. Once the conditions there had stabilised, he told us, the community had difficulties coming to terms the agencies pulling out, leaving them again to their own devices along with a well which few were willing to take ownership of, nor felt inclined to maintain, regarding it as ‘their’ well, rather than ‘ours’. Clearly, however good the intentions those who built that well, unless we approach these situations with a little bit of humility and willing to listen, asking ‘what can we do for you’, allowing those we work with to take ownership, rather than ‘we’ll do this for you’, such work can never be truly effective in our efforts, instead allowing this grotesque status quo to remain.

But from that discussion, and the event as a whole, I drew a wider message. I spent three days with among the most intelligent, knowledgeable, wise, articulate and experienced people I have ever met, most without the undisputed benefit of a private school, let alone the dreadfully crucial Oxbridge education we’ve come to expect of our leaders. These were not the ignorant, diseased, voiceless, faceless, nor indeed helpless individual of the infamous Band-Aid album art, these were people who understood the problems of their communities, and who possessed the ideas, experience and means to do something about it.

So why then, aren’t nations like Sudan, Mozambique and Venezuela centres of blue skies, green grass, singing birds, bright sunshine and peace, love and prosperity for all? Well, in Mozambique, they used to have a sugar industry, a fairly productive, competitive and profitable one too. Then, in the tradition of the missionaries which swept the continent a hundred years before, in came economists who, knowing best, took charge, changing policies, removing rules and barriers to comply with a system to which we, here in the developed world, do not ourselves subscribe. Similarly, Sudan has been racked for decades by a civil war, which preceded a famine which has killed thousands more. Funnily enough, there are few gun factories in Sudan, and so arises the question, where did they come from? If you fly over to Venezuela and you’ll find a nation which continues to lack basic medical services, and yet pays millions annually in debt repayments to far wealthier nations, while enjoying some of the largest oil reserves in the World.

Taking such things into account, it’s not hard to see the absurdity in our basic ideas of charity; akin to a gangster’s driver offering to take the victim to hospital on his way home to count his loot. If we, -you- want to be really effective in leaving the world a better place for all of us, then it increasingly seems to me that it’s not simply enough for ourselves to be doing positive things, whether that be raising money, volunteering in these places, or building wells, however useful these acts may be, so much as preventing our own governments from doing the negative things.

Perhaps, in nations which were not racked by war sponsored by our commercial opportunism, places not ripped apart by our economic arrogance, and governments bankrupted by our greed, individuals such as Bibash, John Carlos, Dilma and Killanga would be able to get their work done, which they clearly possess the expertise and drive to do. That’s not to say that our own efforts go unwanted, or unneeded, or that there isn’t a role for us to play, but I truly believe that it’s time for us to realize that the solutions to the developing world’s problems lie in the developing world. W e are their partners, not their benefactors; and we should instead see our role as making room in the global arena for others to take control over their lives, rather than simply replacing one type of foreign control with another.

In our discussions about the beliefs which stood in our way, they talked of ‘selfishness’ and ‘greed’ as characteristics which could be reversed, rather than as basic qualities of humans, to be accepted and exploited rather than challenged. Scoff as you will at such apparent naivety, but the fact that such beliefs and optimism persist and are honestly held in nations which, we are led to believe, are such pits of decay and disaster, to me speaks volumes. Could it be that, in doing these things, we find we have as much to learn as to offer?