Aid must address the root causes of poverty

By Pete North - August 23, 2020

Being the son of a notorious good safety advisor, in our household you couldn’t help but pick up a few of the technical concepts of the discipline. One of the things preached in our house was safety by design. Well designed kitchens with hygiene built into the design philosophy tend to eradicate outbreaks of food poisoning.

But then this concept is infinitely expandable. Safety by design is inherently desirable being that the byproduct of safe design is efficient processes. Nowhere is this more true that in the field of ports and logistics. Of you go to any modern British distribution centre they are built to a particular standard with the processes built into the design.

Similarly our ports are in pretty good shape with lanes and holding areas, all computer controlled and with safe, modern port equipment, all of which makes for a smooth running, efficient operation. Then if you want an example of how not to do it, your first port of call is surely Nigeria.

The problem starts with the roads as illustrated above. If you think we’ve got problems with potholes here you ain’t seen nothing. One water filled pothole can destroy and entire shipment. The other problem is improperly loaded containers, often unsecured.

The Nigerian Federal Road Safety Corps records that causes of tanker and trailer accidents between 2007 and 2010 totalling 4,017 cases, included: obstruction, speed violations, mechanically deficient vehicles, overloading violations, dangerous overtaking, loss of control, route violations, driving under the influence of alcohol and drug and wrong overtaking. If there are updated statistics I doubt very much has changed. Nothing else has.

One of the issues is the age of the lorry fleet. The work horses in and around the ports can often be American cast-offs dating back to the 70’s which, if in better condition, would now be desirable classics. They wouldn’t pass an MOT in even the most lax European country. That there is such a mix an match of lorries tells you there is no overall standard. Much of the fleet comprises of ex-European end of life lorries and US civilian utility vehicles.

Apart from the dangers these roads and vehicles pose to human lives, the economic implications are enormous, with attendant negative effects on trade and commerce. Importers and exporters find it difficult to carry their containers in and out of Apapa. More often than not, many of these containers fall, destroying their contents and resulting in huge financial losses.

Nigeria is, however, taking action to improve its road safety situation. Following its accession in October 2018 to the 5 key UN road safety Conventions, the country is stepping up efforts to ensure their swift implementation, with help from UNECE.

This is exactly what should be at the forefront of any aid and development policy. Most of the good governance we enjoy in the west is built on a foundation of good technical standards for national infrastructure.

Once you get a read on the landscape in any developing country you are then not surprised by what you find in recent news media. With building standards an optional extra we see that residential blocks are built with every corner cut leading to construction accidents and fatal crane and bridge collapses. It would also appear that Grenfell like events are far from uncommon. Fire safety and building standards are an afterthought.

Though authorities are at least attempting to grasp many of the issues but the sheer scale of the task of installing good governance is beyond their immediate ability. Too much is happening outside of their authority and is not helped by widespread corruption. We see illegal land clearances, bulldozing rainforest to make way for urban developments (routinely unsuitable and unfit for purpose) or palm oil plantations, leading to main drainage channels being frequently overwhelmed and causing fatal mudslides.

This is the “invisible government” which is absolutely essential to the functioning of a first world country and paramount to everything built above it. Humanitarian aid is all well and good in tackling the day to day symptoms of bad governance, but much of the conditions that blight so many lives are entirely resolvable by way of enforcing technical standards and maintaining regulatory inspections.

Health and safety regulation attracted the ire of the British tabloids when EU single market regulation forced major investment in compliance, often to the bemusement of commentators who didn’t see the value in it. Arguably our own system of rules wasn’t that bad to begin with, but harmonised rules is part and parcel of efficient trade.

As much as there is life enhancing potential in these such measures for the developing world, it is also essential if they wish to compete in global markets. Unsafe, obsolete and dirty transport infrastructure is too unpredictable to base sustainable value chains on. Nigeria in particular suffers from major port congestion causing delays and spoilage that essentially rules out exporting.

In respect of that, if the UK wants to address migration and the root causes of poverty in the developing world, it needs to be less humanitarian focussed and more technical minded in terms of nation building. Address the fundamentals and they themselves can sort out their humanitarians needs.

But then this isn’t simply a matter of installing infrastructure on their behalf. Though that would present a great many opportunities for UK companies, it is not a long term solution. All over the developed world we find infrastructure funded by foreign investors in a state of disrepair. Building without the capacity to maintain has only a temporary impact.

What’s needed is local technical training not only to do the job itself, but also to build a functioning civil service capable of carrying out the necessary regulatory checks and issuing fines and penalties for noncompliance. This is beset with problems by way of endemic corruption. Consequently, anti corruption activity should be at the forefront of our foreign policy, building capacity in regional enforcement.

But then this also underscores the necessity for the UK and Europe to properly enforce their immigration systems. Whenever there is regional instability it’s usually the most well off in any developing country who are most able, and the first, to escape. Many who turn up on our shores are university educated and with means – more than able to establish themselves in any number of countries, who’ve paid more to smugglers than most Brits have in their life savings.

Whenever we’ve engaged in language and skills training to develop the intellectual capacity in developing countries, they all too often use that training to go elsewhere, draining developing countries of their own human resources, while providing businesses a cheaper alternative to training natives.

There’s no shortage of useful things we can be doing, but as detailed elsewhere on Turbulent Times, it has to be part of a concentrated holistic strategy centred on promoting good governance. Most of the humanitarian emergencies in the developing world, are either caused or exacerbated by poor technical governance and corruption. Unless we address these key factors our collective efforts will always be geared toward the symptoms rather than the causes.