We currently have GIZ (German development agency with an unfortunate name) spending millions here in Northern Uganda doing lot’s of close to zero impact projects while causing potential harm while they are at it. Their projects are so painfully bad it sometimes makes me feel physically sick, and I’ve failed completely in my few efforts to talk to GIZ members about what they do.
I’d be very curious to hear more about this, in particular specific projects and how they have failed or caused harm. Or is it basically all of the projects in this list?
For a start, read that list and see if you can find even a handful of initiatives that seem likely to have a reasonable impact. Most of these projects are not clear, potentially high impact interventions but usually a bunch of trainings, meetings, meaningless “capacity building” of government staff.
“It advises policy-makers in East African countries on the opportunities offered by carbon markets and carbon pricing instruments. In addition, the project provides expert and technical advice to government agencies on updating NDCs and long-term climate strategies.… In addition to this, workshops and networking meetings provide information on Article 6 and market-based approaches in the region.”
Uganda is run by a dictator who’s Army and police continue to oversee the pillaging of their few remaining forests for charcoal, and here GIZ is pouring more money into those same thieve’s pockets (as reported below).
Obviously I only have encountered GIZ first hand here in Northern Uganda. Just to throw one concrete example in here , there’s one particularly bad ongoing project here on rubbish collection (much more mundane than charcoal cartels!). I’d hardly call rubbish collection the biggest problem we have here in the first place. GIZ’s mad approach was to try to get poor people here in the city to pay a fee and bring their rubbish to collection points—basically trying to conjure up huge behaviour change overnight which of course was never going to work. We even had one of their staff come to our door and announce the new program—which of course never happened. Who here is going to pay to bring rubbish to a collection point when they don’t even see it as a problem?
And as part of the project they might have spent half a million dollars on a handful of German imported rubbish collection trucks for local government, only for them to get seized by a debt collector apparently because of some phony debt probably trumped up from inside the local government itself.
They also do a bunch of water accessibility stuff here in Gulu town which is highly dubious from an inequality perspective, as it favours only rich people in town who already are doing OK, and neglects the 80% of poorer Ugandans who live outside of town.
You’d think these kind of cliche aid mistakes would be a thing of the past, but unfortunately not.
Often GIZ projects don’t even make it make sense on paper, forget even about the disasters while implementing them. Read this garbage, especially the “Approach” section. What really even is their approach it’s certainly not clear t me? https://www.giz.de/en/worldwide/59817.html
It’s really sad, imagine the good they could do if they instead just gave all that money they are spending driving around in fancy cars and feeding rich corrupt government officials to poor people.
I’d be very curious to hear more about this, in particular specific projects and how they have failed or caused harm. Or is it basically all of the projects in this list?
For a start, read that list and see if you can find even a handful of initiatives that seem likely to have a reasonable impact. Most of these projects are not clear, potentially high impact interventions but usually a bunch of trainings, meetings, meaningless “capacity building” of government staff.
This one here really made me angry https://www.giz.de/en/worldwide/42196.html
“It advises policy-makers in East African countries on the opportunities offered by carbon markets and carbon pricing instruments. In addition, the project provides expert and technical advice to government agencies on updating NDCs and long-term climate strategies.… In addition to this, workshops and networking meetings provide information on Article 6 and market-based approaches in the region.”
Uganda is run by a dictator who’s Army and police continue to oversee the pillaging of their few remaining forests for charcoal, and here GIZ is pouring more money into those same thieve’s pockets (as reported below).
https://www.independent.co.ug/black-gold-report-pins-security-for-protecting-charcoal-cartels/
https://www.monitor.co.ug/uganda/news/national/security-forces-aiding-charcoal-trade-report-3367774
Obviously I only have encountered GIZ first hand here in Northern Uganda. Just to throw one concrete example in here , there’s one particularly bad ongoing project here on rubbish collection (much more mundane than charcoal cartels!). I’d hardly call rubbish collection the biggest problem we have here in the first place. GIZ’s mad approach was to try to get poor people here in the city to pay a fee and bring their rubbish to collection points—basically trying to conjure up huge behaviour change overnight which of course was never going to work. We even had one of their staff come to our door and announce the new program—which of course never happened. Who here is going to pay to bring rubbish to a collection point when they don’t even see it as a problem?
And as part of the project they might have spent half a million dollars on a handful of German imported rubbish collection trucks for local government, only for them to get seized by a debt collector apparently because of some phony debt probably trumped up from inside the local government itself.
They also do a bunch of water accessibility stuff here in Gulu town which is highly dubious from an inequality perspective, as it favours only rich people in town who already are doing OK, and neglects the 80% of poorer Ugandans who live outside of town.
You’d think these kind of cliche aid mistakes would be a thing of the past, but unfortunately not.
Often GIZ projects don’t even make it make sense on paper, forget even about the disasters while implementing them. Read this garbage, especially the “Approach” section. What really even is their approach it’s certainly not clear t me? https://www.giz.de/en/worldwide/59817.html
It’s really sad, imagine the good they could do if they instead just gave all that money they are spending driving around in fancy cars and feeding rich corrupt government officials to poor people.
Thanks, that sounds quite bad.