Disguising Jobs We Don’t Want as Foreign Aid Won’t End Poverty

Disguising Jobs We Don’t Want as Foreign Aid Won’t End Poverty

Leila Janah, Founder of Samasource

For those of you that don’t know, Samasource is a charity that educates marginalised people (women and those in poverty often with no formal education) in Uganda, Kenya, Haiti and India on basic IT skills. It then puts these people in jobs where they can perform simple tech-based tasks for companies like Walmart and Deloitte in areas from image tagging to machine learning in exchange for a locally-calculated living income.

And it’s a huge hit. Founder Leila Janah has received praise for her work all over the web from here on Steemit to the New York Times, Fortune and Forbes. And why not? Just check out her book, Give Work, where she shows why supplying people in poverty with jobs is often the most effective foreign aid out there.

But hey- even aside from the book, it’s fantastic to see a second generation immigrant (and a woman!) such as herself capable of making so much impact. Inspiring even. As a second generation female immigrant myself, I’ll be the first to say that it’s great to get all the representation we can get.

Yet, despite all of this fanfare, I have to admit it. Her project, Samasource, does make me wonder.

It all seems a little too good to be true. The swooning headlines and gracious tributes for tackling the worst of man-made poverty by simply giving people what they’re told they want- a job.

So what’s the problem?

It looks like sugarcoating. When the glamour is taken away and reality sets in, we begin to realise that what Samasource really does is outsource the issues the Western world is struggling to overcome; unfulfilling jobs with repetitive tasks in an age when their automation is nigh.

Now, this of course doesn’t mean we should start running around condemning poverty-stricken Haitians for stealing our jobs. There’s no stealing involved after all. It’s just savvy companies on a constant quest to find an ever-cheaper labour force to better compete with the rest.

If anything, Samasource is a little like a better regulated version of sites like Fiverr and Upwork (sites where Westerners often outsource work to people in developing countries who they can pay less). But there's a big difference. It doesn't just task people with work and hope for the best. Instead, the organisation specifically chooses people in as much poverty as possible and then trains them to carry out their menial tasks. This means they can be trusted to deliver well and be paid on Samasource's terms rather than their own.

And paying a living wage in Kenya, Uganda, Haiti and India is of course nothing compared to what companies like Walmart would need to pay someone in the West. At the end of the day, these companies just want cheaper labour. And hey, if association with one of the best humanitarian efforts in our decade can obscure this reality, then so be it.

In this way, Samasource is a false remedy to the West’s first world problems as in reality, it's just putting them somewhere else (so is the history of colonialism).

Although I can't speak for Haiti, it's also worth noting that the program primarily focuses on developing economies with relatively stable political regimes and decent economic growth, rather than countries arguably in more need of help like the Congo or the Central African Republic.

The Western Saviour Dilemma

Leila Janah helping someone on her program

But then it all becomes a little fuzzy when we consider how it's “empowering” impoverished people and marginalised women with needed income they wouldn't otherwise have. After all, who else is sorting this out? Also, it's nice to see that almost 90% of those taken on by Samasource apparently move on to higher paying work (although in what I don't know) or higher education (to what gain, I also don’t know).

Given my scepticism on the project, I see it as a short-term solution to much more resounding global issues. These include the rise of automation leading to a post-work world and rising inequality with the increasing influence of big businesses and cash-hoarders. But then again, maybe to get any semblance of a humanitarian project up and running these days, it's necessary to compromise. And maybe this is a good one to start with.

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Now over to you. What do you think? Is outsourcing our menial jobs to people who can’t say no really a solution? I know I'm biased. But so is the beginning of any decent debate. ;)

Also, before I forget, if you enjoyed this piece and would like to see more like it on Steemit, please upvote, resteem and follow me @annielennon . Thank you and until next time! :)

Image Sources: 1, 2, 3