The following post is written by Diane Bennett and Dennis E. Bennett.
“Yes, but is it scalable?” is a question often asked of development interventions. Sure your life-saving malaria net program works in one village, but will it work throughout the whole country? Yes, cash transfers worked in Mexico but will they work in Sierra Leone?
Everyone knows that development interventions should be scalable. But sometimes… everyone is wrong. In our experience working in South Sudan, very short-term, totally unscalable solutions may be just the thing to address specific short-term problems and avoid perpetuating aid dependency.
In 2003, communities displaced from their homes by decades of conflict were trying to re-establish themselves in Upper Nile, but local leaders found their energies consumed by the demands of growing grain to feed their families. To maximize their efforts on community development, we wanted to improve the food supply and infuse capital into villages, while respecting local mores. For Dennis, a banker who helps multi-billion dollar institutions manage their risk, the problem was an unfamiliar one: how to infuse capital into a cashless society?
Our research found tribes in the area bartering with grain, gold, goats, chickens and cattle. The small amount of circulating bills barely survives local termites, which can devour a pile of cash in just a few hours. Grain is commonly used, but attracts rats, which in turn draw poisonous snakes. In addition, grain needs seed and time for cultivation, depends on unpredictable rainfall, requires storage for excess supplies, and is more vulnerable in times of war. Searching for a better cash-less solution, we found goats. Goats are portable, require relatively little care, and since tribes in the region universally trade goats, this solution doesn’t exclude anyone.
We made three loans of three locally-sourced breeding goats each (one male, two females), for a total investment of $300. The loans were two years, and “repayment” was a reciprocal set of goats (from the progeny), so there was no interest or expense. The loans went to three community leaders, chosen by the communities. Our intention was to reinvest the “repaid” goats back into the village, making the program self-perpetuating. But the villagers had other plans.
A boy watches his family's goats, Upper Nile, Sudan
Of the three loans, only one was repaid to us, an abject failure in finance terms. Instead, goats were contributed to other villagers to start herds, “paying it forward” rather than paying us back. Instead of continuing with our program, borrowers assumed responsibility and perpetuated the project not just to feed their own families, but to help the whole village.
Five years later, these villages no longer need external food assistance, this program no longer exists, and we can say the Yamachoma (grilled goat) is delicious.
16 Comments
Is there anywhere I can find more information on this?
thats unsual, goats breed, perhaps twice a year and the program could have gotten their goats back. Was this intention clearly communicated to the villagers? perhaps not, which is why they made the ‘repayment’ forward to other villagers
This is an encouraging story. Looks like the program over-achieved! The lesson as always-don’t give Owino fish (or goat in this case), teach him how to fish. And he’ll teach others…
“these villages no longer need extra food assistance”.
after getting three goats!
Post hoc ergo propter hoc…
But hey, it is true! I also bought two goats some years ago, not too far from Sudan, and they produced many baby goats. After eating some, now we still have 7!
And it is true, I swear, since the day I bought those goats, we have not needed external food assistance!!!
Guess this makes me now a top contestant in the best aid project 2009 competition!
(despite the monetary and dietary success, the goats failed to do their job on our land, namely to keep the vegetation small& short. Turns out investing in sheep would have been more effective)
Let’s make it a tradition, every time one of the countless Bennett’s success stories is posted,
it is time for the Onion:
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/46226
By the way, typical of any aid project: paying 100$/goat in a poor country.
Someone earned a nice commission…
@Bankelele
The village leaders could have repaid the loan to us as you point out, but chose (and we agreed) to ‘pay it forward’ to other villagers, essentially taking over the program. We felt that if we insisted on repayment to us, it would reinforce their dependency.
@ Geckonomist
In this area, male breeding goats cost $60, female breeding goats $20 each, for a total of $100 per 3 goat set.
As a banker rather than a professional aid worker, one of the challenges “on the ground” has been seeing the unintended financial/economic consequences of various relief aid into this region. Especially overpayment for locally produced items due to either naivete or bureaucratic rules. While not 100% successful, we try to avoid overpaying for locally produced items, because overpayment often results in local/regional inflation – and causes a great deal of pain and suffering to local villagers who suddenly can no longer afford the basics for survival.
We know – and monitor regularly – what the “current market prices” are of everything from grain to chickens, goats, donkeys, cattle, and bride price. It is interesting to observe that “purchasing power parity” (or a barter-based equivalent) exists between different tribes with different cultures and languages, and that PPP works reasonably efficiently even in this remote area.
So yes, we ensured that we paid the local market price for male and female breeding goats, and did it at prices that were appropriate for those specific tribes.
If the program was successful, why didn’t you expand it by a factor of 10-100 to other villages?
Sweet mercy. An aid intervention involving 9 goats – count em, 9 – is given airtime on Aidwatchers, for us to all learn from and draw conclusions. This is beyond parody.
As a small organization with limited resources, we sourced goats within the region. More goats would have greatly increased the expense and diluted the effect, by the likely perception that we were giving hand-outs rather than loans.
There are elements of this program that some readers have apparently missed. First, the purpose of this program was to provide capital to this region without giving direct handouts of cash (or goats). That increased the sense of responsibility and avoided a welfare mentality/response.
Second, the region is so remote, even by African standards, that this small program had a much larger impact than it would appear by counting how many goats were in the program. It provided the impetus for the community to improve their wealth through their own expansion of this breeding program. In that sense it was leveraged effectively.
Third, we wrote about this because it highlights the principal that providing capital (as loans, not welfare) even in a barter-based subsistence-level farming environment can be a very effective means for improving the economic welfare of the region.
We are continually experimenting with programs to improve the local economy and thus the wealth and welfare of the local community. Some of those experiments have worked, some have not. But we judge the success or failure of a given program based upon whether it improves the community’s standard of living and the community’s self-sufficiency, while doing so in a manner consistent with the local culture.
As a non-economist I was impressed with the tale of the goats;. Often we assume that life must increase in its complexity, whereas what may be needed is a move toward more simplicity. Well done, I say!
I think your link to the “www.servantsheartrelief.org” website misses the “http://”, since it is being treated as a local link.
I think a lot of NGOs that are struggling with their strategies to implement aid effectiveness need to borrow such an idea. I also think that this worked well because of the bottom-up approach rather than the often applied up-down strategy.
Although anecdotes provide us with very limited information, as humans, we love nothing more (usually for their emotional content more than their informational content). Whatever it may or may not tell us, this anecdote was heartening. Hearing stories about poverty-related suffering and about overcoming it helps motivate us to act.
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