Greg Adams, Director of Aid Effectiveness, Oxfam America
The challenges, dilemmas and frustrations of the Kenyan citizens featured in Good Fortune will be familiar to anyone who has been moved by the struggle of those in poverty and felt compelled to try to help. There are plenty of stories of how such help has worked or failed. Although a child born today in South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa or Latin America is more likely to survive her birth, go to school, earn more money, give birth safely, vote for political leaders and die of so-called “old age” than her predecessors were, 1 billion people are still left behind, their prosperity, dignity, security and lives curtailed by the scourge of poverty.
This poverty is not an accident. It is the consequence of deliberate decisions by numerous actors, both wealthy and wanting, and of deliberate actions, whether legal or illegal, socially acceptable or shameful. Responsibility for these decisions and actions is hard to pinpoint; there’s plenty of blame to go around. But the key lesson is that if poverty is a human-caused condition rather than a natural one, humans can change the rules and systems that prevent people from lifting themselves out of poverty.
When poverty is viewed this way, we are forced to accept that poverty is not a lack of wealth, but a denial of rights. Money cannot buy happiness in Kenya any more than it can in the United States. Development aid cannot “buy” development; people and societies develop themselves. Aid can often be a useful and necessary resource for people investing in their own development. However, as with any investment, someone will choose the investment methods and locations, and the identity of the party choosing those things ultimately will influence the identity of the party reaping the returns. This we hear loudly in the voices amplified in Good Fortune.
The crux of the problem is that we, as donors, even donors with the best of intentions, too often impose solutions that are simply wrong for their context. How are we, sitting in air-conditioned offices in Washington, D.C., to know how to best improve the living conditions in Kibera or the livelihoods of Kenyan farmers? The least we can do as donors is let the people on the receiving end decide what role aid should play in their efforts to build a better tomorrow. Simply put, we need to be better listeners and genuine partners. And for that to happen, the various components of our aid system — from those handling the decision-making process in Congress to our “frontline” aid professionals — need mandates and resources to listen and respond to the voices of the people they are trying to help.
Anything less is simple charity. It might make us feel good, but it will accomplish little change in the lives of people living in poverty.
Introduction
Gregory Adams, Director of Aid Effectiveness, Oxfam America
"The crux of the problem is that we, as donors, even donors with the best of intentions, too often impose solutions that are simply wrong for their context. How are we, sitting in air-conditioned offices in Washington, D.C., to know how to best improve the living conditions in Kibera or the livelihoods of Kenyan farmers?" Read more »
Erica Hagen, Project Lead, Map Kibera
"As this movie points out so beautifully, the attitude of 'we know best what's best for you' is just a modern version of the colonial approach that 'corrected' people's behavior for their own good. It is perhaps the most insidious level of disrespect, and in the United States it would be considered anti-democratic. Is development intended to save people from themselves, or is it meant to empower them to achieve the goals they themselves most value?" Read more »
Lawrence MacDonald, Vice President, Center for Global Development
"Many who watch the film will want to know whether most efforts to foster development are similarly ill-starred. Is there nothing that works? Is a sort of benign neglect the best that the rich world can offer people in developing countries? Below I offer a few tentative answers." Read more »
Anna Tibaijuka, Executive Director, UN-HABITAT
"The goal of improving slums, along with the inseparable task of reducing poverty, can only be achieved through a common vision. We have to be against poverty, not the poor. We are against slums, not slum dwellers. Slums and poverty would not exist if there were genuine commitment and political will to combat them. And this common vision can only be realized through genuine partnerships." Read more »
Rasna Warah, Journalist and Author, Daily Nation (Kenya)
"But by portraying Adhiambo and Omondi as 'victims of development,' Good Fortune subconsciously reverts to the stereotypical image of Africa that is so common among Western liberals -- an image that tends to romanticize African poverty by portraying Africans as innocent victims of development whose pure, traditional ways are being corrupted and destroyed by outsiders, rather than addressing the really difficult questions about why the continent is in a perpetual state of under-development. Read more »
Greg Adams, Oxfam America
Greg Adams, Director of Aid Effectiveness, Oxfam America
The challenges, dilemmas and frustrations of the Kenyan citizens featured in Good Fortune will be familiar to anyone who has been moved by the struggle of those in poverty and felt compelled to try to help. There are plenty of stories of how such help has worked or failed. Although a child born today in South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa or Latin America is more likely to survive her birth, go to school, earn more money, give birth safely, vote for political leaders and die of so-called "old age" than her predecessors were, 1 billion people are still left behind, their prosperity, dignity, security and lives curtailed by the scourge of poverty.
