Kony 2012

Kony 2012 reveals many problems associated with foreign aid in developing countries.  Badly thought out aid programmes or campaigns can cause more harm to the recipient.  Looking at Invisible Children Inc., their products and methods leads me to think that though well-intentioned, the full impact of Kony 2012 was not thought out carefully and instead may lead to:

1. Greater U.S. military involvement in Uganda
2. Further human rights abuses by the Ugandan Army

Furthermore, the full aid potential of Kony 2012 has not been harnessed, making the lack of in-depth impact projection glaringly obvious.  However, I have not had the time to fully research the evidence that causes me to say this, hence I shall be more restrained on this point and apologise for any inaccuracy.

The negative impacts of badly thought out aid programmes is coherent with my experience in medical missions in Cambodia.  Being unable to import Singaporean drugs, we had to buy drugs from local sources and realised that not bargaining prices down would cause the local drug prices to increase as the industry would be less competitive, harming the locals in the long run.  While there was a positive impact as it was a form of investment in the indigenous pharmaceutical industry, the point is that there was a significant negative one that we failed to take into account, and much larger NGOs must take this into account to avoid harming the recipients of their aid programs in the long run.

However, Kony 2012 completely misses the point.  While it is a valuable example of how aid agencies can raise awareness of the problems they are trying to solve, anybody who knows anything about Uganda or the Lord's Resistance Army will be able to tell you that Kony's Army is a spent force and that pursuing Kony is a largely pointless exercise.  Yes, Kony is on the top of the International Criminal Court's Wanted List and he must pay for his crimes, but catching him now is not going to help Ugandans in any big way now.  Kony is already in South Sudan; his forces have been pushed out of Uganda.  America's response of sending military advisors to Uganda is a disproportionately large response for such a small problem.

Setting aside the inappropriate solution, there are also problems with how the solution is being carried out.  Invisible Children Inc. has marketed their Kony 2012 products as a means to raise awareness.  Apart from creating the false sense that raising awareness and perhaps donating money is THE solution to ending poverty in Central Africa, it also panders to a messianic complex present not only in America but also other developed countries which, sadly, includes Singapore.  It also implies that Africans are completely unable to solve their problems and also opens up the risk that in the event that Uganda emerges as a strong nation, idealistic slacktivists, together with the charitable organisations that they support such as Invisible Children will take false credit for Uganda's progress where the hard work has been done both by the citizens of Central Africa and their governments.  Kony 2012 and Invisible Children would probably benefit Central Africa more if it outsourced all its products to small enterprises in Africa, helping the local industry grow.  Though it may mean that products would cost more, it would do much more than simply raise awareness to facilitate military action and is a much more sustainable approach.  It will require much more effort on the part of Invisible Children Inc. in both overcoming red tape and finding local enterprises to invest in, but isn't charity about going beyond the call of duty?

Reading and listening to both Ugandan locals, their reaction to Kony 2012 and local not-for-profit agencies working hard to generate growth and progress in Uganda reveals how out-of-touch Kony 2012 is from the local situation.  While some of these posts also err in making claims without evidence and being overly emotional, one can see where they are coming from, about how far from reality Kony 2012 is.  In a way these angry outpourings are also caused by a sense of unfairness, whether legitimate or not, resulting from the fact that many of these agents have dedicated their entire lives to Uganda, doing real hard work there, yet very few in the developed world know of them and support them.

Kony 2012's small redeeming factor is that it has paved the way for more awareness raising by other agencies such as Project Diaspora and War Child International.  Handled right, it may lead to a flood of sustainable initiatives in Central Africa as well as improve the quality of not-for-profit initiatives worldwide.

Unfortunately, being what may be called a "full-time student", I haven't been able to do the most in-depth research into statistics concerning this issue.  While the onus is on me to provide readers and bloggers with accurate information, I must still issue a disclaimer as to the contents of this post while I do think that this would be the reasonable conclusion to draw from the information available to me.  I will do my best in the following days to collate the sources and articles I used in the formulation of this post.