Needs of Poor People in Developing Countries (From Emile KAHOUN, Lycee Yadega, Ouahigouya)
In developing countries, poor people have relatively simple needs and it is primarily with regard to their basic requirements and activities that they want assistance. If they were not capable of self-help and self-reliance: they would not survive today. But their own methods are all too frequently too primitive, too ineffective, these methods require up-grading by the input of new knowledge, new to them, but not altogether new to everybody. It is quite wrong to assume that poor people are generally unwilling to change. But the proposed change must stand in some organic relationship to what there are doing already, and they are rightly suspicious of, and resistant to, radical change proposed by town-based and office-bound innovators who approach them in the spirit: "you just get out of my way and I shall show you how useless you are and how splendidly the job can be done with a lot of foreign money and outlanding equipment".
Because the need of poor people are relatively simple, the range of studies to be undertaken is fairly limited. It is a perfectly manageable task to tackle systematically, but it requires a different organizational set up from what we have at present (a set up primarily geared to the disbursement of funds.) At present, the development effort is mainly carried on by government officials, both in the donor and in recipient country; in other words, by administrators (who know nothing about the basic needs of rural areas populations).
In the rich countries, there are thousands of able people who would like to be involved and make a contribution to the fight against world poverty, a contribution that goes beyond forking out a bit of money, but there are not many outlets for them. And in the poor countries, the educated people, a high privileged minority, all too often follow the fashions set by the rich societies and attend to any problem except those directly concerned with the poverty of their fellow countrymen. They need to be given strong guidance and inspiration to deal with the urgent problems of their own societies.
The mobilisation of relevant knowledge to help the poor to help themselves, through the mobilisation of willing helpers who exist everywhere, both here and overseas is a task that requires some money, but not very much (...) . There is therefore no question of returning the aid programmes upside down or inside out. It is the thinking that has to be changed and also the method of operating.
Extract from Small is beautiful by E.F Shumacher
QUESTIONS
1) In poor countries , most of the developing projects fail. What in the text can explain this failure. (4 marks)
2) To be successful , how must be projects ? (how must be = the right sort help for poor countries) (4 marks)
3) Does the development of poor countries necessarily depend on foreign aid ? (10-15 lines) (6marks)
4) Translate the last paragraph into French from... The mobilisation............. to ......own societies (6marks)