Taking Things for Granted

Like any industry or other group of people pursuing similar exploits, the development clique traffics in distinctive trends, language and pastimes. And, like the new kid in school, my adjustment has been rough at times. I joined the freshman class of Grass Roots Development High School as a transfer student from Investment Advisory Academy, where overpowering market forces and modish capitalist ebullience infused the halls.

It’s hard for me to forget “my American past” because my experiences in the private sector helped to shape who I am and dually represent who I was prior to working. My parents instilled an entrepreneurial spirit in me from a very early age, and now that philosophy is a driving force in my type-A personality, work ethic and interpersonal skills. I never expected anyone to hand anything to me and was wary of anything that smelled of a “free lunch” (leftover sandwiches from client meetings notwithstanding).

Back to the present in West Africa, one cannot ignore the extent to which grant awards are an entrenched part of development culture. Grants are an accepted facet of development work that is more pervasive than iPhones or skinny jeans at a high school. It’s a difficult proposition to resist – developed countries are brimming with funds and developing countries are destitute in comparison. So why not shift some of that wealth to well-deserving causes in needy countries?

Because grants are not capacity-building or sustainable, that’s why. Voilà, the crux of my internal conflict about grants and their effect on recipients. Grant awards ram against my capitalist / free-market-force belief system. I truly believe in the discipline and motivation spurred by the interest and principal repayments of a loan and feel that some important lessons are lost when these go away. What incents a struggling co-op to improve its productivity and profit margins when they’re being financed without recourse? The burden of repaying a loan with interest is a powerful inducement to a business to prudently invest the loan principal and institute practices and changes that assure a good yield on that investment, especially given the cost of interest. To paraphrase Hemingway, you’re just laying out a sushi buffet when the fisherman could be learning to catch his own nigiri.

Still, I want to acclimate with the right crowd at Grass Roots Development High. I’ve shed my corporate wardrobe (though other PCV’s still say I look corporate at times, and that Dave dresses like a Young Republican), friend-ed the mavens on Facebook and dutifully followed protocol by getting into the grant game. Despite my misgivings, on behalf of my association I applied for and was awarded two grants by the US Embassy. The first grant is a donation of approximately $1,000 worth of pagnes celebrating US – Burkina Faso friendship, which the association will sell and then use the proceeds to purchase a buffer stock of cashew nuts. The second grant is to pay for a training session on achieving export quality nuts. Hopefully that training session will give the association the knowledge and skills to successfully apply for an ISO certification, which in turn would open up the very lucrative European and North American cashew markets.

Don’t get me wrong, I do recognize the value of these grants and am thankful that the US Embassy has the funds to promote women’s and micro-enterprise development within Burkina Faso. However, a part of me wonders how long it would have taken my association to build up funding for these two end-goals themselves and also if realization of these goals would be more meaningful if they were forced to fund them out of their own coffers. Yet, grants are an ingrained expectation here that can’t be erased suddenly, and I imagine that’s true for the rest of the developing world too. Infrastructure grants are one thing* but grants for a private sector enterprise are something else entirely. While I don’t think I would have been ostracized by the cool kids at Grass Roots Development High, I certainly would not have felt right by my association if I denied them the benefits of free money due to stubborn principle of my own unabashed righteousness. I’m here in Burkina Faso, sweating profusely and eating terrible food, because of my desire to help them, not to experiment with my own theories on development. If my being here was about me, I might as well transfer back to Investment Advisor Academy, or whatever’s left of it.

*Be on the look out for an exciting future blog post about classroom construction for which I am trying to secure financing!