This poverty is not an accident. It is the consequence of deliberate decisions by numerous actors, both wealthy and wanting, and of deliberate actions, whether legal or illegal, socially acceptable or shameful. Responsibility for these decisions and actions is hard to pinpoint; there's plenty of blame to go around. But the key lesson is that if poverty is a human-caused condition rather than a natural one, humans can change the rules and systems that prevent people from lifting themselves out of poverty.
When poverty is viewed this way, we are forced to accept that poverty is not a lack of wealth, but a denial of rights. Money cannot buy happiness in Kenya any more than it can in the United States. Development aid cannot "buy" development; people and societies develop themselves. Aid can often be a useful and necessary resource for people investing in their own development. However, as with any investment, someone will choose the investment methods and locations, and the identity of the party choosing those things ultimately will influence the identity of the party reaping the returns. This we hear loudly in the voices amplified in Good Fortune.
The crux of the problem is that we, as donors, even donors with the best of intentions, too often impose solutions that are simply wrong for their context. How are we, sitting in air-conditioned offices in Washington, D.C., to know how to best improve the living conditions in Kibera or the livelihoods of Kenyan farmers? The least we can do as donors is let the people on the receiving end decide what role aid should play in their efforts to build a better tomorrow. Simply put, we need to be better listeners and genuine partners. And for that to happen, the various components of our aid system -- from those handling the decision-making process in Congress to our "frontline" aid professionals -- need mandates and resources to listen and respond to the voices of the people they are trying to help.
Anything less is simple charity. It might make us feel good, but it will accomplish little change in the lives of people living in poverty.
Gregory Adams is Oxfam America's director of aid effectiveness. In this role, he is responsible for leading Oxfam America's efforts to increase the effectiveness of U.S. foreign aid by placing the voices and priorities of poor people at the center of aid policy and practice. He has over 10 years of experience covering national security and foreign affairs for members of the U.S. House of Representatives. He most recently served as legislative director for Representative Diane E. Watson of Los Angeles, who is a member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and vice chair of the Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health. In this role, he helped to craft Watson's positions on the Millennium Challenge Corporation, the F process and other aspects of U.S. global development policy. He has a bachelor's degree in political science from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Erica Hagen, Map Kibera
Erica Hagen, Project Lead, Map Kibera
Just the other day, I was trying to explain to a newcomer in Nairobi what I like about working in Kibera. I found myself saying that in the whole of Nairobi, the slums are the only place I have found what I could call a healthy society. In spite of all the problems there -- violence fueled by poverty and corruption, lack of basic health care or any sort of reliable security -- in my 10 months working in Kibera I've found it to be defined by a strong, even fierce sense of pride. Whereas the formal parts of Nairobi seem stricken by a misguided sense of modernity, epitomized by barricaded housing complexes behind electric razor wire where people regard each other suspiciously through the windows of their Land Rovers, in Kibera there is, strangely enough, a sense of freedom. It's not a romantic place, but visitors invariably leave with a healthy respect for what people have created with their own hands out of the muck -- a thriving community, something that has been destroyed elsewhere in Nairobi over the years.
This sense of community is what I think residents like Silva Adhiambo, who is featured in the film, and those who participate in our project, Map Kibera, are seeking to defend. They are in a constant uphill battle against the much stronger forces of the government, the powerful and the wealthy to defend their tiny pieces of earth -- and why? Because it is intrinsically dehumanizing to face a large development scheme like that of the Kenyan Slum Upgrading Project.
We started Map Kibera not to change all this, but with a simple goal: to help residents of this "invisible" community become visible on their own terms -- both to themselves and to outsiders. We started by training 13 youths to create the first free and open digital map of their community, and we have evolved to include Voice of Kibera, a website that maps stories by local media and allows residents to report via SMS, as well as employing an online video news team. We support residents making use of the powerful knowledge they already hold for policy advocacy and planning or just to change the image of Kibera seen on national TV -- one that highlights despair and violence.
