I read that critique with hope, but ultimately I found it largely unconvincing.

I'm very surprised by the claim that mosquito nets keep their beneficiaries in poverty. Mosquito nets are not trying to lift people out of poverty, and yet there is some evidence that they do help lift people out of poverty to some extent. I really don't understand how distributing nets can keep people in poverty. 

Kalulu says:

if you randomly asked one of the people who themselves live in abject poverty, there is no chance that they will mention one of EA’s supported “effective” charities, as having impacted their lives more than the work of traditional global antipoverty agencies. No. That’s out of question.

To be honest, if you asked someone who had received $1000 from GiveDirectly whether it impacted their lives, I'm pretty confident they would say a hearty yes. It also allows the lived experiences of the poor to dictate what happens to the money -- something which Kalulu demands.

GiveWell believes that all of the GiveWell Top Charities outperform GiveDirectly, and I think this is correct, unless you place an unusually low amount of value on saving a life. Again, GiveWell have validated whether they are imposing a Western perspective when it comes to this moral weight judgement -- they have surveyed people in Africa on this question.

One area where I do agree to some extent: I think it would be good if more people from the populations which benefit from these interventions actually worked at GiveWell. I have certainly had conversations with GiveWell where we have discussed the details of models and I have invoked lived experience of spending time among the global poor, and I got the impression that GiveWell could have benefited from having more of this perspective.

Overall I still don't feel we need to galvanise actions to improve the situation.

Some might be sceptical of a critique which could be paraphrased as: "EA is getting it wrong because it should be funding NGOs which are run by people who have lived experience of being ultra poor. By the way I have lived experience of being ultra poor and I run an NGO." I don't think you need to invoke this scepticism in order to find this critique unconvincing. 

"What can we do to help improve this situation?"

Before we assume there is a situation that needs to be improved, it is important to make clear that there is a problem. The existence of an article from someone in an extremely poor place saying that EA has not helped his community is not compelling evidence that there is a problem with how EA is using its resources.

The total cash flow through from AMF, the deworming programs and Give Directly through their whole history is probably in the area of 1-2 billion dollars. Or something like 2-4 dollars per extremely poor person.

Obviously this hasn't made a big direct impact on the day to day life of a random poor person in a random poor country . It isn't enough money.

So the question that we actually want to answer is: Given the actual quantity of resources we have available to put towards extremely poor countries, would that tiny amount of resources do more good per dollar if we adopted the proposals put forward here? Alternatively, would these proposals allow us to mobilize more rich Western person money, until there is enough being donated to actually fill the holes?

Thanks so much for this - am loving the development focused discussions on the forum at the moment!

I'm a New Zealander who has lived in Northern Uganda for 10 years and this is exactly the kind of response I often get from Ugandan development workers. I think his argument is well intentioned but flawed, while raising a bunch of important points we can work on. Here are a few thoughts on his arguments

1. Unfortunately empirical evidence is rarely valued highly here - instead development theory and logic are leant on. You can see the author lean heavily on the kind of "teach a man to fish" development theory that still predominates in mainstream aid, even when that theory isn't usually backed by evidence.
   
   "If you visited a truly impoverished country like Uganda, you will quickly notice that many of the things that effective altruists call “effective” — from mosquito nets, to $100 business grants that are provided to groups of 3 people — are the same short-term, disposable solutions that have not only kept their recipients in abject poverty, but also, they are the very kind of solutions that often disappear the same day their proponents exit."
   
   His explanation for why he doesn't believe the interventions are effective is based on theory not evidence. I'm yet to meet a Ugandan development worker here in Gulu, Northern Uganda at least who has quoted evidence about development - and that's after 10 years working here. Unfortunately the education system here focuses heavily on theory and barely at all on evidence. Part of the reason for this is lack of resources - university students here often don't have access to databases because their universities can't afford it which is pretty tragic. Also many older lecturers who are 20-30 years behind on development theory.
    
