Ugandapanda

I was inspired to pen this piece after gawking at this Stuff.co.nz article. The writers’ intent was to demonstrate that high fuel prices were a disaster. But as I read I became confused, even incredulous. Was the article a spoof?  Some complaints seemed more positive then negative, a step in the right direction. Where people expressed inconvenience and frustration, I saw a glimpse of a better future. A healthier, more grounded and more sustainable world.   

I won’t deny there are downsides to the fuel price hike. Poor people suffer as with any price rise. Scumbag oil companies and governments find new pseudo-economically viable places to drill, which never should be touched. Russia funds their war machine through the sky high oil prices Germany and France continue to pay.

But fuel prices have to rise, a lot higher than even now if we are to have any chance to halt this climate crisis. Yes this current price hike is abrupt. Yes we aren’t ready. Yes our electric car infrastructure is non-existent. Yes Public transport isn’t fit for purpose. But what we see from these regular folks’ responses are small ways that high fuel prices can push us simple humans in the right direction. And our groaning creation takes a tiny breath.

So here’s why high fuel prices are fantastic

We Go Local

“I’ll have to rethink where my daughter goes to school in the future if it keeps increasing, because we school out of area,” King said.

Although its nice to choose where we send our kids to school, a great way to burn less oil is to share most of our lives with our proximate community. Local school, local shops, local doctor, local church, local friends. In New Zealand cities at least, most people live within a 20 minute walk (or 10 minute bike) of all important amenities and we don’t need to drive to reach them.

High fuel prices force us to do what’s painful, but better for us and the planet – spend most of our lives closer to our home. Attend local schools. Go to the local Thai restaurant rather than Macdonalds at the mall. Buy clothes from our local thrift shop. Make friends with our neighbours. A richer, more simple life. If high fuel prices force us to think twice or thrice before driving across town, the benefits might be deeper than ‘just’ mitigating the climate crisis.

We Go Electric

Last week I talked to a friend (who yes, has a pretentious Nissan Leaf) who was excited about unexpected conversations the fuel price hike had triggered. “Two of my friends are probably going to buy electric cars. And for the first time ever my parents are even talking about EVs!” We don’t have New Zealand data yet but other countries like England have seen a surge in EV sales as people balk at the fuel hikes. In just one week in early march sales surged by almost 40%.

If governments like New Zealand’s fail to incentivise electric cars through providing good infrastructure and significant subsidies, sky high fuel prices might be the catalyst we need to supercharge the transition.  

We Go Public

Presbyterian Support Northern manager Alistair Houston:
“One client has stopped using her car and only uses it for urgent matters. The car is now seen as a luxury she cannot afford to just ‘pop out in,’” Houston said.

Houston, we don’t have a problem – your complaint is rather a profound solution, the only way forward through our climate crisis.  “The car is now seen as a luxury”

Forgive me father, for I have sinned. While in New Zealand I loved fishing in the mountains. To reach the most beautiful places on earth, I drove hundreds of kilometers often alone in the car and released hundreds of kilos of carbon. Perhaps what I did is no longer defensible, but I am sure that it was a luxury. I made a luxurious, selfish trade-off between damaging our fragile earth and my personal pleasure and fulfilment.

In our current climate situation, whenever we use a personal petrol vehicle at the very least we should give thanks and be grateful for that luxury. For a convenient gift whose days are numbered.

Yes, moving away from the personal petrol paradigm is rough on poorer people who can’t easily access poor public transport systems, and we should already have non-petrol car solutions, but needs must. As cynical and populist as our governments’ sad move was to slash our fuel tax, they made a great move in halving the cost of public transport. A huge step towards normalising the only way forward.

Buses, trains and car pooling have to enter our common consciousness and become a norm. As petrol prices get higher not only are we forced to make hard decisions about our own transport, but governments like we’ve already seen in New Zealand will be forced to both improve and fund public transport to soothe the wrath of their penny-pinched populous.

So if the recent fuel price hikes push us even an inch towards go local, go electric and go public, then I’ll celebrate every cent of the hike.