If there is one thing that has been thoroughly destroyed over the years in Kibera, it is trust. Trust of anyone who is an outsider, bearing gifts that turn out to be poison apples. In the film, Sara Candiracci, program manager for the UN-HABITAT slum upgrading project, says, "So many institutions... go in there and do these small projects, but in the end, the impact is very low. I mean you need to go there with a big project, working together with the community to have a big impact." I think that she has it exactly backwards. It is only the small projects that can make real, lasting change in a place like Kibera, because trust has to be built slowly and carefully. Candiracci's statement illustrates a widespread obsession, borrowed from corporate strategy and American-style industrial development, with scaling up development projects. Have such projects in the public sector ever succeeded in the United States? The housing projects of Chicago? Kenyans are all too accustomed to seeing grandiosity from Big Man politicians who pocket profits with impunity. Candiracci also says, "The hard work is dealing with the people." I would argue that the work is the people. They are not a secondary nuisance in the path of their own progress. This is the attitude that ruins international development on a global scale. As this movie points out so beautifully, the attitude of "we know best what's best for you" is just a modern version of the colonial approach that "corrected" people's behavior for their own good. It is perhaps the most insidious level of disrespect, and in the United States it would be considered anti-democratic. Is development intended to save people from themselves, or is it meant to empower them to achieve the goals they themselves most value?
But the most important response is that of the young Kiberans. Map Kibera recently started a local video news effort called Kibera News Network, supporting a team of youth to tell stories and report news in their community from their own point of view. And they watched the film with unwavering attention. When they saw Kibera burning, not a few of them had tears in their eyes. When Silva spoke bluntly about distrust of authorities, they laughed in solidarity. I asked them if they agreed that the upgrading was not a positive thing for Kibera. They were silent; most come from the other side and have not yet been affected. But they said, "This is the truth. This is what it is like to live in Kibera. This is the kind of thing that happens to us. Someone comes by and marks our house with a red X, or cuts our power line, or tells us a new scheme has just been passed and it's time for us to fall in line." It's clear that they were moved by seeing a character so beautifully portrayed who represented their side of the Kibera story. The students also made their own video expressing their opinions about the slum upgrading project.
To me, what matters is that increasingly these are the stories that are told. The slum upgrading project is not a favorite of mine; I think it could destroy the social fabric and networks of relations that make Kibera function, much as similar projects have in my hometown of Chicago. I think that UN-HABITAT was on a better track with a previous project that would take current features and formalize them: A sewage ditch is poured with concrete; an informal dump is encircled by brick walls to prevent disease. The fact is, this is a place thousands of people have literally built with their bare hands. To say that it shouldn't exist is correct. The corruption and bad policy that created it should never have existed, and the current economy, in which the rich depend on the artificially cheap labor of slum dwellers, should not exist either. But perhaps there is simply no way to perform the wholesale removal of chunks of people to the unknown humanely. Perhaps the moral wound that Kibera represents can only be healed though projects small enough to support humbly the most inspiring residents to do their work better and to make their voices heard.
Erica Hagen founded Map Kibera with partner Mikel Maron in October of 2009, and established GroundTruth Initiative, LLC in March 2010. She received a Master's of International Affairs from Columbia University in New York, where she focused on journalism and international development. She has worked in four countries on development communication and evaluation, and in the United States on refugee and immigrant issues. She holds a B.A. in Religion from Reed College.
Lawrence MacDonald, Center for Global Development
Lawrence MacDonald, Vice President for Communication and Outreach, Center for Global Development
Director Landon Van Soest and producer Jeremy Levine have made a provocative documentary that raises tough questions about top-down approaches to development. The questions this film poses are not new to development types: The filmmakers' views (top-down development efforts are misguided at best and sometimes downright destructive) fall squarely at the Easterly extreme of the Easterly-Sachs debate. Still, even development policy wonks who are tired of this debate will find plenty to chew on in Good Fortune's moving depiction of the struggles of two Kenyans -- a midwife in an urban shantytown slated for demolition and a livestock herder whose land is flooded out by a foreign-backed rice farm. (Full disclosure: Center for Global Development was pleased to host a MeetUp with Van Soest and Levine last February to gather comments on an early cut of the film.)
