Are delays in aid funding inevitable?
Getting donors' money smoothly and quickly into the hands of those who desperately need it - and know how to use it - is a perennial problem faced by both governments and non-government agencies. Joseph Malinga, our reporter based in Katine, north-eastern Uganda, only yesterday wrote on our site that it has now taken five months for funding to arrive in Katine to replace the losses suffered by a farmers' savings group following a robbery last year.
Katine is a community development project, involving 66 villages in six parishes across a large area and covering the full range of development issues. The non-government agency Amref (African Medical Research Foundation (Amref), which is implementing the project, funded by Guardian readers and Barclays Bank, works in several countries and through various national and local administration offices in Africa and elsewhere. Each office handling the funds requires them to go through an exhaustive checking procedure to ensure the targeted community group receives the money.
The question is whether there is a faster, more efficient way of processing funds. Incomprehensible or unexplained delays in funds reaching destinations can shatter people's hopes and dreams - delays sadly common within many NGOs funding development work. Despite the Guardian's repeated calls to Amref to speed up the transfer of funds to the Emorikikinos farmers' village saving and loan association, Amref has still taken five months to move the money from its HQ office in Nairobi, Kenya, to Katine, Uganda - Kenya's southern neighbour.
Surely, regardless of all the sound reasons given for delays, there needs to be an change in procedures? For not only in this case have the farmers, who have long been complaining about the delay, probably been disadvantraged (perhaps they can let us know how?), but the morale of much of the community will, inevitably, have been affected too.
Are there, in fact, ways to improve dissemination of funds, given the need to keep funding processes clear, transparent and secure? How can systems such as the M-pesa money transfer service, launched in Kenya in 2007, be used to plug gaps in processes used now between funding agencies and beneficiaries?
Funding is a complicated process but modern technology should be able to simplify and speed up payments. What processes are readers using? What works and what doesn't? Have your say below as a donor or recipient.