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God”

We had our opportunity to be those blessed peacemakers – this war never needed to happen. As troops gathered on the border of Ukraine, we had the power to stop this war from ever happening. All trade with Russia should have stopped until the tanks pulled back. All Russian money in foreign banks seized until the troops immobilised. The oil pipelines which supply a third of Europe’s oil cut off until Putin promised never to attack. Even in little old New Zealand we should have seized the assets of Russian billionaires – just last year one Oligarch invested 100 million dollars in Kiwibuild! In just one day the west could have crippled Russia’s economy, brought the country to its knees and they could well have abandoned the idea of war. With close to zero foreign trade and foreign money Russia couldn’t function and they would have been forced to withdraw. We could have not tolerated this war.

We don’t tolerate sexism, we don’t tolerate racism, we don’t tolerate homophobia.

But yes, we still tolerate war.

Still more shocking is that  is that even after the war began, we didn’t cut Russia off fullstop. It’s bizarre that with all the useless rhetoric “condemning” Putin and Russia, oil still freely flows down a 1200km pipe from Russia to Europe. Money still flows between American and Russian banks. Russian ambassadors still sit happilyin plush offices around the world. It’s a sick joke that Commercial airlines avoid Ukraine, while they still fly in and out of Moscow.

Even the stock markets were surprised by how pathetic we were. Only a day after the start of a war, most global stock exchanges ROSE yesterday because they were surprised how light global sanctions were. Even cynical inverstors thought that perhaps the developed world would do better than business as usual – they were wrong.

Why is this? Why do we do nothing when we have so much power?  

We are far, far more selfish than we think we are.

We pretend to care that tens of thousands of people will die in Ukraine but we don’t really. We aren’t willing to sacrifice anything in order to live in a world where one country invading another without even a humanitarian pretense isn’t an option. Our Democracies therefore are working perfectly, responding to our selfishness. Our pragmatic governments know their citizens are selfish, so they leave Ukraine to rot. They know we would rise against them if oil prices went up 30% after we turned off the Russian tap. Biden bizarrely reassured us that “Our sanctions package is specifically designed to allow energy payments to continue”. They know we would vote them out next election if the world went into recession as it recovered from zero Russian trade. Our leaders know that our primary drive is to maximise our own pleasure and minimise our pain. They know the terrible truth that we tolerate war more than we tolerate inflicting even a little suffering on ourselves.

In Canada tens of thousands of people are protesting the government’s response to covid. In New Zealand the biggest protest in my lifetime is on the doors of parliament, and it’s mostly a selfish one. We used to protest about big stuff on behalf of other people. Against the Vietnam war, against apartheid in South Africa. Now all we can muster a decent protest about is the loss of minor freedoms.Where are the thousands of New Zealanders and Canadians banging down the parliament doors on behalf of innocent Ukrainians getting slaughtered? Where is the viral hashtag “NoWar” covering our social media feeds? Where are the journalists condemning our governments for their fatal inaction?

Many of us have foooled our selves that at the we really are caring, peaceloving people who would sacrifice something when the need arose. Climate change inaction should have already exposed this lie. Our response to the Ukraine invasion has proved it beyond doubt.

The myth of a progressive democratic utopian world is dead. We should be ashamed of ourselves.

At least we can take this opportunity to look in the mirror. Why do we still tolerate war? How can we do better? I’ll share three ideas. Yes they are flawed and naïve but perhaps someone will find them useful

1. Realise our own complicity. There are important societal awakenings of our complicity as individuals in issues like racial injustice and the climate crisis. The Ukraine war is no exception – we are part of what has allowed this to happen. Once we realise the ways our selfishness and greed play into the problem, we can find ways to be part of the solution. Am I willing to pay a price? Could I suffer higher petrol prices and inflation to make war less tolerable?

2. Bring the discussion home. It’s easy but perhaps not useful to obsess over the state of the war in Russia and muse about what might happen next. More useful would be to discuss what our own country could to do make the war end more quickly. Are there any Russian investments in our own country which could be targeted? Do our banks have interests in Russian oil? If we move the social and mainstream media discussion away from things we can’t change, and towards things we can then perhaps our politicians and government will feel more obliged to do more.

3. Revive the art of unselfish protest. Our current generation has become complacent in the art of peaceful, unselfish protest. We know from past efforts such as the global anti-Vietnam war protest and civil rights movements that when a significant minority rise up against complacent government, change can happen. If groups around the world protested against their government’s tolerance of war, then our democracy might be swayed away from complacency and towards action. Maybe oil pipelines could be cut. Maybe bank transfers could be stopped. Maybe we could move a step closer towards a world where war was finally intolerable.  

