The Road to Hell Is Paved With Well-Intentioned Development

Reading about Monica Ayieko's bugs-to-food plans called to mind "Pure Product," an an essay by Binyavanga Wainana recently excerpted in Harper's Magazine.

This is biogas, the Swedes told us. A fecal matter. It looks like #@&! -- it is #@&! -- but it has given up its gas for you. With this new fuel you can light your bulbs and cook your food. You will become balanced dieted; if you are industrious perhaps you can run a small biogaspowered posho mill and engage in income generating activities.

We went back to class. Very excited. Heretofore our teachers had threatened us with straightforward visions of failure. Boys would end up shining shoes; girls would end up pregnant. Now there was a worse thing to be: a user of biogas.

Wainana also describes her experience as a child with processed maize
-- corn -- sent by the US to relieve African famine. Her classmates, accustomed to white-colored cornmeal, were disturbed by the American feed's yellow coloration; soon they became suspicious -- that it had been intended for animals, already gone bad, treated with contraceptives.

Soon, in the Njoro High School dining hall, vast amounts of yellow porridge went directly into the bins. Our teachers, normally violent fascists in matters of discipline, looked the other way. We had food fights with the porridge every evening, and the floor would be littered with the clumpy remnants of America's love.

Do Ayieko's plans fit this mold? It's too early to say, but it's not hard to imagine boxes of insect-based foodstuffs being rejected by people who would rather go hungry than accept the indignity of eating charitably given bugs. As Ayieko's ideas move from research to application, the lesson of basing development and food aid on locally defined needs and desires -- rather than dreaming it up from a distance and imposing it, top-down -- is a good one to remember.

Related Wired coverage here.

Pure Product [Harper's] [Subscription-only, but also reprinted here]