R. Todd Johnson writing in
Friends of Ethiopia:
Outside of direct relief aid and some of the amazing health and education research and development, much (perhaps most) of what is done in the developing world through non-profits and NGO's, could actually be accomplished through a business model, even if it would be harder to raise investment funding. Instead, someone begins selling tax subsidized and donor subsidized water pumps in Africa, because it is easier to raise the funding through tax deductible donations rather than through the rigors of proving out the business model for investment dollars, with the great result of increased deployment of inexpensive water moving technology in the developing world to aid rural farmers, but the negative results of (1) killing the market for future indigenous entrepreneurs attempting to sell water pumps at a profit and (2) locking a potentially valuable distribution channel in a non-profit, making it difficult for other for-profits to use.
A friend of his an
entrepreneur in answer to a question about how he was doing stated:
"Africans don't see a reward system in place for being entrepreneurial. In fact, they view it as a matter of survival, not an opportunity to lift themselves out of poverty. Rather, what they learn at a very early age, is that in order to make good money, they should learn to speak English incredibly well and then maybe, just maybe, they can get a job driving for an NGO. In a few years, if they play their cards right, they might be able to land an NGO job as a project manager and even advance further."
More
here
3 comments:
Inaccurate - while that person you are referring to may well aspire to an NGO career path is it because it is one of the few they can start with without much education. Often NGO workers start side businesses with the little pay/stippends they get - while these often fail at least they have a safety net of the NGO job. Jobs in government are often the same but often involve huge levels of corruption. It is also extremely hard for the local population to compete against megacorp, corrupt tendercorp, chinese import corp or some long term business who wrapped up the distribution of water pumps 30 years ago. So often local entrepreneurs are left to small service area business which are limited in range and growth.
@roballen - Shouldn't we work to empower entrepreneurs to find more avenues for success and move beyond this development model? Long-term "working for the company store" isn't sustainable or desirable.
I really struggle with the sheer number of organizations that hire people into non-profits but then pay them very low wages. I think we can better empower all people by paying higher wages, rather than asking people to accept less simply because they want to help. I think that saying wanting to help means you should make less is a very confusing message.
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