The film will nicely discomfort two groups who are normally at odds. Supporters of increased development assistance will squirm at the seemingly tone-deaf U.N. bureaucrat, who announces that Kibera, Africa's largest slum and home to 1 million people, "should not exist." Those who rail against aid and see private sector investment as a pro-poor alternative, such as African economist and media darling Dambisa Moyo, will wince at Calvin Burgess, the callous representative of Oklahoma-based Dominion Farms Limited. Burgess's supreme confidence that he knows what is best for others -- including people who are about to lose their land and homes to the rising water behind a Dominion dam -- makes him seem like a cardboard cutout of a Hollywood villain.
Documentary filmmakers are not obliged to come up with alternative approaches to the problems they describe. Indeed, after watching the film one of my stronger emotions was a sense of gratitude to the filmmakers for capturing these moving stories.
But many who watch the film will want to know whether most efforts to foster development are similarly ill-starred. Is there nothing that works? Is a sort of benign neglect the best that the rich world can offer people in developing countries? Below I offer a few tentative answers.
First, helping people is hard. Many actions have unintended consequences. This is perhaps especially true of outside support for development that at its core involves extremely complex processes -- in other words, not only economic growth, but social transformation. Still, many projects do work. My colleague David Roodman, an expert on (and sometimes critic of) microfinance, recently returned from Nairobi, where he visited projects run by Jamii Bora, a donor-supported microfinance organization that performs a variety of services, including slum resettlement. Roodman didn't do an in-depth study of Jamii Bora, but he is an astute observer, so when he tells me he believes Jamii Bora is helping people -- and that it helped to calm the waters during Kenya's post-election violence -- I'm inclined to believe him. As part of a broader initiative, my former colleague Ruth Levine (now in a senior policy job at the United States Agency for International Development) led a study group to discover what has worked in global health. The resulting book, Millions Saved: Proven Successes in Global Health, documents 17 cases in which large-scale, long-lasting programs, many of them top-down, improved the health of millions of people, often literally saving their lives.
But projects -- and foreign aid to support them -- aren't the only way to help. Rich world policies in many areas -- think trade, migration and climate, to name just three -- have a profound impact on poor people in developing countries. The Center for Global Development's annual commitment to development index measures the level of development friendliness in 22 high-income countries, adjusted by the sizes of their respective economies. In 2009, the United States ranked number 17.
Good Fortune offers a valuable and moving critique of two efforts to help gone badly awry. It deserves to be seen and discussed widely, especially within the development community. Some who see it may be tempted to use it as a stick to beat foreign assistance, or even to justify inaction in the face of extreme global poverty and inequality. I think that would be a mistake. This film poses a simple question to all of us: Is this the best we can do? Surely not.
Lawrence MacDonald is vice president for communications and policy outreach at the Center for Global Development. He also serves as acting vice president for operations. A development policy communications specialist and former foreign correspondent, he works to increase the influence of CGD's research and analysis by leading an integrated communications program that includes events, publications, media relations, online engagement, and government and NGO outreach. Previous to his work at the Center to Global Development, Macdonald was a senior communications officer worked at the World Bank. He also worked in East and Southeast Asia for 15 years as a reporter and editor for The Asian Wall Street Journal, Agence France Presse, and Asiaweek Magazine.
Anna Tibaijuka, UN-HABITAT
Anna Tibaijuka, Executive Director, UN-HABITAT
I would like to congratulate the filmmakers of the film Good Fortune for their important effort in showing one of the most pressing issues facing our world today -- rapid urbanization and its impact on communities, cities, economies and policies.
We live at a time of unprecedented and irreversible urbanization. As of today, 3.3 billion people (half of humanity) live in urban areas, and by 2030 this figure is expected to swell to almost 5 billion. Whereas urbanization could be a cause for celebration, as cities are centers of economic excellence and cultural creativity, the unfortunate fact is that 1 billion people worldwide live in slums, where they have limited access to water, sanitation, housing and secure tenure.
UN-HABITAT, the United Nations Human Settlements Programme, is the United Nations agency for housing and urban development. Our mandate is in line with Target 11 of the Millennium Development Goals: By 2020, to have achieved a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers.
