The System of International Aid

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

INTRODUCTION:

Hello everyone! My name ist Stephan Kyburz. And this is the 44rd episode of the Rules of the Game podcast.

As an advocate of democracy and discussant of democratic institutions, what I cherish and promote are democratic values and rights – one of them is the right of self-determination. Individuals, communities, peoples and nations should have the right of self-determination. That is the right of people to choose their own governments, to decide on their own rules, customs and beliefs; to live empowered lives without oppression by foreign systems and regulations over which people have no control and no say. People should be in charge of and jointly decide on the institutions that govern their lives.

Now in a complex globalized world that is obviously hard to achieve. What affects people’s lives are not only the laws and rules that are present in a community or a country, but also systems of global governance, international trade, and international aid. But especially in the system of international aid, people in the Global South clearly seem to lack any claim to self-determination.

How international aid is allocated and employed is decided in London, Paris, Washington, Geneva, and Brussels. While the stated intentions of billions of dollars of aid flows are promoting development and eradicating poverty, underlying these decisions are often political, economic, and security considerations of the donor countries. People’s lives in the Global South are externally affected by a system and concepts that were created and designed far, far away, and without their consultation or approval.

As you may already anticipate, this episode is a little different from my usual conversations. Instead of discussing a specific set of political institutions, I want to present an alternative perspective on the system and institutions of international aid. To me it seems important to discuss the vast aid industry that has emerged over decades and that lacks democratic merit on the receiving end and is hence oppressive in its own way. It is in some sense complicit in preventing people from living self-determined lives.

With Degan Ali I discuss the system of international aid based on her inside experience of working in the sector for over two decades. She speaks truth to power and that really takes some bravery to do, and I honor that. Degan Ali shares many compelling stories from her home country Somalia, but also from several years of growing up and studying in the US. She explains how local agricultural markets were destroyed by foreign interference and how the Somali government is at the whim of foreign donor countries, instead of being accountable to its own people.

Listening to her perspective is really important and powerful, even though I don’t agree with all her viewpoints. With her voice and her work she tries to find ways to liberate Somalia from the traditional aid paradigm. As it is pointless to wait for the international aid system to change or even to leave Somalia, what seems the most promising way forward is to empower local civil society organizations and to raise their political profile to increase their leverage on the political stage.

Degan Ali has been at the forefront of shifting power for decades. She is the Executive Director of Adeso, an organization that made cash transfers a significant, legitimate method of delivering aid to vulnerable populations, beginning with the first large-scale cash transfer program during the 2011 Somalia famine. She is also a Rockefeller Foundation Global Fellow for Social Innovation, a contributor to the Overseas Development Institute, the Humanitarian Policy Group and the Global Food Security Journal. Her work has been featured on The New York Times, Al Jazeera and The Guardian. 

You can find all of her contributions on her website. You find links to all references in the show notes.

I am your host, Stephan Kyburz, and this is the forty-third episode of the Rules of the Game podcast. I am a political economist with a PhD in Economics from the University of Bern in Switzerland. And I previously held positions at the London School of Economics and Political Science and the Center for Global Development.

You find a full transcript of this episode on my website rulesofthegame.blog. Please send any feedback to rulesofthegame.ddi@gmail.com. If you like the podcast and want to do me a favor, please give it a 5-star rating. If you’d like to support my work, consider buying me a coffee at buymeacoffee.com and you find the link to it on my website rulesofthegame.blog. 

Without further ado, please enjoy this conversation with Degan Ali.

DISCUSSION: 

Stephan Kyburz: Degan Ali, welcome to the Rules of the Game podcast. It’s great to have you on the show.

Degan Ali: Thank you for having me, Stephan.

Stephan Kyburz: My first question as always is what is your first memory of democracy or of politics in general?