2. His point on all EA charities being Western is a good one, but I think this more drives at the point that almost all large charities (with some exceptions like BRAC)  are Western. The way EA operates, relying mostly on RCTs and big studies that only large charities can afford, means that for better or worse (I think often worse), only big charities can be funded. I LOVE the idea of funding potentially effective local charities while reviewing their effectveness, and I also think that many of them have opportunity for scaling. I think this comment misses the point a bit "so spending $100k on a study might be pointless when the org only has capacity to absorb $50k."  first because studies are likely to cost more than 100k, and second because many local charities do have big scalabilty potental. Maybe you fund 10, and find only 1 has the potential to become both big and effective, but that might be worth it.
    
3.  "Conduct third-party surveys of the intended beneficiaries of poverty relief. So far the only instrument of this kind I've seen is GiveDirectly's program."
   
   On this point I think before and after surveys are deeply flawed for a number of reasons but this is an interesting debate. Both sides of the argument play out a bit in the discussion about Wellbys especially in the comments here.
   
    https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/uY5SwjHTXgTaWC85f/don-t-just-give-well-give-wellbys-hli-s-2022-charity
    
4. His observation here is brilliant and I think 100% correct, but it' not reallys a criticism of EA, more a critcism of the uselessnes of charity in general in Uganda. I believe most charity in Uganda is useless and often even harmful. Farming improvements have come mostly through the market not aid - as one example new effective seeds for the cash crops he talks about.
   
   "But the thing is: every household in our region that depends on maize, lives in chronic extreme poverty, and has lived in chronic poverty for eternity. Neither the effective charity nor the other big antipoverty agencies that came before it, have changed this. By contrast, those farmers who are growing crops like sugarcane, no charity or antipoverty agency has ever supported them. But today, every village in our region that you visit, is covered with sugarcane. It is also the same with many other crops (rice, tomatoes, water melon etc) that are at least providing rural farmers with some tangible income."
   
   
   
   Unfortunately I don't think there's much hope of EA theory taking off here for a long time unfortunately, due to lack of focus on evidence locally and the lack of ability for people to have critical discussion about charity. Unfortunately there's too much self interest at stake. For social and political reasons people are VERY hesitant to criticise other charities here. It might  cause you to not get a job in future or worse annoy a political establishment. As a expat here I have the white privilege of being able to speak critically without threatening my livelihood.
   
   As a brief note, hiring locally already happens most of the time as it is a core part of mainstream development theory. Most charities mostly people from the local (ish) community."If you are a charity working in eg Uganda, try promoting your hiring rounds among your beneficiaries and their surrounding communities" - 
   
    

Let's talk about two ways of granting money to small, hard-to-evaluate projects to help people in extreme poverty.

• One is the method Kalulu is calling for, which is donating to small, local, grassroots charities like his Uganda Community Farm. UCF has existed since 2013. They grow crops at their farm, then train other farmers to do the same, give them material inputs, and build a pipeline to market for their collective output.
  • They have 4-7 people on their team, have a tiny budget ("$0 for the most part"), and work with 300-400 farmers, of whom about 50 have made a switch in what they plant. After stopping their sorghum operations during 2020-2021 due to COVID-19, they are back. They also have a vision of building an agro-processing plant, which they estimate would cost $1 million for farmer support and cassava, cereal and grain processing, and a further $14 million for an additional component for processing fruit.
• The other is donating directly to individuals living in extreme poverty, to spend the money as they see fit. This is what GiveDirectly, founded in 2008, does.
  • On their website, requests come with the potential recipient's own story about why they are requesting a grant. Isaiah, 26, of Pleebo, Liberia, says "Since I dropped out of school in 2019 when I was in the eleventh grade, I am happy that GiveDirectly has given me the hope of restarting my education... One of the main things that I am thinking of right now is to invest in a mini business wherein I will be buying goods from Pleebo and taking them to my community to be sold. The proceeds from my business will provide funds to forward my education."

One rebuttal to Kalulu's argument about the superior persistence of local, grassroots organizations is that UCF did have to stop its operations for about two years due to COVID-19. Certainly, that's not UCF's fault, and I feel sympathy for their hardship. I also admire Kalulu's work to lift himself and his neighboring farmers out of extreme poverty.

But by contrast, GiveDirectly not only maintained its operations during COVID-19, but created a new program for COVID-19 support that distributed $76 million to 342,000 African families. They can do this because they can wire money directly to recipients. GiveDirectly is also experimenting with 2-year and 12-year basic incomes for 40 villages.

