Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala on aid versus trade
Oct 9th, 2009 by Claire Seaborn
Summary:
Former Nigerian Finance Minister Nogozi Okonjo-Iweala speaks at the 2007 TED conference in California about the future of Africa. After doing opinion research and looking at other studies, she calls employment the top issue for African youth. To provide jobs Okonjo-Iweala advocates a partnership between government aid, private sector donations, and “ordinary African people.” She tells a personal story to explain that the source of aid can often be irrelevant to the person receiving it. Okonjo-Iweala’s priority solution is to build infrastructure using funds from international donors, but with consent and consideration from local peoples. Finally, she advocates job creation and empowerment for women.
Commentary:
Who IS Nogozi Okonjo-Iweala?
A native Nigerian who went to Harvard and has a Ph.D in regional economics and development from MIT. After being the first female Finance Minister for Nigeria, she is now a director at the World Bank. I think Okonjo-Iweala uses strategic essentialism in her talk in two ways – first to take on the role of an “ordinary African” in order to convince her audience that she is somehow authentic and understanding of that population. Second, to adopt the identity of a successful westerner, who uses the language of finance and economics to explain the relative gains of helping the poor. I have to wonder – how would my perception have differed if the speaker was a caucasian male? Okonjo-Iweala’s oriental dress and femininity made me more likely to sympathize and try to understand her. I was inspired by Okonjo-Iweala but still critical of many of her ideas about development.
What WAS she talking about?
Okonjo-Iweala uses an economic rationale to explain how humanitarian aid can save lives, which makes the economy more productive. She says the act of the EU giving aid to Spain and Ireland for infrastructure should be repeated in African countries. Well, I know that the EU is the largest aid donor in the world and has given billions to Africa. Okonjo-Iweala would say that the money wasn’t used in the right places. I think she neglected to mention the amount of government and private sector corruption that adducts that aid money. Plus, with new aid, I thought she should have mentioned the importance of environmental sustainability. Finally, although the talk’s title was ‘aid versus trade’, Okonjo-Iweala only addressed the former. After reading the public commentary posted under the video, I found many other viewers equally frustrated by the topics she chose to focus on and incomplete explanations.
Where is the voice?
It is questionable whether Okonjo-Iweala (or anyone) can properly represent individuals in Africa. I think she does give a voice to the ‘subaltern’ by doing opinion research and speaking against injustice publicly. She empowers the colonized and marginalized by saying that the developed world could not have been built without the ‘aid’ from today’s developing countries. She does recommend conferences and consultation processes, and praises China, a more powerful developing nation, for hearing the interests of local people. I don’t want to forget that even through Okonjo-Iweala, voices can still be “caught in translation.” Is Okonjo-Iweala subaltern? That is still up for debate.
2 Responses to “Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala on aid versus trade”
I think that as much as Okonjo-Iweala is a Nigerian and and African and she is speaking about issues within Africa and how to create a ‘New Africa,’ I feel that she simply represents the subaltern. I don’t think she herself is a subaltern because I feel the background, her English and her economic knowledge clearly shows how different she is from the pictures of the Africans she shows in her slide show. I don’t know if this is just because I get confused with the notion of subaltern. Does her education, exposure and political position take away her characteristic of ‘subaltern’?
I also found it interesting when she explained that Africa has not only received aid but given aid- in labour, and resources. It is an interesting perspective in receiving aid, as there are many leaders, politicians and economists who question the notion of aid.
I feel she has quite a mainstream view of development, and I agree, never seems to question the institutions that are currently in place.
I think we should not just put her into the simple binary of elite/subaltern. Instead, a more progressive way to think of it is put her on a spectrum of subaltern-ness, if it makes any sense. As Amy has pointed out, her educational background and career as an “expert” in development agencies surely qualifies her as an elite. Though, it is worth mentioning that she’s lived an impoverished and insecure childhood when she was in Nigeria. This intriguing combination of subaltern childhood and elite adulthood makes does not only make her an interesting “hybrid” of cultures but also wins her a “passport” to be accepted in the North, ie. winning herself a voice. After all, she would not have been in this conference, videotaped and uploaded to TED, where millions of internet users can listen to her talk, if she has not work for the Bank. So, I think what she represents is a media through which some of the voiceless can use to get their opinions heard. We all know every single kind of media have its own filters resulting in things never getting mentioned. Okonjo-Iweala’s filter is her education and work experiences. Therefore, the task becomes to analyse her talk to see what particular segments of the voiceless she strategically chose to showcase and what her intentions to do this were.
I agree with Amy that she made an extremely interesting and valid point that Africa has made significant contributions to international aids for sending Africans to the Western world. And I think it’s very well thought of her to speak of colonial history of exploitation without mention the word “imperialism” or “colonialism” or “responsibilities of the West.” Considering the occupational diversity of the audience, like development agency personnel, investors from the North, development fund managers, government official etc etc, I really admire how she has put together a broad range of issues and present them in a positive and forward-looking way without scaring away her audience of her activism. Think of the phrase “help them (those who are investing and handing away aids) to help us better.”Isn’t she advocating for a more equal relation, like a partnership, between those who are carryin out the big D development and local African people?
There are a couple of things I was skeptical. First, she uses the term Africa to talk about what is really a collection of highly varied, dynamic and fragmented places. This homogeneous notion of Africa often gets used by people who are really concerned about the continent and its people. I do feel a bit sad every time I hear people uses it because I think the notion helps to reinforce the view of African people as passive, poor and needy subjects of development who are essentially all the same. Another thing I wanted to see more out of her talk is concrete examples of how aid materials and money were and are still being “misused.” She does talk about how aid can be used correctly with the examples of Spain and Ireland. Maybe, rather than just put the spotlight on “successful places” she could have gone a bit further to explore how and why aids had failed in Africa and the political and economic interests to keep African nations as “failed places.”