Degan Ali: I would say not democracy necessarily, but maybe of politics. My first, I think real interaction with it was probably at the age of 9, when we came to the US leaving Somalia, not because we were refugees, but because my father was military attaché here for the Somali government and we were diplomats. And one of the most, coming from a country that had some of the best education in the continent, if not the world, and the assumption because we had come from Africa was that we were completely ignorant and coming into the white schools in DC and Virginia. And then in Virginia, I remember the teacher, because English was not my first language and I didn’t speak English very well she would put me in the back of the classroom and basically ignore me. So I didn’t understand that. I took it as just because I didn’t speak English. Well, but at the same time, it didn’t feel right. And I remember complaining to my parents and my mother was just very angry about the whole thing and she’s a very assertive person and she immediately understood what was happening and she came into the classroom and she talked to the principal and complained and said, why are you relegating my child to the back of the classroom as if she’s an idiot? And if she doesn’t know English, she knows math, she knows science, she knows other subjects. So why don’t you try to communicate with her instead of just ignoring her? And how is she going to learn the language if she doesn’t interact? My mother speaks excellent English, very polished and went to school for some years in high school in the US. And frankly, I think they just didn’t know what to do with this educated black woman and this child. So that was my first experience with politics and race. And the idea that, you know, Africa was just backwards and we were just a bunch of ignorant people. And it’s, it’s, I think it’s not as simplistic as racism because there are elements of racism in there. But we had also similar experiences with the black kids in school who used to also make fun of me saying you’re from Africa. Do you guys swing on trees? And do you even have houses or is your houses on trees? Do you drive cars? So, yeah, all of that I think made me realize that it wasn’t just, it was definitely a form of racism, but there was a huge element of just lack of education and ignorance on the part of the American population in general about Africa. And I never felt less than, I never felt because, well, I knew where I was coming from. But I did kind of feel these people were just ignorant and I felt sorry for them, for their ignorance and their lack of exposure to the world. 

Stephan Kyburz: Did your experience change over time when you, you know, started being really proficient, I guess, in English? And because I guess it was a very impressive feeling right at the beginning of your journey in the US and maybe that bad feeling in the beginning that stuck with you over time?

Degan Ali: No, that feeling could have made me very angry and myself very racist in the sense that I would have just learned, I experienced quite a lot of overt racism from white people. But I also knew that it wasn’t just white people who were… found me just an oddity. It was also the black kids. So I could have chosen to be angry. And I didn’t. I actually felt sorry for them, more than I was angry. And I think it probably, that experience and subsequent experiences through my education system made me never feel that this was my home. It was the place I was going to stay forever. And I think it’s probably also that and the activism of my mother and her influence over me, I think made it very clear to me what I wanted to do with my life. I knew from day one of college that I wanted to go into the development space. I wanted to help my people and I wanted to go back to the continent. I didn’t want to sit in the US. I wasn’t one of those kids who comes into university, spending two years of their time, not knowing what degree to major in and blah, blah, blah, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. And I was like, OK, which degree is gonna help me get there. So I took a degree in international politics with a concentration of African studies in my bachelor’s. And so I think that’s the impact, the most monumental impact that had on me was that it informed my idea of not making this my home and going back home and also going back home to help my people. And because there was this impression the world had that my people were backwards and didn’t know anything and all of that. And of course, a lot of things changed from the age of nine to the time I was in university. The civil war had happened, my very well developed country had become a hub of refugees and you know, place where people were just running away from, instead of the memories I had of a child of a fairly developed, very sophisticated country in many ways. In the education system, the government’s capacity, what the government was doing for its people. Just in so many ways, far, far more advanced than many countries in the continent today, let alone in 1991 when the Civil War happened. So those changes happened in those years. And I think that those changes were also very monumental in making me feel like I had to go back home and help my people.

Stephan Kyburz: And at what age did you return home and started working in development?

Degan Ali: Trying to do the math. I think it was the age of 27. It was 1999. I came back after I got my masters and I worked for a few years in the US. I worked in the US in social work. So I worked with a lot of Children in black communities, in the South side of Chicago who were experiencing the criminal justice system at a young age. And I tried to help those Children and I did a lot of social work with those Children and they were also many of them were graduating from the… I mean, not the foster care but the state. Many of them were in group homes and the state was basically going to get them out of the system at the age of 18 when they become adults. So they have like, no plan to transition and be independent adults. So that’s what I did for a few years. And then I also worked with Amnesty International on the death penalty issue trying to eradicate the death penalty in the US. So I always say social work is the same as international development work. It’s just one is done domestically and one is done internationally for similar vulnerable communities.

Stephan Kyburz: So you really saw like both sides communities suffering by political failures, both in the US and in Somalia.

