How
much can Raytheon, Mastercard, Nokia, Monsanto and the like be
trusted to invest in long-term outcomes in the global South? When you
see the actors behind U.S. ‘aid and development’ in Africa, is it
any wonder that African leaders would look for any other partner to
work with?
by
Jim Carey
Part
2 - U.S. investment and aid: philanthropy is business
In order
to better understand how U.S. aid and investment in infrastructure
work in Africa, it’s best to look at the Western corporations that
function as “philanthropy contractors.” One of these U.S.-based
philanthropic giants that dominate aid and development in Africa is
the well-known Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
One
prime example of how U.S. aid organizations operate in Africa is a
Gates Foundation initiative that was launched in Nairobi, Kenya,
where the foundation created a series of “financial inclusion labs”
in a partnership with Mastercard. The Mastercard project, launched in
2014, was a part of the Gates Foundation’s “Financial Services
for the Poor” program, meant to provide more access to “digital
payment options” for people in the global South.
Publicly,
what this project did was provide electronic payment services to
citizens of Nairobi because payment-processing giant Mastercard just
felt bad they didn’t have them.
In
reality, what the project did was secure the market of Nairobi and
the users of the Mastercard system as customers for the corporation,
without Mastercard actually having to risk any of its own money.
Mastercard even confirmed that this was their reasoning in a press
release issued at the time, which said the grant from the Gates
Foundation gave Mastercard access to “new markets that may
otherwise be commercially unviable” by paying all of their costs to
enter the market.
The
Gates Foundation uses its influence to aid other corporate partners
to secure contracts in Africa too. One such company that Bill
Gates is a personal cheerleader for is agriculture giant Monsanto,
which the Gates Foundation portrays as a key partner in ending world
hunger. Monsanto has a reputation for using the vulnerability of
countries in need of agricultural aid to its own advantage to crush
local production networks, as it attempted to do in Haiti after the
2010 earthquake, which eventually led to protests by farmers, with
some even burning Monsanto seeds.
These
kinds of protests surrounding Monsanto’s effects on local economies
have also played out in Africa — one example being Kenya, where GMO
imports were banned in order to protect Kenyan agriculture. When the
government tried to reintroduce GMO food, all sectors of Kenyan
society took to the streets to voice their opposition. Since
implementing this ban, Kenya has faced pressure from none other than
the Gates Foundation, which is spending its time, money and political
capital on behalf of Monsanto to reverse the ban on GMO imports.
The
Gates Foundation even practices this form of philanthropic blackmail
at home in the U.S. The prime example of this was the Foundation’s
championing of “Common Core” programs in schools. Common Core,
which continues to be highly unpopular among U.S. parents, is an
initiative pushed by the Gates Foundation, with pressure applied
through the policy that the charity would not provide money to
schools that didn’t implement their approved curriculum.
Clearly,
these practices aren’t limited strictly to the Gates Foundation,
Mastercard, Monsanto, or any other single U.S. corporation. Another
example that was highlighted last year during the U.S. presidential
election was the Clinton Foundation, its donors, and its contract
recipients in reconstruction and aid projects.
It is in
this framework that one can see that the U.S. philanthropy industry
doesn’t necessarily act as an altruistic charity but rather as a
source of corporate subsidies disguised as altruism.
These
foundations partner with everyone, from defense contractors to
foreign despots — convenient and seemingly indiscriminate couplings
that should make anyone question their motives and how well the
corporations responsible for many of the world’s problems can
really be trusted to solve them.
How much
can Raytheon, Mastercard, Nokia, Monsanto and the like be trusted to
invest in long-term outcomes in the global South? When you see the
actors behind U.S. ‘aid and development’ in Africa, is it any
wonder that African leaders would look for any other partner to work
with?
It just
so happens that Africa has found a much more reliable partner that is
rising to the rank of a global superpower.
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