Kenya's slums are growing at an unprecedented rate. In 2005, the Nairobi metropolitan region was inhabited by an estimated 6.76 million people. More than 70 percent of them live in slums under appalling conditions without shelter, clean water or adequate sanitation. The slum of Kibera, where Good Fortune was shot, is one of the largest informal settlements in Africa (600,000 to 1 million people living on 256 hectares).
The Kenyan government and local authorities are faced with the serious challenge of guiding the physical growth of urban areas and providing adequate services for the growing urban population. If the gap between the supply of and demand for urban services, such as water supply, sanitation and housing, continues to grow, the social consequences of urbanization could be severe.
In Kibera, UN-HABITAT is working jointly with the government of Kenya to implement a demonstration phase of the Kenya Slum Upgrading Programme (PDF). Created in 2004, this program aims to improve the livelihoods of people living and working in informal settlements in the urban areas of Kenya through the provision of security of tenure and physical and social infrastructure, as well as opportunities for housing improvement and income generation.
The goal of improving slums, along with the inseparable task of reducing poverty, can only be achieved through a common vision. We have to be against poverty, not the poor. We are against slums, not slum dwellers. Slums and poverty would not exist if there were genuine commitment and political will to combat them. And this common vision can only be realized through genuine partnerships.
The Kenya Slum Upgrading Programme draws on the expertise of a wide variety of partners. Involvement of local communities is crucial to success, as only the members of those communities know what they need, and only they can guarantee program ownership and sustainability.
UN-HABITAT is playing a leading role to ensure the full involvement and participation of the local community in all facets of project development and implementation. Active involvement on the part of slum dwellers demonstrates that they can take responsibility for their living conditions, and that their contribution is essential to finding lasting solutions. Their participation also builds social cohesiveness and integration within their community.
Let us be under no illusion that slum upgrading is easy. The film successfully shows some perspectives of urban development. However, the film cannot show many of the complex stages involved in slum upgrading.
In addition to constructing low-cost housing, the Kenya Slum Upgrading Programme is improving water, sanitation and waste management services; constructing a low-volume road; and providing household power connections in conjunction with the Kenya Power and Lighting Company. UN-HABITAT is also conducting training courses to empower the community. Most recently, a groundbreaking ceremony was held for a youth resource center that will include computer facilities and a dispensary.
These efforts should go some way to improving the lives of some of the slum dwellers in Kibera and to meeting Target 11 of the Millennium Development Goals. But this is just the beginning.
Nairobi is growing at a rate of almost 5 percent a year. By 2030, the population of Nairobi will be over 20 million. If we do not commit ourselves to slum upgrading in places like Kibera, it is predicted that the worldwide slum population could double to over 2 billon people.
We need to raise awareness about slums and the urgent need for slum upgrading, with all its complexities. And it is important for filmmakers and journalists to highlight the plight of the urban poor.
Anna Tibaijuka is the Executive Director of UN-HABITAT. During her first two years in office, Mrs Tibaijuka oversaw major reforms that led the UN General Assembly to upgrade the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements to a fully-fledged UN program. Mrs Tibaijuka has spearheaded UN-HABITAT's main objective of improving the lives of slum dwellers in line with the Millennium Development Goals. UN-HABITAT is responsible for leading the effort on Target 11 of those goals: improving the lives of 100 million slum dwellers by the year 2020. Apart from her UN-HABITAT activities, Mrs Tibaijuka is dedicated to the role and rights of women in development. The founding Chairperson of the independent Tanzanian National Women's Council (BAWATA), she is also the founding Chairperson of the Barbro Johansson Girls Education Trust dedicated to promoting high standards of education for girls in Africa.
Rasna Warah, Kenyan Journalist
Rasna Warah, Journalist and Author, Daily Nation (Kenya)
There is an image of Africa etched in the Western psyche that is hard to erase. It is the image of the helpless African dying of starvation or poverty against a backdrop of clear blue skies and scarlet sunsets -- an Africa whose people can only be saved through Western goodwill, donor aid and charity. It is this hopeless and helpless Africa that fuels the imagination of writers, journalists, filmmakers and even rock stars.