 “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God”

N.B: Here’s a couple more great suggestions from Dr. Peter Hill’s comment below

– For the prayers amongst us, we can ask for forgiveness where we are complicit, and pray that those in power would do the right thing, including or own leaders and the young president of Ukraine.

– Write to your local Member of parliament. If they know that we care, they might be more inclined to act.

“But nothing’s getting through, so let me spell it out. A-B-C-D-E, FU!”. Now I thought that was a clever lyric, but my wife didn’t agree. What do you reckon? Anyway…

Although enormous predjudice, problems and disparities remain, us humans have made progress on some fundamental moral issues like ending racism and gender equality. This progress will only be further accelerated by recent movements such as “Black Lives Matter”, and “Me Too”. On my recent trip to New Zealand, I was encouraged by cross generational adoption of Maori language, and a wider public understanding of the mahi (work) that needs to be done to rectify wrongs and disparities both past and present inflicted on the first people of New Zealand.

This progress is reflected in pop culture, with mainstream outfits Disney and Hollwood making an effort to at least appear inclusive. New cartoons and blockbusters sport multicultural casts, highlight minority issues and give female characters more agency. One measure of this progress is the Bechdal test, which asks whether female characters have conversations with each other which aren’t just about men. Only twenty years ago 70% of big money blockbuster movies failed this test, now 70% of them pass. Forgive me for the flawed graph but it gets the point across.

This change has been rapid and stark. Go back and watch your favourite episodes of Friends or Seinfeld from just 20 years ago and you’ll find yourself regularly cringing or worse at the casual racism, sexism and homophobia througout the shows.

But there are many blind spots in our cultural ‘progress.’ And there’s one particular group who both society and pop-culture still seem free to abuse in both subtle and less-than-subtle ways.

Poor people.

Classism should be the next ism to to be binned in pop culture.

Many of you will have heard the aforementioned mega-catchy saccharine diss track “a,b,c,d,e FU” where a girl lays her ex out to dry. Be warned, listen at your own risk. It’s both truly cringe and truly stuck in my head, with the situation only getting worse while I’m writing this. Nah-nah-nah naaaaaaah, nah-nah-naah, nah naaah…

Although public abuse is a bona-fide terrible way to deal with post-relationship issues, I know this is a diss track and she may have some fair points about her ex. He did allegedly text her friends behind her back, and had a brief go at revenge dating. Also she does try to give credit where credit was due, to his dog…

But her subtle digs at poverty should not be acceptable. She says “FU” to his “broke-ass car” and his “craigslist couch” (trademe-ish for New Zealanders). This may seem harmless at first glance, but why is she using these vehicles of abuse? The implication can only be that its somehow bad to have second hand stuff. That her ex is a worse person, and perhaps has less value because he isn’t rich enough to buy new things.

We can debate the cause of major societal problems, but I shouldn’t have to convince anyone that it ain’t poor people. It’s not poor people driving up house prices. Money printed during the pandemic that was disproportionately given to rich people has contributed to the inflation and the increased cost of living which is shaking the world.  If pop culture is going to diss anyone, let it be rich people.

Imagine you’re a teenager who hears Gayle’s tune. You’re sitting on a nice old couch which your single mum bought on craigslist, making ends meet on her minimum wage job. You’ve already been struggling with self esteem and then you turn on the radio and hear the diss about the ‘craigslist’ couch. Maybe you feel your mum isn’t doing so well after all. Maybe you won’t go to school tomorrow because what’s the point anyway?

Imagine you’re a 20 year old guy who just got your first full time job on a building site. You’re pretty proud of yourself because you managed to buy your first car for a thousand bucks. It’s beat up but it does the job. Well you were proud until you’re friends started giving you heaps about it “Hey Nick, you aren’t gonna have much luck with the girls in that old dinger are you!”. Then you turn on the car radio and hear Gayle diss the guy with the “broke-ass” car…

Imagine you’re 80% of the population in Uganda, who can’t afford any kind of couch or car. What does this song say about your worth as a person? The messages we send through pop culture may seem trivial at first, but they help shape the false, toxic, normative narratives of society. That rich = good and poor = bad.