Degan Ali: Yeah. Yeah, I would say, yeah, I saw both sides and I understood, I think at a young age that the system that ensures that we stay in poverty, that is very colonial is not, the oppression is not just of us in Africa, but it’s also of communities in the global north. So I understood that, it’s one of the messages I’m constantly talking about with philanthropy right now is that when we start talking about decolonizing wealth in the US, we have to do the same thing internationally. Edgar’s book on decolonizing wealth was very instrumental in the domestic space. But the issues are the same whether you’re in the US or whether you’re in Canada or whether you’re in Africa or Asia. So it’s one of the things that I think the 1% and the governments in power, the imperialistic governments, they want to keep us divided and not make real solidarity and allyship across these communities.

Stephan Kyburz: Today I’d like to discuss your experiences with institutions in international development. And I know this is a big topic. There is so many aspects to it. There is the United Nations, International Organizations. There are what we call like western governments, there are governments in developing countries and they all play a role and especially also civil society organizations in developing countries. And you have so much experience. And I listened to some of your podcasts where you were a guest, you were interviewed and I was just impressed by how you speak truth to power and how much you believe in more fundamental change and you speak about the structural issues that are within the system. And so in one of the podcast episodes or even in two, I listened to, you said that as a Somali citizen, if you had like a magic wand and you could make the whole aid system or the whole international humanitarian system, leave the country, you would say yes, you should leave tomorrow. I was very impressed by that statement and I would like to know from you, how did you arrive at that very strong conclusion?