To his credit, director and producer Landon Van Soest has shown another side of Africa in Good Fortune. In this film, Africans themselves organize and mobilize to protect their livelihoods, homes and environment. This film takes an intimate look at how large-scale development projects in a rural and urban setting in Kenya threaten to destroy the livelihoods of two Kenyans, Silva Adhiambo and Jackson Omondi, and the underlying theme of the film is that large-scale development projects -- in this case, mass slum upgrading and large-scale modern agriculture -- can be detrimental to the livelihoods of the people who are supposedly the intended beneficiaries.
One of the two stories in Good Fortune focuses on Kibera, a shantytown in Nairobi that the United Nations wants to demolish. While I am not convinced that the Kibera slum upgrading project is a success story that should be replicated, as suggested by the UN-HABITAT program manager shown in the film (a woman who admits that she is "not clear" about the impact the slum upgrading project will have on the community), I do believe that slums are a symptom of a bigger problem related to lack of political will, inequitable distribution of resources, ill-conceived development projects, paternalistic notions about "what is good for Africans" perpetuated by the globe-trotting development set (epitomized by the government official who urges the Kibera residents to "follow what we are advising because we are experts in development") and an unjust international economic order that keeps the majority of Africans in a perpetual state of poverty and dependency.
But why do slums like Kibera exist in the first place? Various factors, such as rapid urbanization and the impact of the World Bank/IMF-led structural adjustment programs of the 1980s and 1990s that eliminated subsidies for basic services in urban areas (which in turn increased levels of urban poverty on the continent), contribute. There is another fact: Cities such as Nairobi would not function without the labor provided by slum dwellers (in factories, at construction sites and elsewhere). Slum dwellers, in turn, need the employment generated by cities to survive, and they need affordable housing (provided by slums) to be able to compete in a job market where labor is cheap and where rents for better housing are unaffordable.
Slums epitomize the failure of government institutions and an economic system that has a high tolerance for inequality. Any attempt to improve the lives of slum dwellers must employ an integrated, multi-sectoral approach (not focused exclusively on housing) that looks at slums as a system sustained by economic, social and political forces. To improve the lot of slum dwellers, governments must ensure that economic growth is linked to eliminating corruption, distributing resources more equitably, increasing subsidies to the poorest and most vulnerable groups and intervening in housing markets to ensure that housing is made more affordable, especially for the poorest groups. Unfortunately, the Kenyan government is unwilling to take this approach, because current economic liberalization policies imposed on the country by Western donors state that government intervention in markets and the provision of subsidies would be "anti-free market" and detrimental to economic growth.
Unfortunately, we don't learn about any of that in Good Fortune. Rather than placing urban and rural poverty in the context of the social, economic and political realities of Kenya, or examining the various reasons for deepening poverty and inequality in the country, the filmmaker portrays the problems plaguing the protagonists through very narrow lenses. He appears to suggest that Adhiambo and Omondi not only have a "right" to continue living the deprived lives that they lead, but that they must defend this right, even if it means fighting back the forces of progress, industrialization and modernization -- the very forces that helped countries such as China, Malaysia and South Korea to improve dramatically the standard of living of millions of people.
There is no doubt that "land grabbing" in Africa on the part of foreign multinationals and foreign governments is having a negative impact on the continent's ability to feed itself and is resulting in the displacement of thousands of people from their ancestral lands. It is also true that slum upgrading projects, as envisioned by UN-HABITAT, have failed to incorporate the views and expertise of the people most affected by these projects. For instance, there is little recognition of the fact that slum dwellers such as Adhiambo move to the city primarily to earn an income, and that their major concern is not housing, but employment. (Nice houses mean nothing to them if they lead to losing their jobs.)
But by portraying Adhiambo and Omondi as "victims of development," Good Fortune subconsciously reverts to the stereotypical image of Africa that is so common among Western liberals -- an image that tends to romanticize African poverty by portraying Africans as innocent victims of development whose pure, traditional ways are being corrupted and destroyed by outsiders, rather than addressing the really difficult questions about why the continent is in a perpetual state of under-development.
Rasna Warah is a respected columnist for the Daily Nation, Kenya's largest newspaper. For several years she worked for the UN-HABITAT as a writer and editor. More recently, she edited an anthology entitled Missionaries, Mercenaries and Misfits that critiques the development industry in East Africa. She is also the author of Triple Heritage, a historical memoir that explores the role of Asians in Kenya's politics and economy. She currently lives in the coastal town of Malindi with her husband.