Covid-19 was, and still is, humanity’s final reminder to change the way we end global poverty.

 

By Anthony Kalulu  @KaluluAnthony  |  December 2, 2022:

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Many people have said over the last three years, that Covid-19 won’t be the world’s last pandemic.

Others have even suggested that things like covid could become even more frequent this point on. And who knows if that is the reason why, in 2022, some people were asking if Monkeypox could be the world’s newest pandemic, when covid itself was still ongoing?

And back in 2020, when covid was shattering people’s lives everywhere, many people across the globe were saying that, in the aftermath of this pandemic, the world must not “go back to normal”, that’s, the same old ways that defined it pre-pandemic. At one point, the UK’s Overseas Development Institute even put it simply that “normal was the problem.” I really wish the world follows through on this.

Most importantly, I believe global poverty, too, and the way the world ends it, should be no exception.

Because, whether it is a global healthy crisis like covid, or climate change, the world’s ultra poor in the global south are always the ones who feel the most pinch — both in terms of survival when these crises are on, and in the rebuilding process when they are over.

For example, almost immediately after Uganda declared its first covid lockdown in March 2020, lots of households in my area of Kamuli, in eastern Uganda, were having no food whatsoever, and were in dire need of help. Many were finding it very hard to even secure the smallest things like masks, and sanitary supplies. It was also the same everywhere else in Uganda, as it was in many other poor countries.

Today, the rebuilding process is even harder. After all, many were already living in chronic poverty even before covid. That is why I really believe, if this pandemic was any lesson for the world not to go back to normal, as some people said, then global poverty, too, and the way we end it, should be no exception.

Moreover, the world doesn’t even necessarily need new sources of funding to end global poverty. No. Most of the money that humanity needs to end global poverty for once, is the same money that the world is already spending specifically on ending global poverty even today, but in a way that makes nearly impossible for the extreme poor in the global south to escape poverty.

All the more reason for the world not to go back to normal.

 

To me, this is personal:

 

On November 15, 2022, I turned 41. And for the entire time that I have been on earth, I have never, ever stepped a foot outside of Sub Saharan Africa, the world’s epicenter for chronic poverty. During that time, I can assure you, I am one of those people who have known the true wrath of Sub Saharan poverty.

As a person, it is only years now, from the very first time I exited the hardest forms of hunger, where I could practically go a full day without any food. But my own story is the smallest part of it. The kind of poverty that exists where I live, by far supersedes anything I have ever gone through personally.

My country Uganda has its own share of Sub Saharan African poverty. But my region Busoga, a region nearly the size of the west African country The Gambia, is Uganda’s most impoverished, according to the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS).

One estimate by UBOS put Busoga’s poverty rate is 74.8%, against a national average of 63%. And the deeper you go into the remote countryside, the harder people’s circumstances become. So, if you factored out Busoga’s urban places, such as the popular tourist city of Jinja, and others, it is safe to say that the poverty rate in individual remote rural communities in Busoga’s countryside, such as my village of Namisita, is well beyond 90%.

Because the fact is: the poverty here is unspeakable. Across Uganda, whenever people are expressing pity for specific places in terms of poverty, Busoga is almost always the talk. The poverty here is the subject of every news headline. Every headline. Every headline. Every headline. Every headline. Every headline. Every headline. Every headline. Every headline. Every headline.

Even those people in other parts of Uganda who themselves live in chronic poverty, the moment you mention the word ‘Busoga’, what immediately comes to their mind is a place where people are still living a near-ancient way of life, and a place where abject poverty is the order the day. And they are mostly correct.

In 2010, Busoga was the talk allover Uganda, for a chronic jigger infestation. Nine of our 11 districts were invaded by jiggers, and putting poor hygiene apart, these jiggers were squarely blamed on the biting poverty here, and the poor housing conditions most people live in. It isn’t even over yet. Those jiggers were here with us long before they became national news, and every now and then, they still haunt us.

On Oct 29, 2022, Uganda’s president Museveni visited Busoga. He was appalled by the poverty he saw here, asking “how do you people live through this? So much so that he even promised never to come back here, unless there was some visible change on the scale of poverty in this region. The Monitor, one of Uganda’s major newspapers, also quoted Museveni as being “deeply devastated” by what he saw on his visit.

And as someone who has lived here my whole life, I can assure you, what Museveni saw is the smallest part of the real picture. There are entire households here that can’t even afford soap or salt. There are those that only earn as little as Ugx 50,000 – Ugx 100,000 (or $13 – $26) in an entire planting season of four months. And there are those that only have rags for beddings and clothing in their houses.

After all, even at national level, 60% of working Ugandans only earn ~Ugx 200,000 ($54) monthly, well below $1.9/day. But in Busoga, Uganda’s poorest region,  many are unemployed. This is especially true in my two neighboring districts of Kamuli & Buyende. Because, like elsewhere in Uganda, and in Sub Saharan Africa as a whole, poverty (and unemployment) in much of Busoga tends to be rife, and very unforgiving, in the countryside. Kamuli & Buyende are Busoga’s remotest area. The two districts together sit on 3,300 sq km, and are home to over a million people, but life here is about nothing but ultra poverty.