Degan Ali: Because I’ve been working in my country for over 20 years now. And I have seen the aid community in it’s, in all kind of ways. They’ve gone through so many global processes, transformative agenda, this change agenda, that change agenda, localization, all of these things have happened. We have seen a situation, I’ve been around when the World Bank had absolutely no interest in working with the Somalia… working in Somalia because there was no quote unquote strong government for it to deal with. And then I’ve seen it engage in Somalia and trying to help the government systems get back up and running. But there’s many reasons why I make that statement. One, I don’t see any tangible massive or substantive benefits that we have created for the people. Long term. The Western dominated system led by the UN and these OECD donors hasn’t left one piece of infrastructure in the country, new infrastructure after 30 years, there’s not one major road they’ve constructed, there’s not one major port they’ve constructed, they haven’t constructed massive agricultural infrastructure in the country in the South. Returned the South Somalia to its heyday of being the breadbasket of Somalia and being a country of exporting food instead of importing food, we have completely flipped the switch. Now we are an importer of all of our foods. It doesn’t make sense when we have so much agricultural production capacity. But I have seen WFP distribute food at the time of harvest in South when farmers have their harvest coming out and trying to sell it in the market and completely destroy local production. Like unintentionally doing that, bringing in imported food from Iowa and Wisconsin. I have seen the cash transfers that we pioneered that I was so proud of now being used as a lazy way to program. Even though I have been calling for a government registry of all aid beneficiaries, term I don’t like but I have been saying for 10/15 years, we need a government led beneficiary lists so that people are not being double or triple registered and nobody has heeded that call. Now we are in a situation where people in Mogadishu after the 2011 famine and leaving their farms and leaving the the bread basket of Somalia coming into the cities, to the capital city as IDP’s that they are doing what anybody would do, which is to take a WFP, be part of a WFP registration for a cash transfer, be part of an NRC database of cash transfer, be part of an Oxfam or Save the Children, whatever, it doesn’t make a difference, which name it’s all the same and people are doing, you know, they’re making very sophisticated decisions to game the system, because they see the system is broken, it’s not working. And they understand that there’s massive corruption, they understand that there’s massive wastage that takes place. So they have no respect for the aid system. And so these people instead of going back to farm in their farms they are getting paid $200, $150 every single month from aid programs. Why would I risk my life, go to Al Shabaab areas, risk weather conditions, maybe I won’t have a good harvest. Why do all of that when I could just sit in my IDP camp? Maybe do casual labor during the day, the days that there’s no money coming in and the days that there is money coming in, I just sit and just be part of these beneficiary roles. So we have created serious, serious dependency of these people. And all because nobody wants to actually invest in one single registry of beneficiaries in the country. They don’t trust the government to manage it, each agency doesn’t trust each other to manage it. And then I’ve seen like the investments, where’s the money, where is the real money going into? The money is not going into spurring the private sector. The private sector and the diaspora are the ones who are holding the country together. It’s not the aid. People think that the aid is the: what’s saving people’s lives. It’s not, it’s the private sector, it’s the diaspora’s remittances, it’s not aid and it’s not the government. And instead of saying, OK, now how do I spur private sector growth? How do I invest in the private sector? I’ll give you a very basic example. This is the one I gave yesterday to people. The UN runs a flight business to Somalia called UNHAS – United Nations Humanitarian air traffic or something. And they pay, I don’t know how many hundreds of millions of dollars to run this. The EU or, ATCO also have a flight system. 10/15 years ago I used to always Marvel, I was like, between these two agencies, they’re spending God knows how much money into flying expatriates, NGO workers, UN donors into Somalia. Why don’t they invest money, their money, a portion of it and the two big airline companies that were operating at that time, Daallo and Jubba and have them compete amongst themselves and say whoever meets these international standards, whoever can pass through this test, I’ll give you two years to get your systems up and ready and I’ll pump X amount of money into both of you. This is what NASA did to create space X. This is what NASA does to spur competition between Jeff Bezos group and Elon Musk’s group for this. You know, say I’m going to invest in this and um whoever meets these standards in the next two years is the one that we’re going to go with and use regularly instead of paying private chartered companies to fly us around. They didn’t do that 15 years ago right? Now there’s like at least seven Somali Airlines run by Somali business people, entrepreneurs, investors pull their money together and they’re running seven different companies. We’ve gone from two to like about seven. This is now an opportunity and I’m like, they’re going everywhere. They’re going to Kismayo, they’re going to Mogadishu, they’re going to not just the big cities, they’re going to smaller cities and they could potentially go to even more locations if there was investment put into them. So now there’s absolutely no reason in my opinion, for the competing alternative UN led donor led system of airlines that are going into Somalia, it’s actually harming the private sector and this is money that could be put into the private sector instead of giving these… And they’re not free flights. We as NGO’s we charge it to the projects but we pay, everybody pays for these flights, plus the subsidization that takes place by the donors. So ATCO heavily subsidizes their flights, other donors like USA ID heavily subsidized the WFP – UNHAS flights. It just, it boggles my mind that after 30 years now we are seeing private sector, putting their own money at the table, risking their own resources and you are not willing to help the airline industry in the country by saying I’m not going to run a parallel system that competes with the private sector. I’m actually going to support the private sector. What does that tell you? That tells me that these people have zero interest in the real development of Somalia and getting these people out of poverty. They want us to be perpetually dependent on the little crumbs that are thrown at us and be recipients of cash transfers or NFI’s or shelter or whatever unsustainable programs that they do rather than investing in real development, real infrastructure. They get angry. After the 2011 famine when Turkey came in and built their largest embassy in the world in Somalia, largest embassy in the world they built in Somalia. OK. So what does that do? That’s a massive statement of their commitment to the country of Somalia. And then in five years, they built more roads than the entire 30 years of aid from all OECD donors combined. Billions and billions of dollars. They have done more in five years in terms of real tangible infrastructure that you can feel, that you can touch in five years than the entire OECD donors combined, meaning including the biggest ones like USAID and UKAID others. So why do you get angry when people say we love Turkey? I mean, why, I mean, it’s just factual, it’s just basic understanding and this whole thing about the West’s narrative about China and all of that. Well, China is doing exactly what the Turkish are doing. The East in general has a different paradigm, different understanding of how to interact in Africa than the West has done. And 60,70 years of independence and we have not gotten what we need out of the West. And so now governments are looking to in other directions. And my last point is to say that as a Somali, I also know my government is very, very weak and has very little capacity and cannot resist. Western aid cannot resist. Chinese aid cannot resist anything. And let’s these governments, basically aid is coming with conditions is not for free. So when the US government is giving you hundreds of millions of dollars into security, they’re calling the shots on security and a lot of it is, by the way security sector, very little of it is in real development. They’re so focused on Al Shabaab. They’re not thinking about prevention. Like how do you get kids away from Al Shabaab is, you create jobs, you create industries, you create employment and there will be no Al Shabaab or very little influence of Al Shabaab. But that’s just not their long term thinking. They rather put a billion dollars into security than $100 million into job creation, infrastructure and agriculture and industries. It’s just, it’s so completely nonsensical and just irrational the way the system works. So as a Somali as a very proud Somali, I also recognize the weakness of my government in resisting these temptations, this money. And I know that they can’t resist it. They’re very weak and they will sign away our land, they will sign away our minerals, they will sign away our oil, they’ll sign away everything in a heartbeat. At least many of the ministers would and maybe this current government. So that’s my, my real fear. I don’t see that they have the understanding of what it means to be a sovereign nation and they have the willpower to resist all the temptations and be strong. And think about, ultimately, the next generation and three generations from now. And what are we leaving behind a legacy? Everybody’s thinking about now. What can I benefit for myself rather than what can I leave behind for my great grandchildren?

