Summary of Stupart

The “7 Worst International Aid Ideas” by Richard Stupart helps give some insight into different foreign aid and development efforts that are either unproductive or even detrimental to the people they’re intended to help. On a several instances, these efforts even appear to driven by selfish reasons rather than a humanitarian mindset.

The first terrible international aid idea is the 1 million T-shirts project. Jason Sadler, the head of this operation, foolishly assumed it would be a good idea to dump free T-shirts in impoverished villages in Africa. However the cost of shipping the T-shirts to Africa is more expensive than making T-Shirts in the first place, and takes away the business of making clothes in these villages and damages their economy. Why would someone buy a T-Shirt made in their village when they can get one that was airdropped for free?

Stupart touches on several other important failed international aid efforts and gimmicks, including 50 Cent’s extortion for Facebook likes of his energy drink and TOMS Buy-One-Give-One scheme which exploits gullible consumers buying their Chinese manufactured shoes in their efforts to help people. What hit home the most for me was the point he makes about the USAID being used as a foreign policy tool. Having just read the Atwood article, it was nice to get some background examples of how the USAID was malicious because of how it was overly-manipulated by politics as a foreign policy tool. The examples of the USAID ceasing operations in Yemen and being tagged as an enemy in the afghan war helped provide background that Atwood assumed the reader knew when reading his article.