'Mozambique, the darling of the donor community'

It is a little confronting being on the other side.

I guess when I see the ads on TV for World Vision and all those kinds of things, I kind of think of the people in third world countries like Mozambique to be nice, humble people who are poor but entirely benevolent.

The truth is, they're not. And I don't know to what extent this covers the population (I know it certainly covers many in positions of power and influence!), but my experience so far is that they are just as self-interested as pretty much the rest of the world, taking handouts when they can and not necessarily using it for the purposes intended.

As many of you would know, I'm writing the business plan for this seed company for the moment. We're trying to test the market for high quality seed (rather than low quality, recycled seed they've been using all this time). Using this maize seed would actually make incredible inroads on poverty - for a fraction more cost (one US dollar a kilo, 25 kgs to plant an entire hectare of maize) they would produce SIX TIMES the amount of maize (3 tons instead of 500kg) in quicker time, with a much-needed high protein element.

I was talking over this idea with an Argentinian entrepreneur who laughed at the idea. "But why do you think it's a bad idea?", I retorted (In my head I was asking, can't everyone see the effect on malnutrition and food this would have? Not to mention the individual farmer's profit!).

"High quality seed?", he said in his European accent. "You have one problem. Why would someone who's never paid for maize seed in his life start paying for it now?"

He had a good point. (I had to admit to myself, I'm not intending to start paying for MP3s anytime in the near future.)

I visited a near-defunct seed factory today which absorbed 50 million British pounds of foreign aid and donor funding. Two of the other factories opened with the money have now closed, without a trace of the money (this one is closing in a few months). Over the 10 years, one of the factories barely produced 400 tonnes worth of seed - which is not much considering the factories had a normal capcity of 5 tonnes per hour - that is, 50 working days' production (or less than 17 days at non-stop capacity). What an incredible waste of donor money!

But I can see why, just by stepping into their shoes. If someone just keeps giving me things for free, and giving, and giving, why wouldn't I just slacken off and take it! If I stopped taking the money and spending it, they would stop giving, wouldn't they ...?

Blessings
John (back in Maputo for a 2 day business trip)


A typical roadside store in Mozambique ... these are everywhere, and sell items ridiculously cheap (but when you consider 67% of the population live on less than 40c a day, that's not surprising...)
Source: some document some guy from the government gave me today