Stephan Kyburz: Thanks for sharing all these impressions and experiences. And if I understand you correctly, there was just a huge crowding out of domestic activities by the international AID system. You know, as you say, it kind of destroyed local agricultural markets. And as I heard in other interviews, it also, for example, the whole donation of clothes, you know, destroyed local textile markets, et cetera, et cetera. And even in this case of the airline business, it seems like that the international organizations or international interventions even prevented the local airlines from becoming established players. Now, my question is really regarding the government. Do you think that by all these foreign organizations working in Somalia that this kind of destroyed the social contract between the Somali people and its government? Or in other words said that you know, you say the Somali government is quite weak and I guess the circumstances were really difficult but that you know the international money that is flowing in is making it’s very tempting for the government to run off the money instead of really serving the people and establishing a social contract between the people and the government. Do you think that if there was less intervention from abroad, that the government would be stronger by now and hence the social contract between the people and the government would be in a better state?

Degan Ali: Yeah. Honestly, I’m… that’s why I said what I said in that podcast that you were referring to with Heba. And it’s a hard decision to watch my people die of hunger and thirst. But I believe now and I’m also a person of faith. And I also understand that in the end it’s God’s will, what will happen? It’s not me, it’s not the UN, it’s not the US government, it’s ultimately in God’s hands. But I also, I would rather leave us to our devices and let us fight it out, do whatever we need to do, get our house in order. You know, if we have to elect a benevolent dictator that will lead us through this transition stage, whatever it is that we decide to do, I’d rather we make those decisions ourselves, independent of outside influence and outside control. Leave us to our devices to sort it out. We will eventually sort it out if it takes us five years, if it takes us 10 years, if it takes us 20 years, we will sort it out. And I have not seen anything but harm that comes from influence of global North donors, whether it’s in Iraq or Afghanistan. If anything, I’ve only seen… They’ve destroyed very strong countries and governments. Gaddafi’s government was, had some of the highest literacy rates. They had free education, free health care. They had amazing social safety nets for their citizens. And he was their best friend until he said I’m going to create an African currency that is based on gold, not based on the dollar and he became a threat to the dollar and he had the receipts, he has the money to make that happen because he was collecting gold reserves all those years to make that happen. And so not only did we destroy his country and invade it in the most savage way and show a lesson to anybody that would think of doing what Gaddafi did. But we also took all their gold reserves. Where is the Libyan gold? Where is it now? It’s probably sitting somewhere in the US and the UK. So we literally pillaged an entire country and brought it to nothing overnight. So tell me, you know, what is the benefit of foreign intervention? How can you trust that kind of foreign intervention? That’s the extreme, of course, example. But I see a more benevolent, but it’s still insidious example. In Somalia, 30 years of aid has done absolutely nothing for our country in a real sense. And if anything, the West is just still interested about how do they control Somalia’s minerals and oil? That’s their biggest thing is how do they make sure that the governments, whatever government they put into place is a puppet that’s willing to give them what they want. There’s no real desire for lifting the millions of Somalis out of poverty and creating real sovereignty and financial independence for the country. So I have come to that very sad and tragic understanding because I’m part of the problem. I’m not placing myself out of the system. We, we are an NGO for 30 years. We’ve been in existence and we’ve been participating in the system for 30 years benefiting from it, getting funding from it. Which is why we are now making a massive pivot and saying we’re not taking bilateral funding, we’re not taking UN funding, we’re not taking INGO funding. And by the way, these guys, the INGOS are just puppets just like the local organizations. They don’t determine the kind of money and the priorities of the donors. It’s the donors, it’s the Americans who say I’m going to give X amount of dollars towards security or I’m going to give y amount of dollars towards democracy and human rights. Those are decisions not in the hands of these NGOS, they just implement whatever is out there. But those are decisions made by the governments and same thing with the World Bank and the IMF who controls those institutions. It’s the ones who have the voting power and they’re the donors and that’s the US and the EU countries and Canada and Japan. So it’s just, it’s a sad state of affair that we don’t have the government that can see the bigger picture. We don’t have the ministers that can see the bigger picture and understand what the long term objective of all of this is.