In my own village of Namisita, in Kagumba Sub County (Kamuli), which is where I live, and where I am seated even now, most households live in absolute poverty.

 

Some of the people who live within a 300-meter radius from me, in Namisita.

 

Here is me visiting (in June 2022) one of the farmers that my nonprofit, the UCF, works with in Namisita.

Amidst the scorching sun in early 2022, a woman here in Namisita visited my project, the Uganda Community Farm (UCF), to ask for seed, in preparation for the rains that were being anticipated in April. She ended up asking for help on 3 other things which aren’t part of the support that the UCF provides to the farmers we work with.

“I don’t have soap. I don’t have salt. I would like to hire an ox plough to help prepare my land, but I don’t have any money”. When she left, I asked the people I was with, what might have motivated her to say this. One of the people I was with, knew a little more about her personally. And the answer was that it wasn’t just her. What she had told us, is what most households were going through.

Yet, when I look back, although our region is the poorest in Uganda, Sub Saharan Africa as a whole — the world’s poorest region — has a lot in common, and so is the developing world in general. That means, the life we are living here, has much in common with what is happening in many other impoverished places across the global south.

 

Let’s not go back to normal: under today’s approaches to ending global poverty, it is simply impossible for people like us to escape poverty.

The coming of the Global Goals coincided with a lot of things in my own life. That is the reason why I have frequently referenced these goals in most of my writing, for example in my 2020 article in The Guardian.

As a person, in 2015, when these goals were being launched, I was still going entire days without any food, and things had been that way for me since my years of childhood. Luckily, the period 2014 – 2015 is also when I decided it was now time for me to take things into my own hands.

So, when the Global Goals arrived during the same time, I thought this couldn’t come at a better time. And so, wary of the kind of poverty I was emerging from, and the level of poverty in my region as a whole, I started badgering the global antipoverty world right away, and have never put my hands down. My goal was to ensure that, come 2030, things shouldn’t really be the same.

Today, I know a thing or two about the global antipoverty world. And one thing that I can say is: under current approaches to ending global poverty, it is simply impossible for people like us to escape extreme poverty. I will sum this up in 4 ways:

 

#1. Today, nearly all existing solutions to ending global poverty have remained exclusively top-bottom, and inevitably short-lived.

Incidentally, humanity is still very convinced that the best way to end global poverty, is for the world’s poor to sit and wait for the right people, from the global north, to come and move them from poverty. The result is that, in the majority of remote rural communities, as is the case in our region, there is usually nothing whatsoever that is happening to end extreme poverty. 

If you visited a place like Buyende, one of Busoga’s most secluded places that is home to over 400,000 people, you would be hard pressed to find a single antipoverty agency that has ever been here, not just lately, but from as far back as the early 90s. It is also the same in many other communities across Busoga.

Even in those few poor communities that have been lucky enough to get some random intervention, the impact has always been very short-lived, and unseen. A 2021 report by the Uganda Bureau of Statistics which painted the a more bleak picture for Busoga, which report you can listen to here (video), put it plainly that… “poverty programs and interventions have not had any dent in reducing poverty”.

To me, this all means: the only way global poverty can end, is by putting world’s ultra poor, i.e., the people at the very bottom of the pyramid, directly at the helm. Because, for the most part, there is usually nothing whatsoever that is happening to end poverty in a place like ours. Even those few interventions that have occasionally come up — which interventions “have not had any dent” on reducing poverty — these interventions have always been top-bottom.

The extreme poor, meanwhile, permanently live here, and are therefore best placed to end poverty, with continuity, if only they were at the helm, or if they were accorded the means to take charge of events. Sadly, that is not what humanity thinks. And for this reason, humanity really is very opposed to the idea of directly supporting those of us who live in chronic poverty, in the global south.

 

#2. At present, global antipoverty funding isn’t for WE the poor.

Today, only 1% of all the money that is intended to end global poverty (Official Development Aid and Humanitarian Assistance combined), is what goes directly to the extreme poor in the global south.

Specifically, only 1% of all Official Development Assistance (funding from agencies like USAID, UKAID etc), and an even smaller portion (0.4% in 2018 alone) of all international humanitarian assistance (all charitable global antipoverty funding included), is what goes directly to local and national grassroots organizations in the global south, today.

Moreover, for the latter (i.e., humanitarian assistance), the 0.4% in 2018 was an increase, according the 2019 Global Humanitarian Assistance Report. In earlier years, that figure was even smaller.

And when it comes to Africa in particular — the ground zero of the global fight against poverty: In 2018 alone, only 5.2% of the $9 billion in US foundation funding that was specifically earmarked for Sub Saharan Africa, went to local organizations in Africa — the African Visionary Fund, a partnership between the Segal Family Foundation and other US grantmakers, says on their website, quoting a report from the US Council on Foundations.

