Bangladesh aid group's quiet Afghan success
Wednesday, 20 Jan, 2010
BRAC employs 3,900 Afghani staff, working on healthcare, education, micro-finance, empowerment of women, gender parity, and getting girls into schools. It extends credit to 180,000 families across the country, has a presence in all 32 of Afghanistan's provinces. –AP Photo
DHAKA: Immaculately attired and cigar in hand, Fazle Hasan Abed, who will soon become the first Bangladeshi citizen to be knighted, does not look as if he holds the secret to a better future for Afghanistan.
But his charity, the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee, has successfully exported its model of development to the war-torn country, where corruption and a Taliban insurgency have frustrated many Western aid efforts.
“A key element of BRAC's success in Afghanistan is that we are from a developing country. We know and understand poverty,” he told AFP after his knighthood was announced in Britain's New Year honours list.
“Outside Bangladesh our operations in Afghanistan are our largest. We have been there for the last seven years. We are cost effective — we pay Bangladeshi salaries — and yet achieve more than other aid groups,” Abed said.
Abed, 73, who holds dual Bangladeshi-British citizenship and is due to be knighted on February 16, trained as an accountant in London and quit his well-paid job with oil giant Shell when war broke out in Bangladesh in 1971.
Using the proceeds of the sale of his London flat, he founded BRAC after the bloody battle for independence ended the following year.
At first, BRAC helped millions of refugees who streamed back into the new country, and then it diversified into healthcare, micro-finance, agriculture and education.
“BRAC decided to look at poverty as a multi-dimensional syndrome: not just income poverty, but poverty in terms of healthcare, in terms of education, the things that keep poor people poor,” he said in an interview at his Dhaka office, surrounded by flowers sent to congratulate him on his knighthood.
Four decades later, Abed's approach has been hailed as one factor behind the drop in the proportion of Bangladeshis living in extreme poverty from 80 percent to around 40 percent of the population.
The approach has proved so successful that BRAC, which has a staggering 130,000 local employees worldwide, has expanded into Africa - including southern Sudan - and been lauded by world figures such as former US president Bill Clinton.
“Southern Sudan is again a post-conflict country. Most of the people lived in refugee camps for 30 years so a whole generation does not know how to do agriculture,” he said.
Abed's new title, Sir Fazle, will “open some doors” as BRAC explores more opportunities in Africa, he said.
“I didn't aspire to the honour, but it will help us operate” he said, adding that he is not the first person in his family to receive the title - his great-uncle was knighted under the British Raj in 1913.
BRAC's overseas expansion began in 2001 when Abed followed the collapse of the Taliban regime and was struck by the parallels with Bangladesh in the early 1970s.
“I saw a lot of opportunities in Afghanistan for BRAC. The government was fragile, donors were looking for organisations which could deliver,” Abed said.
So he took his organisation — which has a turnover of nearly one billion dollars and is Bangladesh's second largest employer after the government — to Kabul, the Afghan capital.
“We now have 3,900 (Afghani) staff. We are working in healthcare, education, micro-finance, empowerment of women, gender parity, and getting girls into schools,” he said.
BRAC extends credit to 180,000 families across the country, has a presence in all 32 of Afghanistan's provinces, and has just been granted contracts to run hospitals in 10 Afghan provinces — including one in Kabul.
The low-key success on the ground and their popularity with the Afghan government - “they think we're a great resource,” Abed said - could provide a new framework for development work in Afghanistan.
Last week, outgoing UN special envoy Kai Eide warned the international mission would fail unless the “civilian components” were given as much attention as the military's role in stabilising the country.
“It slows our work if there is no (stable government). But development can still happen as long as the people are there,” said Abed, explaining how BRAC works in a fragile, fractured state using skills honed in volatile Bangladesh.
“As long as you work in villages, directly with the people, the (government) does not mind what you get up to,” he said.
BRAC receives funding from philanthropists such as George Soros and Bill Gates, but generates most of its income through commercial enterprises including an international retail clothing chain named Aarong.
In the long run, Abed believes his organisation, which also has interests in Internet providers, banks and tea plantations can help strengthen the Afghan state.
And as Kabul's government comes under constant criticism for corruption, BRAC also provides a means of channeling aid through village councils and a direct grants system called the National Solidarity Programme.
“We are working in 8,000 villages in Afghanistan on the National Solidarity Programme. We are building groups of people who will manage their own villages.”
Bangladesh aid group's quiet Afghan success
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