Stephan Kyburz: And one way for you as an NGO to try to grapple with the situation and kind of balance the issues was your initiative to bring more money to local NGOS also called localization. And you were involved in the grand bargain of the UN’s 25% Grand Bargain that was in 2016. And I think it was for you a way to try to bring more power to the local NGOS and local communities. What’s your assessment of that, you know, initiative now and how do you currently see how to empower local civil societies and NGOS?

Degan Ali: That is one of my, one of many theories of change is that if we do give more resources to civil society, particularly unrestricted multi year funding as an investment for civil society, then I think that civil society should get out of the business of service delivery, health education, water. We should get more into the business of advocacy and innovation and holding our governments accountable and creating international solidarity with global North civil society which are called INGOS for some reason. We’re not international but they are. I think that what I’m hoping is is that if we have a strong civil society that they will do what I’ve been trying to do in my small way, which is to influence the system and influence their government and all of that, if we have weak civil society, then it’s, there’s not nobody to hold the donors accountable. There’s nobody to hold the government accountable. There’s nobody to hold the private sector accountable. So that is one theory of change that I have and I’m still working hard to make that happen. But I also think that we can’t be waiting for the internationals to change. But we have to come up with our own solutions to our problems and we have to really truly develop some homegrown solutions to these issues and become very entrepreneurial. Support private sector development, support industries, industrialize so we can create more jobs for people. That’s also my other theory of change is that all of this is about creating jobs and lifting ourselves out of poverty and liberating ourselves from the aid paradigm from the aid system, whether you’re an NGO or whether you’re the people, the communities themselves. To do that we need some real different solutions than what exists right now. So as Adeso we’re doing a lot of investments and we’re trying to become, ourselves, financially independent and you know, practice what we preach so that we are liberated from the AID system. But the communities themselves need to be liberated from AID. The government itself needs to be liberated from AID. And has to start thinking about how do we generate resources for ourselves? How do we control our own resources? So, yeah, that’s my other theory of change. And I, I don’t think I’m going to be influential to the government of Somalia if I don’t have money, honestly, that’s the bottom line. So I have to figure out how we generate the resources so that we can become. Because the private sector that exists in Somalia right now is not a private sector that has an understanding at all about what’s going on and they have so much money sitting and they could themselves be constructing a toll road for instance, and with their own money, they could be constructing ports and helping to own it. They could be helping the government in so many ways but also continuously enriching themselves. It’s a win-win situation. They could be creating some amazing win-win situations that could help not just the government, but the citizenry, but they just, they don’t have this understanding. So instead of having negative influencers or apathetic influencers like the private sector or negative influence like international actors, my position is we have to earn some resources ourselves so that we can financially help the government see what that path is and see that it can be done on their own without caving in to international pressure.

Stephan Kyburz: So if I understand you correctly, your view is that service delivery should be moved closer to the government or at least away from NGOS and the local civil society organizations should be empowered and become also more political. Is that right? To hold the government accountable to liberate themselves from, from the whole aid industry to become more independent and powerful. But for that, they need also some funding.

Degan Ali: Yes, I mean this thing of non political, it’s such… I’ll try not to curse. It’s such baloney because everything is political when you are a $1 billion organization and you’re taking money from the US government and the British government, how are you saying to me that you’re not political when you are doing programs in government controlled areas of Syria and not in the rebel controlled areas of Syria, what are you doing except being political? When you are operating in non Taliban areas of Afghanistan and refuse to operate in Taliban areas and service needy Children and women who are still needy even though they’re under the Talib, what are you doing except being political? You make explicitly political decisions and when you are taking the money of the invaders, how are you not being political? When you’re taking us government money to operate in Iraq or Afghanistan? How are you not political? So it’s complete BS, to me this whole idea of not being political and they love to use that against us in the South. But they, it’s ok for them to define it for themselves in the North and continuously be political. They are being purposefully political but in the wrong areas for the wrong outcome. So I do think that we need to embrace the idea of being political and not run away from it and see it as an important role that we need to be playing. And I’m not saying we have to support a political party or another political party, but we definitely have to recognize all of this is political and we have to support political movements that are trying to change the system for our people. Whatever brand or label that they have been given by the North. That’s not how we should be judging ourselves, our peers in the continent or in Asia. And I think we need to be working together as the global South. I don’t think… We need to stop talking about the G7 and G20. We need to start talking about G77 and how the G77 really push back against the G7 and the G20. Or especially the G7. I think that’s what we should be thinking about is that how do we reclaim our sovereignty? How do we destroy UN Security Council veto power? So that the UN works for everybody’s interest and not for the interest of a few. How do we talk about changing the trade rules and coming together a block to the WTO and saying, here’s our trade rules. This is what we’re going to do. Otherwise we’re all leaving the WTO and we’re all going to have an alternative trading agreements that we’re gonna create on our own, based on our own priorities. And we’re going to call the shots. You know, these are the kinds of things that interest me, that civil society should be actively engaged in and be promoting.