As well as eradicating poor bashing like that in Gayles song, we need more pop-culture role models from poorer backgrounds too. The same way we make every effort to be body-positive, we should take every chance to build up those on the tough end of the socioeconomic spectrum. Not just rags to riches or self actualisation stories, but where a poor person is the hero. This isn’t about glorifying poverty, but about increasing self esteem and hope across the socioeconomic spectrum. Perhaps the next iron man is a genius on the unemployment benefit who invented cold fusion in his bathroom lab. The next Batwoman could be a volunteer at a food bank who uses her personal connections to transform the underworld of Gotham for good. Contrived yes, but not much more than the current superhero narratives.

“Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

It’s 4:00am

“Doctor, please come now”

I sleep not very well on a bamboo mat in our most remote health center Pwunu Dyang. The rain starts pounding on the roof, and soon also on my conscience.

Midwife Scovia has fear in her eyes and since I know how tough she is, her fear soon becomes mine too. To cut a long story short, Lucy* is in labour. She had 4 previous cesarian section operations to remove babies from her womb, so there’s no way Scovia can safely deliver her baby in the health center. If Lucy doesn’t get an operation in the next few hours, her womb might rip open and kill her and the baby.

Except that the hospital which performs the operation is 4 hours away

And the road is close to impassable, even on a motorcycle

And the rain pours

And its 4:00am

But we can overcome these challenges. Scovia’s husband had hired a motorbike for a couple of days, and is willing to brave the rain and the road to take Lucy to a halfway point, where she can catch a NGO ambulance the final two hours to the hospital. You might scream “how can a woman in labour with scars on her uterus travel two hours on the back of a motorbike on terrible road?” To which I can offer only an insufficient answer.

Because she must

But one challenge remains – Lucy has no money. And the motorbike transport needs money, as does the ambulance driver. She needs about 20 US dollars in total, not a huge amount even here but still money Lucy doesn’t have. But this time everything might just be OK, because the rich white man is here. The rich white man who can pull 20 bucks out of his pocket and not even notice it has gone. The rich white man who 10 years ago used to earn that 20 dollars in a mere half an hour. The rich white man who used to earn the same amount in a week as our incredible midwife Scovia who’s skills might save Lucy’s life earns in a full year of hard work.

This dragon who hoarded his wealth, is about to flick one of his thousand gold coins towards a suffering mother who might then survive the day. Should this dragon feel good about that? Am I somehow a good person because I “helped” someone with 20 dollars?

$#!%loads of money in this world

There’s Ugandan book that you can buy on the bus and in the market entitled “Why have you chosen to be poor when there is so much money in this world?” That could be a good question, if it wasn’t for the “chosen” part and the poverty shaming (we’ll get to that). There is in fact $#!%loads of money in this world, more than enough to go around. The per capita GDP on this humble earth is US$11,000 a year for every woman, man and child. With some change in our global systems we could all happily live on that much money. There’s more than enough money in this world to transport this woman to hospital. More than enough even to transform the healthcare infrastructure so that her transport and healthcare could be free.

But unfortunately that won’t happen tonight. The $#!%loads of money does not reach midwife Scovia, let alone labouring woman Lucy. And why is that?

Because we are dragons

A lot of us are dragons of various sizes, hoarding our wealth as we build our personal or family empire. Us dragons pour our money into bigger and bigger dragons dens (houses), bank accounts with many zeros and the kind of lifestyle the other half of the world can only dream of.

And the dragon problem is getting worse. Inequality during the pandemic has skyrocketed across the globe. In America during the pandemic, the top 1% of Americans looted an incomprehensible 50 Trillion dollars from the bottom 90% of the population. Those dragons must need a massive cave just to store that much gold. An estimated 300 new HUGE dragons (billionaires) were also spawned during the pandemic, on average one a day.

Many of us smaller dragons in Western countries like to take aim at much bigger dragons like Bezos and Musk, who to be fair are twisted enough to fly into space for fun while a global pandemic rages. Instead of cavorting into space, those two could have paid to vaccinate the whole of Africa for coronavirus by now*.

But I digress, because we are indeed dragons too, not just Jeff and Elon. Most of you reading this are rich, perhaps richer than you realise. If you own assets worth more than just $90,000, you hoard more gold than 90% of humans. If you have just $4000 of assets to your name, you are richer than half the people on the earth. I’m not saying this to evoke guilt, only to bring us to the realisation that yes, you and I might just both be dragons.

