Innovative Ideas for Development

• New! Food Aid on Demand

  Posted: August 15, 2009, 5:13 pm

  
  

  I opened the newspaper today to find quite possibly the worst implementation of aid dispersal I could imagine. The government set up a text messaging service to identify where food aid is needed. Anyone with a phone can send a message with their location to the number and food aid will be sent.
  
  The brief article can be seen in the Daily Nation from Friday, August 14th, Page 9. Here is the text:
  
  

  The government yesterday created a hotline for people affected by hunger to send their requests for food. Government spokesman Alfred Mulua said those in desperate need of food can send a text message (SMS) indicating their locations to the number 2888. The government will then quickly dispatch food to the indicated areas through the famine relief program which President Kibaki announced early this week.
  

  
  Problem #1 – Due diligence is an impossibility. The potential for abusing the service is immense.
  
  Problem #2 – The truly poor most likely don't have a phone to send the message or sold it to buy food.
  
  Problem #3 - The volume of messages going to be sent will be unmanageable.
  
  Problem #4 - The logistics of delivering food aid to individual locations without a set plan is hugely inefficient.
  
  Problem #5 – If this is a mere stunt to try and identify locations of hungry people it proves how disconnected the government is with its own people. Plus, the ability for abuse would destroy the validity of the data.
  
  Do you think this could actually work? What other problems or potential benefits do you see?Thank you for helping to spread the ideas that will make this world a better place for those that have been left behind.

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