Where I live in Uganda, there’s a huge amount of giving already—in fact depending on how you define giving, people use far higher percentages of their income on other people than most westerners. But it works very differently. Local giving fits into something like these 3 categories
1. Giving within families (the majority). I estimate 1⁄4 of our nurses’ income goes towards supporting their family members with things like school fees, medical bills and even just cash for their paren Aspects of this system have has been pejoritvely called a “black tax” at times
2. “Patronage” giving. Politicians buy ambulances and put their photo on it, wealthy people sponsor orphans, Rich businesses pay for “health camps”. Most of this giving is directly connected to the work and life of the “giver” and buys them status and good will in their communities. I put CSR in this category too—A local microfinance company built a maternity unit for us a few years ago which is great. I would rate this giving as more effective than most Western Giving but obviously not EA level.
3. Religious giving. People give to support local poor people, local hospitals or prisoners because they believe its the right thing to do, and a responsibility. For example the local Pentecostal church sponsored sitting benches for one of our health centers, even though they have nothing to do with the health facility at all which was pretty cool.
I know countries like Nigeria do have somewhat of a “philanthropy” system in the western sense, but I imagine a lot of this is heavily connected to patronage too.
I have never heard of a local here giving money to an international NGO. That’s completely off the radar. NGOs are usually seen as often ineffective sources of money for local people, not something that you would spend your own precious money on. How could you justify giving money to an org that pays someone an absurd $3,000 dollars a month when your cousin needs money for school fees? At least that’s how I see the logic working.
I struggle to see how giving to animal welfare could plausibly fit these categories. I would doubt whether there are really any significant number of richer Africans who care about animal welfare enough to give money. But I only know the Ugandna context well.
Thanks Nick for sharing your perspective/experiences. It fits with a lot of things I’ve seen/heard. Giving is a huge part of many people’s lives, it’s the effective part that may be particularly challenging. I also have my doubts about animal welfare being a motivating factor for many, but at least we’ve seen traction with some people.
One thing I’d challenge is that people would necessarily donate to an international NGO. Many EA orgs operate within LMICs. So why not just help people find the most effective orgs within their country? Or maybe even region? For example, people on our course seemed very eager to do something about factory farming in Africa. I doubt they would be as excited to donate to shrimp welfare work in Asia or broiler welfare in Europe.
If a software developer in Germany can pay for a German animal welfare campaigner, can’t a Kenyan software developer also just pay a Kenyan campaigner? The relative differences in earnings should be similar.
Where I live in Uganda, there’s a huge amount of giving already—in fact depending on how you define giving, people use far higher percentages of their income on other people than most westerners. But it works very differently. Local giving fits into something like these 3 categories
1. Giving within families (the majority). I estimate 1⁄4 of our nurses’ income goes towards supporting their family members with things like school fees, medical bills and even just cash for their paren Aspects of this system have has been pejoritvely called a “black tax” at times
2. “Patronage” giving. Politicians buy ambulances and put their photo on it, wealthy people sponsor orphans, Rich businesses pay for “health camps”. Most of this giving is directly connected to the
work and life of the “giver” and buys them status and good will in their communities. I put CSR in this category too—A local microfinance company built a maternity unit for us a few years ago which is great. I would rate this giving as more effective than most Western Giving but obviously not EA level.
3. Religious giving. People give to support local poor people, local hospitals or prisoners because they believe its the right thing to do, and a responsibility. For example the local Pentecostal church sponsored sitting benches for one of our health centers, even though they have nothing to do with the health facility at all which was pretty cool.
I know countries like Nigeria do have somewhat of a “philanthropy” system in the western sense, but I imagine a lot of this is heavily connected to patronage too.
I have never heard of a local here giving money to an international NGO. That’s completely off the radar. NGOs are usually seen as often ineffective sources of money for local people, not something that you would spend your own precious money on. How could you justify giving money to an org that pays someone an absurd $3,000 dollars a month when your cousin needs money for school fees? At least that’s how I see the logic working.
I struggle to see how giving to animal welfare could plausibly fit these categories. I would doubt whether there are really any significant number of richer Africans who care about animal welfare enough to give money. But I only know the Ugandna context well.
Thanks Nick for sharing your perspective/experiences. It fits with a lot of things I’ve seen/heard. Giving is a huge part of many people’s lives, it’s the effective part that may be particularly challenging. I also have my doubts about animal welfare being a motivating factor for many, but at least we’ve seen traction with some people.
One thing I’d challenge is that people would necessarily donate to an international NGO. Many EA orgs operate within LMICs. So why not just help people find the most effective orgs within their country? Or maybe even region? For example, people on our course seemed very eager to do something about factory farming in Africa. I doubt they would be as excited to donate to shrimp welfare work in Asia or broiler welfare in Europe.
If a software developer in Germany can pay for a German animal welfare campaigner, can’t a Kenyan software developer also just pay a Kenyan campaigner? The relative differences in earnings should be similar.