How did I become a dragon?

Well most of it was probably chance. There may have been sound decisions and hard work along the way, but your path to a healthy hoard was largely decided even before you were born. You won the lottery, congratulations! Or perhaps more accurately a series of lotteries. Two lotteries define the lions share of how rich we will become. Your birth country, and your parents’ wealth

Lottery 1: Your birth country. For me I spun New Zealand, and straight up won the lottery. Your birth country usually has the biggest effect on how much money you will be able to earn and save. A minimum wage earner in New Zealand might not feel lucky because they will understandably compare themselves to their richer neighbours. But by age 40 or 50, many minimum wage earners in New Zealand will find themselves in the top 10% of the world’s richest people. Even an unemployed New Zealander has a higher living standard than our amazing midwife Scovia, who is tertiary educated and gainfully employed but earns just $120 a month. While unemployed in New Zealand though, you will probably live in a house with more than one room (Scovia has a hut), have running water, electricity, free high quality education for your kids, free healthcare and perhaps even a car! I’m yet to meet a Ugandan nurse who owns a car.

Lottery 2: Your parent’s wealth. Even here in Uganda, if you are born to the tiny percentage who are rich, you will have a decent chance to amass a healthy hoard. While Uganda isn’t rich enough to provide your children with the ingredients for financial success, the good education and healthcare your children need can be bought. Even in richer countries, it has been demonstrated that you are better off being born rich than having ability or talent. In the lead author’s words

“People with talent often don’t succeed. What we found in this study is that people with talent that come from disadvantaged households don’t do as well as people with very little talent from advantaged households.”

Lottery 3, 4, 5 etc.. Your race, gender, orientation, neural make up and countless other dice were also rolled before you were born that might affect your potential to stash cash in this harsh world.

The lotteries of life are real. So perhaps we should not feel too guilty about our dragon status, because it mostly happened due to factors outside of our control. For the same reason we shouldn’t be proud of whatever hoard we have amassed. Much of the reason we are rich was probably because of our favourable background, more than our back breaking hard work. For the most part we don’t “choose” to be rich or poor, the lottery decides.

But can we shed our scales?

So what can we do about it? Can we shed our scales? I’m not going to espouse my personal opinions on potential systematic changes like tax or universal basic income, but instead focus on three steps all of us dragons can take to change ourselves and shed our scales.

1. Realise you are a dragon. This may be the hardest step of all. It’s tempting and easy to tell ourselves and others that we are in fact one of the financial strugglers, usually by comparing ourselves to an even richer dragon. I’m afraid there’s always someone richer, unless you are Jeff. Once we realise though that we actually do have a $#!%load of money at least by global standards, we are set free to do something about it and take steps 2 and 3.

2. Disperse your hoard. Whether through personal connections or high impact charities, it might be time to start dispersing your hoard. If you’re interested in the best ways to give money to make the biggest difference, check out this thing I prepared earlier. You won’t be alone, giving away large amounts of money is no longer longer a fringe or religious activity. Through the movement “Give What You Can”, over 7000 people (many very young) have pledged to give at least 10% of their income to effective charities for the rest of their lives – a beautiful commitment.

I also want to personally thank a growing group of insanely generous partners and friends who have given away huge portions of their stash, often thousands of dollars at a time towards launching health centers in remote places like Pwunu Dyang through OneDay Health

3. Shift our future focus from stashing gold, to making a better world. We are so blinded by all our dragon friends with their huge hoards, we feel the need to keep up with the Jones’s by making our hoard bigger and bigger and BIGGER. When we realise we have more than enough to thrive, we can choose to change our life’s trajectory. Whether it’s through choosing a job which makes the world better, volunteering for charity or our struggling neighours, or even earning lot’s of money for the express purpose of giving it away, there are plenty of ways we can shed our scales or at least become better dragons. Be inspired by Gandalf, who knows a thing or two about dragons.

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo. “So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

And while the committed, talented, skilled and grossly underpaid Scovia rushed around to orchestrate the saving of Lucy’s life, I put my head in my useless hands and cried. I cried at my own iniquity, I raged at the unequal, unfair and unnecessary state of this precious earth we call home, but in the end I allowed myself more than a sliver of hope.

