We are sitting on the veranda of a very pleasant house in a small Liberian settlement, beautifully located on the confluence of three rivers, close to the Atlantic Ocean. Water, green forest, beaches, the sound of crashing waves on one side, birdsong everywhere. This, as the cliché goes, is as close as you can get to Paradise.

A Dutchman is said to have run a trading post from here in the 19th century. There are the ruins of a house-plus-warehouse (the goods below, the owners upstairs), the water hides the remains of a jetty.

The mayor, on whose veranda were are having this conversation, is a veteran of peace and women’s activism. In the 1990s, she stood up against the gangleaders who were tearing her country apart. This is her hometown, destroyed by fighters of Charles Taylor’s National Patriotic Front of Liberia – their patriotism eloquently expressed through killing, raping and looting Liberians on a scale never seen before. But the mayor can work with them, should the occasion arise. Whatever they have done, they remain Liberians. Family. Outsiders do not readily understand this.

She will, however, refuse to work with NGOs. "You know what happens if they come here. They will hold workshops (part 5). And you know what that means. A caravan of Landcruisers, a weeklong meeting in our palaver house. And nothing will happen."

Waiting for no one
But in the meantime, they will have taken over her town with their shiny cars, their expensive expertise, their money and their handouts (part 3). The mayor does not want a dependency culture in her town. She is painstakingly putting together ways and means of getting a reluctant local population to actually do something for themselves, in stead of waiting for 'The Government' or 'The International Community' or 'God' to do something for them.

It works – up to an extent. But she knows that as soon as the aid caravan comes rolling in, her work will be destroyed. Because the aid industry will never learn the lesson that you don’t give people what they don’t want. Remember that pipeline in Zimbabwe? (part 2) They don’t lay much useless pipe anymore. They hold useless (and far more expensive) workshops instead.

Decent bookkeeping
The mayor does, of course, have a money problem. Her town is actually officially a city, which means it has the right to raise taxes. Nice idea – but from whom? But she is equally convinced that throwing money at her town will solve precisely nothing. You need to work with the resources you have. Judiciously. Remember Guinea and how suddenly the lights went on in the capital? (part 4) Not a mystery, just decent bookkeeping.

People will work for the things they are interested in and will discard what they consider irrelevant. A far cry from this quote: ‘If “participation” means that people need to be involved in the planning of an aid programme from the start – well, that’s pure twaddle, of course.’ This, from a Dutch development bureaucrat.

End aid
The aid industry professes popular participation – but never practices it. This is no surprise. The industry was born from the need to employ Western tropical experts when colonialism ended. And indeed: those working in the aid business act in the same manner as their predecessors they profess to malign so much. It’s the motto of the civilising mission: the natives must first be studied and then improved. I actually may have to revisit my premise that the individuals in the aid business are not part of the problem... (part 1)

The end of the aid industry would be hugely beneficial for Africa – and indeed the rest of the “developing” world. It seems the Dutch have taken a lead. (part 1) Good. Let’s see it through. Talking heads can easily be employed elsewhere.