And since the total amount of development aid and international humanitarian assistance that goes directly to the global south as a whole is just ~1.4%, it is safe to say that, overall, the total share of this, which goes directly to grassroots organizations in Africa alone, is well in the 0.1%’s, all philanthropic global antipoverty funding included.

 

#3. The development sector mostly operates at arm’s length from the poor, and is very, very inaccessible to people like us.

The other 99% (or so) of global antipoverty funding, today, remains in the hands of the people from the global development sector, which precisely means western global antipoverty agencies.

Implying, for people like us, the only way to escape poverty, is to either wait for the development sector itself to reach your village, or to get some global antipoverty agency to lend you a voice. Sadly, for people like us, both are out of question.

First, the development sector often never comes. Why? Their own solutions, again, only reach a few poor communities. Second, for people like us, the prospect of getting anyone from the development sector to work together with you, i.e.,. on poor people-led, grassroots solutions, is a near impossibility. Why? These people, again, are convinced that the world’s poor must only wait for their own solutions to come.

The development sector has historically operated at arm’s length from the poor, and is very, very inaccessible to people like us. Very few people may know it, but for those of us at the very bottom of the pyramid, the development sector, unless luck randomly brings them to your community when rolling out their own solutions, are the last people you will ever, ever get the chance to work together with on anything.

 

#4. Humanity as a whole, too, has been instructed to avoid the poor, or to be wary of the poor, as much as possible.

Regardless of things like nationalism, or even racism, our world today has millions of very impassioned, well-meaning people who genuinely want to make the world a better place, and who innately want to help people like us escape poverty, but who have simply [over time] been conditioned into believing that:

a). if you are to help the world’s ultra poor escape poverty, the best way to do so is by safely placing your support very, very far away from the extreme poor themselves, and by being very careful not to work with them directly — under the premise that the poor, especially those us in Africa, are somehow wannabe fraudsters,

b). Only the most legit people, which by default means those from the global north, are the ones who must be at the helm of ending extreme poverty, and are the ones you must always throw your support behind. For example, after the 2010 Haiti earthquake, this is what was said:

“Don’t send money overseas. Even though Haiti is a foreign disaster, don’t send a donation to a foreign bank account. Experts say this is never legit” – Forbes.

“Within 24 hours of the Haitian earthquake, scammers were at work trying to profit from the disaster” – CS Monitor.  “Be ware of bogus online help for Haiti” – NBC News.  “Be careful about those impulse donations” – ABC News.  “If you want to help, you can find a list of legitimate charities seeking donations here.”  –Scambusters.  “How to help Haiti earthquake victims: donate only to vetted charities… Charity Navigator has compiled a list…” – Fast Company.

So much so that, for those of us who are directly battling abject poverty here in the global south, even if you contacted someone in the global north and asked them only for a tweet about your cause, they will simply cringe, and decline a tweet right away — often without even taking a minute to learn about your cause. Not because they are apathetic, but because they have simply been conditioned to think that way.

This kind of conditioning, incidentally, has mostly been done by a) the international mainstream media, and b) the global development sector itself, the same people who are supposed to be the closest allies of the poor, but who have chosen instead to operate at arm’s length from people like us.

 

My message to humanity as a whole:

For those people out there who have been conditioned to fear (or to be wary of) the world’s poor, please change your mind. By clinging onto this kind of worldview, you are only helping condemn those of us who live on <$1.9/day, into eternal poverty.

To me, there is no such thing as an illegit human, or a group of humans who are more legit than others. We are all the same. The only thing that makes us different, is the opportunity (or its lack thereof) that we are afforded to enable us transform our livelihoods. Even those people here in Africa who have been labelled ‘scamsters’, ‘Nigerian prince scam artists’ etc, these people are only where they are because of global poverty and economic inequality.

And to the philanthropic community: if this pandemic was indeed a lesson for the world not to go back to normal, now is the time for you to start directly supporting the people who live in chronic poverty.

To be fair, top-bottom approaches have had more than a good run. This has been the default way of ending global extreme poverty since the dawn of time, and it just hasn’t worked. The only thing this has accomplished, is that it has helped keep the world’s ultra poor on the sidelines of the global fight against poverty. It has only helped seal the fate of those of us at the very bottom of the pyramid. And it has only helped keep people like us on the extreme edge of humanity.

If anything, a final end to global poverty is already long overdue. The world has already spent more than enough time trying to end global extreme poverty, with exactly the same approaches, and exactly the same results. It is time for us to a) accept that staying the course simply won’t work, and b) realize the need to put the ultra poor directly at the helm.

Short of this, we will continue having a world where all existing solutions to ending global poverty are exclusively top-bottom, and largely short-lived, and a world where billions are spent every year, in the name of ending global poverty, in a way that doesn’t touch the ultra poor in any way.

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Anthony Kalulu is a farmer in Namisita, a village in a remote part of Kamuli, eastern Uganda. He is also founder of the nonprofit Uganda Community Farm, working to end extreme poverty