“Well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off … And there was I as smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had been… and there it was lying on the grass: only ever so much thicker, and darker, and more knobbly-looking than the others had been. Then he caught hold of me – I didn’t like that much for I was very tender underneath now that I’d no skin on – and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly delicious and as soon as I started swimming and splashing I found that all the pain had gone from my arm. And then I saw why. I’d turned into a boy again…”

Dragon Eustice has his scales shed – C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader 


* Lucy is not her real name
* Conservative estimates of over 7 billion dollars spent by Bezos and Musk on their space race would have been enough to buy enough to vaccinate the 1.4 billion Africans twice.

A few years ago, Sofia offered to help OneDay Health with the non-glorious, time consuming task of counting huts to help estimate population of healthcare black holes. She’s now running a blog and podcast on the Harvard Public health review, and we had a great wide ranging conversation about local health, global health, OneDay Health and a bunch of other stuff

Here’s an overview on different parts of the conversation – feel free to dip in to a few minutes that you’re interested in!

1-7 mins: What Tessa and I are are up to in Uganda
8-9 mins: Early response to coronavirus in Gulu, Uganda
10-18 mins: Community health and Global health
18-35 mins: The OneDay Health story and reflections
35-40 mins: Coronavirus lockdown and uganda
40-46 mins: Inequality in corona vaccine rollout
47-48 mins: Nationalism and money wastage challenges global health efforts
49-50 mins: What can anyone do to help in global health?
50-54 mins: “Preferential option for the poor” – what drives our work

As a rule (with VERY few exceptions), NGOs should do one thing, one activity and do it well. Most household NGO names do the opposite, but many great NGOs out there both large and small do one thing very well and have enormous impact.

The Against Malaria Foundation distribute mosquito nets. GiveDirectly give cash transfers to the poorest people. Doctors without borders provide quality medical care in unstable areas. They do one thing, do it again and again, and do it well. On the other hand, most big NGOs do a large range of unrelated activities and usually don’t do many of them well. Here’s a couple of screenshots NGO web pages, where they outline their large range of unrelated activities.

So why should an NGO avoid doing so many activities? Why shouldn’t an NGO mix in some education projects, drilling boreholes and agricultural trainings? To be Effective, NGOs should display the 3 Es Expertise, Experience and Efficiency – and unfortunately these 3 Es are impossible to achieve over a wide range of activities. And to add the icing on the cake the Evidence backs up the theory that the best NGOs only do……. one thing.

• Expertise: Any organization that does a wide range of activities will at best be a jack of all trades and master of none. NGO workers here in Northern Uganda constantly work in areas where they have no formal training – they try hard but are not experts. In the morning an NGO worker with a general degree in development studies might train people how to run a savings and loans group, while in the afternoon they run a focus group on domestic abuse. The next day they try and teach poor farmers the best way to plant maize. These NGO workers are experts at no part of their daily job. They are neither accountants nor counsellors nor agriculturalists, but they are forced do an average job in all those areas. NGOs do hire experts (often temporarily) to assist and run their programs, but this is far from universal.

I’m a doctor, and once attended a “training” on malaria partially run by a guy with a degree in public administration. It was terrible, the poor guy tried hard, but how could someone with no expertise expect to teach medical professionals? We wouldn’t tolerate this in developed countries, why do we tolerate it in Uganda? An NGO can’t maintain expertise in a range of unrelated fields

• Experience: You trust Macdonalds (maybe) to make you a burger because they’ve made billions of them and have built a reputation. Whatever we think about Macdonalds, they are experts at making cheap burgers. Lionel Messi is the best football player (maybe) in the world not just because he has talent, but because he has played football for over 20,000 hours. He has a wealth of experience at doing one thing well. Macdonalds isn’t about to start up a hairdressing chain, and neither is Messi going to start playing professional tennis.

The same goes with NGOs. I trust Doctors without Borders to provide top quality medical care in conflict situations because their operation is run by experts who have experience doing it many times before. Doing the same thing over and over again is the only way to gain real mastery. To learn what works and what doesn’t, to become more efficient, to become the best. This doesn’t mean that an NGO shouldn’t change and adapt gradually all the time and even branch out to related activities, but it does mean that the same NGO shouldn’t do a spattering of wildly different things, like mediate land conflicts today and teach sewing tomorrow.