Stephan Kyburz: So it’s really about creating a political movement? Because as you say, like anything is political, I think international, you know, the donors, I think they, they try to say they’re not political or they don’t want to be political but it’s always political, you know, no matter what the words might suggest. But from your viewpoint, I think what I understand is you try to create a move in civil society to re-empower the people in your country. And actually, if the International Aid system would kind of step back, retreat, that would actually help you.

Degan Ali: It would help. I mean, I think we can do this irrespective of whether they’re there or not. These are our communities, these are, this is our countries, we should have the ability to do this on our own. Irrespective of the age system being there or not. I think that there are elements of the development system that could be also catalytic to make some of this happen. And I think that element is the philanthropic funding. I think when there is opportunities to influence 10,20 philanthropists either in the continent or in the global North to do things for good and to do it differently and not make the same investments into the traditional Aid system and give the money to the UN and like the USA ID does and all of that. So I think there are opportunities to find some really important global North philanthropic partners that can see this and can support a political civil society movement. So I don’t think you have to necessarily kick out the entire aid system to make it happen. If we wait for that, we will never get anything done. If we wait for aid and the donors, the OECD donors to leave Somalia, nothing will happen. We can’t wait for that day. We still, we have to do our own work and make our own change happen. It’s not us to make those decisions as well. It’s the governments that will make those decisions, is the governments that will say, hey, the US government, you’re putting a hell of a lot of money into security investment in our country. We have people who are hungry, we want you to put money into agricultural production and infrastructure for agriculture in the South and say the same thing to the different and say the same thing to the Swiss and all of the donors, the government has the power to do that. Of course, they’re very weak. That’s the problem. We don’t have a Kagame in Somalia and we need like hundreds of Kagame in the continent, honestly. I wish we had that honestly. But we’re not going to wait for that day to come when the government has that kind of authority and can exercise its sovereignty. We have to do something now.

Stephan Kyburz: Thanks a lot for, for sharing all those thoughts. It has been very interesting to hear your perspective on the whole structural issues with the Aid system and also your viewpoint of what are possible ways forward. For the audience, people who would like to read more about Somalia or maybe your NGO Adeso, do you have any book recommendations or articles that you think you’d like to share with the audience?

Degan Ali: It’s a substack. Ken Opalo – On America’s structural inability to effectively compete with China in Africa was a really good article that I recently read. And then I would encourage people to find Dr Arikana Chihombori. She’s a Zimbabwean medical doctor who was the former AU ambassador to the US. She has various videos on youtube that you can listen to about the legacy of colonization and she talks a lot about the French colonialism in Africa. Then Dr Howard Nicholas, also, I’m waiting for his book to come out. He had, he’s writing a book, but there’s a video out there on the website, the Critical Collective and it’s about underdevelopment in Africa. What’s the real story.  Howard Nicholas. So those are probably my three biggest recommendations for people. Then people could also check out our website at adesoafrica.org. I think what we, what I’m gonna do, actually, you’ve just made me realize I’m going to put up resources into our website. A lot of interesting resources on our website for people. Just for this kind of questions, that’s what we’ll do is put a bunch of links there. We’ll create a page, we, we’ll work on that. There’s another one I just remembered, The Long History of Debt Cancellation from Antiquity to Today, Dr Michael Hudson. Yeah, he has a lot of youtube talks, interviews, long form, like an hour long, over an hour long. I think your listeners should also look at that one.

Stephan Kyburz: Yeah, sure. That sounds, that sounds great. I am definitely interested to hear and to read what’s on your mind, what you’re reading. And also I’ll definitely link to your website, personal website. Also, there are really great resources there including the podcast I mentioned or the panel discussion on the, on the new humanitarian podcast. So Degan Ali, thanks a lot.

Degan Ali: No worries. Thank you for having me. Take care, Stephan.

Outro:

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