There a number of fields of industrial development that create quite a number of jobs and bankroll billions around the world. The better known culprits include oil, computers, mobile telephony and pharmaceuticals.

The identity of one of the biggest players, however, is secreted away in our collective ignorance.

There is no shortage of keen eyed, breathlessly enthusiastic ladies and gentlemen with grand ideas of world peace, lions laying down with lambs, no war and no hunger. They look through life with rose tint glasses, fondly envisaging an Eden on earth.

What holds these people in common are beliefs in nebulous ideals like foreign aid, strategic papers, Jeffrey Sachs, Live Aid and other such.

One of the biggest of these is the concept of poverty eradication.

A couple of weeks ago I was enthusiastically informed over lunch that poverty eradication was inevitable. The choking noise I made was not the food going down the wrong way but a superhuman effort to check what was undoubtedly going to be a very long burst of laughter.

Anybody with any rose tinted ideals about the possibility of poverty eradication had better get them out of their heads because

Poverty is one of the biggest employers, and what’s more, has created some of the biggest gravy trains in history

Poverty has created a proliferation of global bodies, departments, companies, organizations, boards as well as a host of jobs that allows millions of people and dozens of governments to butter their bread.

Poverty has created opportunities for everyone, no matter what field there are in. Poverty has allowed characters who would have otherwise faded into the yesteryear like Bob Geldof to get their vaguely belligerent countenances on televisions around the world, and his own tele-documentary, Geldof in Africa, where he managed to pass through Africa with fleeting contact with technology and architecture.

Poverty has allowed NGOs to proliferate all over the world, purporting to be working round the clock to deliver man from his poverty and deliver him to a world of manna, wine and cake here on earth.

Poverty has allowed countries to earn still more money, for its coffers and for its people.

One of the biggest ironies of all time that inexplicably escapes notice is that the bodies and structures that are mandated to eliminate poverty are inherently working against their own existence and are expected to succeed.

I would welcome the input from anyone of the opinion that Live 8 was anything more than a glorious, noisy and free concert where people got the ludicrous notion that snapping their fingers would propel the world leadership into action.

As a matter of fact, the instant the last amplifier was packed into a lorry and the last mobile toilets was carted away, the whole thing faded into the collective world’s memory. All that remained was the aroma from the mobile toilets, the trampled grass from the fans, and the puke from the more inebriated fans.

In fact the only people who remember the event were the quieter residents of Edinburgh, and they undoubtedly did not think much of having their sleep interrupted by all the noise.

There is no way that poverty is going to be eliminated. There are too many vested interests, too many gravy trains, too many pockets being lined by poverty, and no one is about to kill the golden goose, the thread of bird flu notwithstanding.

HUNGER

Take for example a very simple scenario like famine in Kenya. As we speak some 1.3 million odd Kenyans are suffering the combined effects of debilitating drought and a devastatingly incompetent government that would be hard pressed to hit the water if it fell out of its collective boat, that has delivered the hungry into the arms of a famine.

The President, rubbing sleep from his eyes, climbs down from his fence and sends a passionate appeal for food aid, ten minutes after authorizing an increase of 100,000 shillings in the benefits of cabinet ministers, the rationale being that cabinet ministers are not sufficiently renumerated for the tireless work they do.

It is here that the gravy train begins to chuff.

George Bush authorizes 100 million dollars to purchase corn. This corn is trucked to the sea and loaded onto ships that sail on to Kenya. These ships are then offloaded and the corn is shipped to the starving masses.

Not clear yet?

Let us look at the actual events

Secretary: There’s someone here to see the President. She says its very urgent. It’s about the famine in Kenya
White House Chief Of Staff (COS): We’re about to go into a meeting on precisely that issue so send her in!

{Enter guest}

COS: Well?
Newcomer: My name is Na Yvette. I have some ideas about helping with the famine in Kenya.
COS: Have you run these ideas by Dick Cheney?
Yvette: If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not. I have this feeling that I’ll be shot down.
COS: Fair enough. Your idea?
Yvette: Wouldn’t’t it be faster and cheaper to buy corn from farmers in Kenya, or even Uganda and Tanzania rather than wait all those months to ship it from here? The people are starving now!

It is at this point that a beefy farmer of considerable girth, smelling powerfully of cow and mint juleps, rises to his feet, spurs jingling.

“Begging your pardon suh, my name’s Billy Ray Cobb, president of the Kansas Farmers association and I do, yes I do suh, urge you not to take this lady’s idea seriously and remove, ye suh, remove the food from the mouth of babes.”

A second man with a striking resemblance to Popeye rises to his feet.

“Aaaaah — ka — ka — ka — ka! I laugh at this suggestion, Mr. President. I have hungry children to feed as well. My name is Bill Panty, president, CEO and Chairman of Panty Line Shipping.”

A third man rises to his feet. “And I, sirs, am Jeffrey G String, head of the G String trucking line. I too oppose that notion.”

President: You see, Yvette, we buy the corn from Billy Ray, and pay him well for it. Then the G String company comes on board to truck the corn to the ports, and here we see the Panty Line. Come into play I mean, and we pay him to ship the corn to Nairobi. So you see, if I follow your suggestion I’d be putting hundreds and hundreds of Americans out of work.
Yvette: But that takes months and months! People will die if we do it that way! Isn’t life sacred?
Cobb: I think I need to get you invited to go hunting with Dick Cheney. I would especially urge you to keep that feathered hat you have on.

