Aid relief outsourced to Tesco?
Just thinking a little more on the Panorama programme showing the derelict hospitals in Sierra Leone.
And mountains of aid piling up in the port. Corruption for the African leaders and excessive amounts of “multi-agency coordination”.
In plain English backhanders and the different agencies tripping over themselves – all to create inaction.
I think the issue is probably now one of getting the Governments and aid agencies out of the way.
They’re now the problem. They’ve achieved what they can do.
Research. Diplomacy. Funding.
They’re clogging the system now.
Isn’t the solution delivery of aid from the ports to the villages in-county.
This is not a massive problem.
West Africa is not the Africa of Livingstone and Stanley 100 years ago.
There are towns. Airports. Roads. Villages. Radios. Mobile phones.
None of these are as developed as in Western Europe but Africa is not a completely isolated wilderness.
It’s simply poor. And corrupt. The problems are known. Diseases. Regional patterns and so on.
Isn’t the task now one for Tesco and the Royal Navy?
Sounds a bit silly but don’t Tesco do this king of thing day in and day out?
Goods shipped to depots then trucked to smaller depots and then distributed?
And don’t the Royal Navy specialise in ships and cargo?
The ships are bobbing around in Portsmouth Harbour or going to Africa anyway?
I’m sure the Belgian or Dutch navy have rich sea-faring heritage to help.
I did some maths. Bad maths.
A blue shipping box can hold 24,000kg.
Allowing for spoilage and wastage. That’s the equivalent of 20,000 bags of sugar – or rehydration sachets or powdered vitamin supplements or vaccines.
That’s enough for 20,000 people for a month.
A decent-sized freighter can easily hold 50 blue boxes.
Enough vaccines etc for 1M people.
3-5 days sailing time to Africa. A week or two trucking or flying in-country.
Within a month from one ship on one trip there’s enough vaccines and supplements for 1M people.
5-6 ships on rotation would deliver that amount of goods every day or two easily.
After the first moth or two the problem would be spoilage and wastage. You probably couldn’t use any more goods after 2 or 3 months.
Or nothing that couldn’t be Fed-Ex’d. The Berlin Airlift kept a whole German city fed and watered 50 years ago within a few weeks. For a year.
Aid has been delivered to Africa under far worse conditions for nearly 50 years now.
You could double the cost: $500 per box apparently: £15,000. And use it as a corruption budget.
Why not. Highlight the funds as for corruption then we all know.
It’s what the UN does in far more dangerous places: “technicals” are the Somali landrover-armoured cars that are budgeted and paid for as “technical assistance”.
A few thousands dollars per shipment of millions of vaccines is pitifully small. And useful to know to measure in future.
Per shipment we’re probably looking at $50,000.
Plus Royal Navy assistance that is budgeted for. Real-world training though rather than bobbing up and down in the harbour.
The Dutch. The Belgians. The Swedes. All have dozens of ships on training exercises or routine cargo shipments.
5M died in the Congo from war over the last decade. A greater total than the Vietnam War.
Approximately 3-5M die from disease in Africa each year.
Victorian diseases.
Soap. Clean water. Disinfectant. Vitamins. Vaccines.
Nothing much more complex than available in any Boots the Chemist. Or a large-ish Tesco.
These are replenished from stock every 7-14 days. For thousands of products.
Field hospitals, medical corps, water tankers are all budgeted and stored.
The Tesco and Royal Navy systems could do that.
DFID has an admin budget of £250M.
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