George Freeman, 22, former street child in Freetown, is a social entrepeneur running projects that get street children into school and micro-finance, youth-led employment programmes (see video).
I've had a story there before but this time I got more comments and more anger about why Africa hasn't developed despite 50 years of aid.
It's a good question. What makes Sierra Leone so interesting is that it's the test case of whether aid works. All the sexy development ideas from budget support to gender mainstreaming are being implemented and if the international community can't help the people of Sierra Leone get back on their feet then it's time to call it a day and say: "hey guys, this development thing, yeah, um we don't have a clue what we're doing, let's go home".
Is it a lack of money, or understanding, or good people and ideas? Are the problems simply too great? Are donors doing the wrong thing with the right people? Are they doing the right things but badly because they don't understand the context and are not working with the right people? Maybe it's just too complicated and to fix it needs much more money and time. No one knows.
But it's our money that's being spent and development practitioners need to be able to explain what they're doing and what is changing and what isn't. The reality is complex. Good and bad things are happening and the good things need to be communicated better. Saying "aid works" was fine in 2005 but not in 2009.
Those who are doing work that is creating change should be celebrated, people like George Freeman. They need to be helped to explain to the world what they're doing, why it's working, how they see the future development of their country and the role aid plays in that vision. The problem is George can't afford a laptop, which is why his website's out of date. He needs help from people in the West who chuck away laptops to build his business.
There needs to be more honesty about the bits that aren't working and explanation of why they're not working. Either those bits are abandoned or it's explained that "this is important for long-term development and in 10 years time we'll see real differences because of x,y and z".
The anger in the comments on my piece calling for more help for Sierra Leone is well-founded. Much of what I've seen in Africa has made me really angry too. It's our money. Good intentions aren't enough. Especially in a credit crunch. The fact that despite this in 2009 Comic Relief raised record amounts is amazing.
2005 was meant to Make Poverty History. Why didn't it happen? Is aid a waste of time? To counter the idea that aid is useless there needs to be more information and evidence of how aid helps. That evidence exists but the UK's view of Africa is still shaped by the famines of the early 1970s.
The cliches of what Africa is like are not the daily realities of the average African in 2009. The development community needs to use the opportunities presented by new media to show that things are changing. Yes Darfur and Congo are awful but that is not all of Africa. From Freetown to Maseru to Ouagadougou millions of ordinary people are working hard to feed and educate their kids and keep their families healthy and in a decent house. The problems they face, along with their politicians and business people, are the same as those in the West. It's just they're a lot poorer and that makes life difficult in ways we can't begin to imagine.
When things go wrong everyone looks for someone to blame. Bankers are a fair target and should lose their bonuses. Poor people are not and should not lose aid intended for them. But the development community needs to get better at explaining what's going on and now is the time to become more serious about how the additional money that's come since Gleneagles has helped and why there needs to be more of it in the future. The credit crunch means people don't trust experts any more whether they're financial, political or developmental. We want to understand where our money is going and why and if we can do that we're still happy to give (as Comic Relief showed). People need to know about George Freeman and the millions of Africans like him.
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