Kalulu's article is hard to interpret because he doesn't name the "one [well-funded] international charity which is among those described by the EA movement as being 'effective'." He says they're also working with local farmers on maize, which he thinks is a bad choice relative to sugarcane and other cash crops. I don't know what charity he's referring to, but perhaps they should hire Kalulu for some kind of local consulting role?

But I don't think his descriptions of EA charities are accurate. GiveDirectly is giving people money to do with as they choose, and is experimenting with long-term commitments to UBI. Their operations are continuous. That does not strike me as the transient, passive charity Kalulu's critiquing. AMF has existed since 2004, GiveDirectly since 2008, and both have maintained continuous operations since then. It's not at all a fair comparison, but UCF is 5-9 years younger as an organization, and has faced ~two years of stoppped or slowed operations due to COVID-19. I'm sure their situation would have been different, had they been better funded, but I think it's important to respond to the specific arguments Kalulu is making in his article.

Overall, I would not support donating to local, little-vetted grassroots charities with a modest track record of success to the tune of millions of dollars. I would be open to an experiment with donating to local grassroots charities in smaller amounts. For example, each of the ~6,000 recipients of GiveDirectly's long-term basic income experiment will receive a total of $3285 over the lifetime of the experiment. Donating about $3,000 to a set of 6,000 randomly-selected local grassroots charities  in impoverished regions (perhaps focusing on ones that have already existed for at least 3-5 years) seems like a reasonable way to experiment with spending $18 million.

Thanks for linking to this article and providing highlights. I tend to take this kind of criticism very seriously, and despite my pushback in the next paragraph, I still think we should pay attention to it.

On the other hand, it appears to me that very clearly many global health NGOs supported by GiveWell would have results mostly unfelt by those in poverty, not because they're ineffective, but because they're preventative. If AMF succeeded in its mission, all you got from it was a mosquito net. You can't know that your own child would've otherwise been the one to die from malaria. The same goes for deworming and food fortification (the latter might even be entirely unfelt by a consumer).

Although I'm not sold on Kalulu's argument (and didn't see enough information about his charity on its website to assess whether I think it is effective), I think this is a good time to remember and acknowledge the weaknesses and limitations of current EA measurement of effectiveness in the global health/development area. It seems quite likely to me that there are grassroots organizations that are more effective at the margin than the current GiveWell four (and many that are significantly less effective). EA simply lacks the resources to evaluate them all, and evaluating them up to the GiveWell gold standard would not be cost-effective even if it did. So the message we have with confidence is something like: "We are very confident that EA's recommended charities are very effective at doing good, and we believe they are the best known use for your marginal dollar."

I share Jaime's view that we should "[t]ry to identify the best local grassroot efforts to support." I'd add that this should be done by people from the countries (or at least subcontinents)  in question to the maximum extent practicable, both for cost-effectiveness and other reasons.  

I wonder if the most effective (in a EA sense) way to help these organizations would be some sort of meta support. If we believe that a dollar in meta support could help move a number of Western charitable dollars away from less effective charities, we do not need to believe these organizations are as effective as AMF et al for meta support to be potentially effective. 

Taking Kalulu's organization as an example, I could find no indication of tax-deductibility status in any country (although references to Donorbox and Benevity suggest there might be). If the organization has a fiscal sponsor offering tax deductibility, not advertising that fact is a major error (which suggests that training for "the best" grassroots organizations on how to effectively seek money for Westerners could be cost-effective). If it does not, then it may be cost-effective to set up an organization to serve as a fiscal sponsor for grassroots organizations that have been identified as "the best local grassroot efforts to support." For better or worse, many donors use that status as a marker for some limited amount of vetting/oversight in addition to the obvious advantages. Of course, for the smallest organizations, the most effective meta might be to set up a fund for "the best tiny local grassroots efforts to support" rather than provide assistance with individual-org fundraising.

I parse the argument as "EA interventions don't have lasting impact. They might prevent some bad things, but they don't fundamentally improve the conditions that cause poverty. People are not kept in poverty because of bad public health in their community, but because of economic factors that disempower them."

And this might well be true. Bednets save the lives of their recipients, but I'm unsure if this leads to a more productive next generation or a more stable political situation.

Basically, live-saved measures are too short-sighted.