• Efficiency: When you aren’t an expert at what you are doing and you don’t have a lot of experience, you waste your donors’ time and money – your work is inefficient. You set up projects and perform activities slowly and inefficiently. A recent 5 year multi million dollar project here supported health centers to deliver high quality maternal health – a noble goal. Unfortunately the project took over a year to set up and only actually supported health centers for 2.5 years – half the total project time. The project was doomed to be inefficient from the start, because the organization running the multi-miilion dollar project wasn’t an expert healthcare provider. They had to start from scratch, build a team, hire experts, consult consultants before even getting started.

Healthcare initiatives should only be run by healthcare focused organisation which already provide quality healthcare. Education initiatives should be run by education focused NGOs which which already provide quality education support.  When the Against Malaria Foundation” distribute mosquito nets, they don’t waste months and millions of dollars planning and developing the project. What they do isn’t a project at all, it’s their regular work They have distributed nets times before countless times. They know what to do, know the challenges they will face and how to overcome them. They have expertise and experience, which makes them efficient and they don’t waste stacks of generously donated cash.

• Evidence: The highest rated NGOs do only one thing. If you aren’t convinced by these arguments, then look at the evidence. I love the adage “An ounce of evidence is worth more than a pound of theory”. Givewell are the biggest organization that looks at which charities are the most cost effective* – charities that do the most good for each dollar they spend. ALL NINE of their top charities , and ALL NINE of their standout charities , do only one thing, and do it well. That’s right, all 18 charities which made their cut, do one thing, do it again and again, and do it well. Keep in mind though that Givewell only rate large NGOs, so many small organisations may also be highly cost effective, but don’t meet their size threshold for assessment.

So when the pitfalls of doing many things badly are so clear, why do most of the most of the biggest NGOs do exactly the opposite? Why do they continue to do many different activities poorly and inefficiently, wasting lots of money?

1. NGOs follow the money. One major reason NGOs do many different activities, is to chase funding. Every year, the mood of major funders like USAID and DFID changes. One year a funder might give 10 million dollars to agriculture projects, but the next year 5 million to  healthcare projects and 5 million to climate change. To access all of these pots of money, your NGO has to have activities in all of these areas. You need an agriculture project AND a healthcare project AND a climate change project. Right now in Northern Uganda, money had been flooding in for agriculture and climate change mitigation, so NGOs (large and small) scramble to design projects to access that cash even if they have no expertise or experience in the are. On the other hand If your NGO specializes in only one activity, you limit the money you can access. Unfortunately, doing a whole lot of activities badly can be a better way to raise money than doing one very well.  

•  “Holistic help” is a better fundraising story than doing one “boring” activity. Stories can be dangerous. Saying “We bought Filder a school uniform, gave her food ever day and paid all her school fees, now she hopes to become a doctor” makes a better story than “we handed out deworming pills to 10,000 school children”. Even though handing out the deworming pills might actually be a better way to spending money helping more Filders become doctors.
  
  Stories that show you’re helping the whole person, or even the whole community bringing about “holistic change” sound wonderful and attract funding, but as charity evaluator Givewell showed with their assessment, holistic approaches don’t work as well as focused ones. You’ll help childrens’ education more by deworming 1000 schoolkids, rather then buying 10 kids a uniform, books and pens. You’ll improve childrens’ health more by giving out 200 malaria nets, then by providing 10 kids with a “holistic” combination of health talks, nutritious food and vegetable seeds. The story isn’t as good, and it goes against our instincts, but we should beware the dangerous “holistic” narrative.

So where should I give my money?
My message is simple. Give to NGOs who do one thing, and do it well. This means staying away from many household NGO names. Most big charities have fallen deep into the pattern of doing a wide range of activities, and are horribly ineffective and inefficient. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you should only give to the large “Givewell” charities however. There are many other smaller organisations, for example here in Gulu Uganda our own OneDay Health (blatent plug) which provides remote healthcare in remote areas, and a fantastic literacy NGO Read4life that have proven they know how to help kids read, and could use your support

What if my NGO already does many activities?
If you’re still doing a wide range different activities, the time to start changing is now. Figure out what you are really good at and focus on that. Work on shifting from an organization that does an average job at 10 things, to an organization that does great job at one (or at least a few) activities.

As always, am super keen to hear your feedback and have a conversation in the comments, on facebook, or through e-mail (which you can findin the “contact” section of the blog”