CONSTRUCTION

When large segments of the women folk are having hour long discussions speculating on who Carlos Daniel is going to marry, and large segments of the men folk are arguing who will take home the Champion’s League, and all of them when to meet in the evening, the finer niceties of donor driven construction pass silently by.

Foreign Secretary: Well, Mr. Minister, I see in the papers that you are trying to upgrade your Mombasa road to make it a dual carriageway from Mombasa to Kisumu.
Minister: Yes sir. We’re very excited about the project. We want to do it in cement instead of bitumen, and right now we’re about to put out a tender to local companies. The construction sector could do with some of this work.
Foreign Secretary: Hmm ….

Two weeks later

Foreign Secretary: Ah, Mr. Minister. Good news. We’re giving you a loan to build that road we were talking about. Isn’t that great?
Minister: Uh … loan? What loan? What for? We’ve already set aside the money in this year’s budget. All systems are go.
Foreign Secretary: But this is a special loan. You don’t pay anything for five years, and then the interest rate is only 10%. I’m sure you can find some other use for that money.
Minster: Well… you’ve got a point there. I’ll take it.
Foreign Secretary: Excellent. This project will be a great success. We have already identified contractors to carry out the work. It will be a consortium of John Peel Construction of London and Halliburton Construction, USA.
Minister: Halliburton? Is that the same Halliburton owned by Dick Cheney?
Foreign Secretary: Is it? I don’t think so. Sounds like a shot in the dark. Ha ha! A coincidence. So anyway, change that tender to eliminate the cement construction thing. The consortium will tender and they should get the tender.
Minister: But …
Foreign Secretary: Take it from me old boy, cement is overrated. Let’s use tried and tested technology for this work. By the way, can you organize tax holidays for the companies?

And so it happens. Bamburi Cement, East African Portland Cement and Athi River mining are perplexed on Monday morning when the government revises the tender to allow bitumen contractors to participate, effectively knocking them out of contention.

Within the week the foreign secretary, clearly having taken notes from his Prime Minister, smiles toothily at the camera as he hands over a cheque of 500 million pounds sterling earmarked for road construction to the roads minister.

The cement manufacturers bitterly rue the opportunities there may have been had they gotten the contracts.

After the press has left the Foreign Secretary taps the Minister on the shoulder.

“You know, old boy, it’ll save you a lot of time and bureaucracy we just process the payments for you for Halliburton and John Peel Construction. Expect communication from the contractors within the week. Give us that cheque. I’ll deliver and process everything for you.”

And that evening the Foreign Secretary lands in the UK with the cheque he left with having moved from his left coat pocket to his right. By the close of business the following day two construction companies are pleasantly surprised to be awarded work they had never tendered for.

Five years later the new Finance minister finds to his amazement that there is a 5 million pound repayment scheduled. He tries and fails to establish why a loan that was never asked for was given, and there was already money to effect the construction.

He is also puzzled why the cement industry is so hostile towards the government.

NGOs

I was informed just this weekend that Kenya hosts the highest number of NGOs in the world. I’ve not found this out for a fact but I am inclined to believe it. The better known international ones include HABITAT, UNHCR, UNDP, ICRAF, ILRI, FAO and a host of other 3, 4 and 5 letter acronyms. Hazard a guess how many people are employed by these organizations.

If by some stroke of fate poverty was eradicated, every last one of them would be out of a job, because most are run on money aimed at funding projects to eradicate poverty.

Then there are the niche local NGOs, which piggy back on very fashionable clichés. These include

• Educating the girl child
• Protecting the girl child
• Feeding the girl child
• Empowering the girl child
• HIV/AIDS education
• HIV/AIDS Eradication
• Poverty Eradication

You would not believe how many NGOs are merrily making short work of donor funding ostensibly to tackle serious issues.

You’d be amazed just how many NGOs are conducting research into “The effects of education on the girl child”

Uh huh.

Precisely 95% of the budget is spent on the following

• Vehicles and fuel for the top managers
• Salary and allowances for top managers
• Per diems for top mangers (must have some expatriates in there somewhere)
• Miscellaneous expenditure

If there is any left, then the girl child can finally be gotten round to.

An interesting study that a prospective NGO can do is how much anti-HIV/AIDS money ends up in the pockets and G-strings of ladies of the night, or the more smooth talking beach boys. The results I assure you will be an eye opener.

MORAL

It is in the vested interests of very many people, and very many industries, and very many countries that poverty remain precisely where it is. The preferred status quo is one where external observers see a lot or running but the reality is that the running is on the spot.

Dubiously benevolent gestures like unsecured loans and laughable inane ones like worldwide concerts are shows of very clever shadow boxing that merely leave feelings of goodwill and empathy in the breasts of many. Will Smith without a doubt had a very good night’s sleep after snapping his fingers on television around the world in his strike towards poverty eradication.

If Tony Blair and George Bush were serious about poverty eradication they would do well to consider genuine measures like allowing fair trade to flourish, and resisting the (considerable) temptation to make quick gains off some African leaders whose intelligence levels are dangerously close to moronic.

Eliminating poverty has been a very happy pipe dream throughout the ages, and the proponents (generally the poor) fondly forget is that wealth does not make one rich — poor people do. The rich flourish because of the poor.

Attempts to address this situation have been tried and failed.

If none of us is poor, can then any of us claim to be rich?

Poverty will never be eradicated by entities whose existence is based around the ideal of eliminating poverty, or those that derive benefits off the status quo. Besides politicians, it is not natural to see an organism rush headlong towards its doom.

Wake up and smell the coffee. Be careful who you regard your Messiah

Run DMC – Mary Mary