On April 8, 2020, ponmo a local delicacy in Nigeria trended for the wrong reasons. In a now-viral video, a woman reportedly spent over N1m to feed her neighbours during the Federal Government COVID-19 lockdown The unnamed woman, a professional caterer identified as ‘a good Samaritan’, was reportedly shocked by the response. Misunderstanding the gesture, the recipients of her generosity lamented about the quality of the food provided after being indoors for several days and complained about the lack of pieces of meat. One woman who provided a glimpse of her food: jollof rice and protein in a disposable takeaway pack shared the viral quote, “I don’t even eat ponmo. I don’t eat ponmo.”
Unsurprisingly, the reactions from the charity recipients sparked outrage among Nigerians on social media. Comments were a mix from moderately benign to outright insulting. The Tweeter who shared the video wrote “I found the video! Some Nigerians are very despicable people. What sort of ungrateful and witchcraft behaviour is this? She is a private citizen and she decided to use her own funds to feed people on the streets.”
In less than 24 hours, the original post had generated over 5,000 tweets with a trending tag #kpomo deriding the charity benefactors and memes for the ‘I don’t even eat kpomo’ lady.
Malcolm Gladwell’s book, ‘David and Goliath’ has a famous line I will paraphrase: “Why do we automatically assume that someone smaller or poorer or less skilled is necessarily at a disadvantage?” Why do we, in the context of our #kpomo chronicles, automatically assume that people who give are making sacrifices, while the receivers, for the most part, are ungrateful people who are unappreciative of the effort, resources and time of the donors?
From the commentary on the origins of online philanthropy in Nigeria and the response to the beneficiaries of our #kpomo chronicles, we can plausibly see the differing perspectives of philanthropy. Why then do we believe that all philanthropy is good? Why do we assume that the broad-brush programmes by philanthropists and charitable persons are addressing the current needs of their recipients? Why is a lot of local philanthropy frothy; too much noise with little substance? Are we misreading and misinterpreting philanthropy?
In an article, Adam Waytz, Assistant Professor of Management & Organisations at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, explains the dynamics of a charitable endeavour. When people are on the receiving end of help, they tend to prefer something called agentic aid, which allows them to choose how to respond, yet people often prefer the opposite — paternalistic policies — when helping others.
To limit the pandemic, the Federal Government had implemented lockdown strategies in Lagos, Ogun, and Abuja, with other state governments including Rivers, Kaduna, and Ekiti applying partial to full lockdowns.
For many Nigerians, the lockdowns hurt. For most people working in the informal sector and rely on daily wages, the lockdown was a death knell. This may be why the attempt by ‘good Samaritans’, to save people with packs of jollof rice and ponmo is justified.
However, charity to the poor may create a vicious, unintended poverty cycle if not contextually executed. Experts believe that charity only exacerbates the challenge of inequality and polarises participants on both ends of the charity quotient as privileged and unprivileged; the former class has a surplus and can aggregate resources to provide food and drive around to give it out while the latter category is trapped at home, unable to trade but have to rely on other people.
Philanthropy cannot solve the inequality problem. On the contrary, it seems to open a Pandora’s Box. Peter Buffett, son of Warren Buffett and billionaire philanthropist himself coined the term ‘philanthropic colonialism,’ describing it as when sponsors, who have very little knowledge of a particular place, think that they can solve a local problem by transplanting what worked in one setting directly into another with scant regard for culture, geography or societal norms.
Charity has become emblematic of the show of wealth, without an improvement in recipient outcomes. Weaponised charity has become a meal-ticket for smart people out of poverty themselves, advancing philanthropic at the expense of the vulnerable.
Discussions about solutions to most social problems usually get sidetracked by wealthy people and their photo ops of charitable deeds. Lost in a fog of generosity is the reality that philanthropy is not a substitute for access to good health systems, economic opportunities, and decent wages, social protection for the jobless and effective education and infrastructure.
Like infrastructure, philanthropy must be pulled in, not pushed, to sustainably assist people. An incident shared by a friend corroborated my thoughts that push doesn’t work. He saw a young lady giving about 100 packs of jollof rice and meat out of her Prado jeep on Awolowo road, Ikoyi to nearby gatemen, fuel attendants, and beggars. After receiving his pack, a gateman commented that it has become tiring to receive jollof rice. According to him, these “big people should be giving other food.” A fuel attendant nearby said he hadn’t finished the bag of rice he got for Christmas so collecting cooked rice was meaningless. A third person chipped in, saying the lady must be spending Nigeria’s stolen money, which would have been more useful if it was distributed to everyone. What was supposed to be a thoughtful gesture to help vulnerable people mutated into a cry for financial equality.
When philanthropies are inclusively strategic in their goals, they can discover new ways to involve the people they hope to impact and innovate new programmatic directions. What would a pull charity attempt look like? An opt-in, technology-enabled intervention platform that aggregates both donors and recipients can help. Instead of a one-size-fits-all approach for mass markets, charity providers can leverage pull techniques to assemble solutions in customised ways to serve pre-defined local needs, in a rapid or on-the-fly process.
For instance, the vulnerable can be categorised into different classes; single, needs-cooked-food; can-cook-so-needs-provision; married, needs-family-food-packs; married and has-food-but-needs-hospital-access-for-sick-child. When you think through it, you realise there are many sub-groups within the vulnerable population. The dynamics of these subgroups is reflected in their pain points. They may all come out for free food (who won’t) but will not appreciate the effort.
How can we make, for instance, food charities more sustainable? We retain existing markets or create new markets around them, what Professor Christensen has called ‘market-creating innovations.” After defining the categories, food charities can discover that a sizable amount of their populations are families. Low-income families need customised food packs.
Every solution must involve, at the minimum, the following components: time, education, partnership, a champion, and accountability; time and effort undertaken to understand the specific needs of charity recipients; a technology-driven platform that educates stakeholders on the process; partnership with multiple agencies, funders, and companies; a champion and total accountability.
The focus of charity must remain vulnerable and poor people. We may need to define new ways of measuring this in the era of Twitter giveaways. Any philanthropic activity should then reflect the views of this class, to understand what they want and how they want it.
“Philanthropy is commendable,” said Martin Luther King, “but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice, which make philanthropy necessary.”
Osunrinde sent this piece via temi.osunrinde@gmail.com
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