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Ben Affleck on Development Aid, Philanthropy, Advocacy, and Congo

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ABOUT THIS EPISODE

Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo is often defined by conflict, instability, and one of the world’s longest running wars. But beyond those headlines lies a different story, one about resilience, local innovation, and communities working to build their own future.


In this episode of The Africa Program Podcast, Mvemba Phezo Dizolele speaks with Ben Affleck, co-founder of the Eastern Congo Initiative, about more than a decade of engagement in the region and what it reveals about development, philanthropy, and advocacy.


Their conversation traces Affleck’s early efforts to understand eastern Congo through direct engagement with communities, civil society, political leaders, and international institutions. What emerged was a central insight. The most effective solutions were not imported from outside, but driven by local organizations that understood the realities on the ground and were already doing impactful work.


The discussion explores the limits of traditional aid models, where funding often remains tied to donor systems, and contrasts them with approaches that invest directly in community based organizations. From health care and clean water to coffee and cocoa cooperatives, Affleck highlights how small, targeted investments can create sustainable economic opportunities when local actors are empowered.


The episode also examines the role of advocacy in shaping U.S. policy, the challenge of building political attention around long running conflicts, and the consequences of declining development assistance. At its core, it is a conversation about agency, humility, and what it takes to translate awareness into meaningful, lasting impact.


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TRANSCRIPT 🔗

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Unfiltered, unapologetic, and insightful, this is the Africa program.
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From Morocco to South Africa, from Burkina Faso to the Congo, our lens is wide.
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We connect the dots and spark fearless conversations on politics, arts, economics, and security.
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Join me, November Pezo Dizolele, founder and managing director of Dizolele Advisory for fresh perspectives and voices from across the continent and beyond.
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Philanthropy, development aid, and foreign assistance remain important, particularly in areas where needs are great.
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And Africa is one such place.
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Of course, Africa always gets a bad rap despite its great contributions to the advancement of the world and humanity.
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Today, however, Africa stands in need of tremendous and sustained development support.
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As the world changes and shifts its posture on development aid and foreign assistance, philanthropy, individual giving, and advocacy have become even more important.
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One area I would like to discuss today is Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where conflict has raged on for a good three decades.
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I would like to bring in someone who's been intimately involved in this space.
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His name is Ben Affleck, and he needs no introduction.
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Ben is an award-winning director, producer, actor, and filmmaker.
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His portfolio of works includes Goodwill Hunting, Pearl Harbor, The Accountant, Batman, and Argo.
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Ben is also a philanthropist and a supporter of development aid and foreign assistance.
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He's the co-founder with Whitney Williams of Eastern Congo Initiative, a grant-making and international development organization based in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
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Brother Ben, as I call him, and I have known each other for 18 years, working in this Congo space.
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Brother Ben, good afternoon and welcome to the Africa program.
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Good afternoon.
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Thank you for having me, Bemba.
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It's a uh it's an honor.
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I'm a fan of the podcast, and uh I'm really pleased to be here.
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Uh thank you very much for having me.
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Thank you very much, Ben.
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Thank you for coming and thank you for following us.
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You've been engaged in development work and particularly assistance in this space for a good 16 years.
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We first met uh back in 28, uh, 2008, and um we were actually talking to Nick Christoph and uh about his work in Darfur, in South Sudan, and Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
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At the time, uh you had not quite yet created uh co-founded uh Eastern uh Congo Initiative with Whitney, but you're already working on it.
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Why Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and how did you get engaged in this space?
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You know, I got um I got yeah, I I'm amazed that we've known each other that long.
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That's uh sometimes I'm amazed that I'm just as old as I am.
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I I keep on and I look back in the the Zoom window, I expect to see a much younger man, and he never shows up.
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Uh, but it's it it's really been a pleasure and an honor to know you and the people that I really come uh to know well and regard so highly in this space.
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Essentially, in in the early, well, I suppose it started in 2000, I suppose it was 2004, uh, there was a kind of expanding awareness of people uh in my line of work and culture and space, which I guess can be called Hollywood for lack of a better word, or at least something else everyone understands, something everyone will understand.
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But a lot of actors and folks uh have become galvanized around um, I guess first it was the sort of save Darfur movement.
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You know, that became something that really expanded into people's consciousness and engaged people in being active.
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There was a sense, you know, here's this terrible uh genocide that's taking place in Darfur.
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And um, you know, uh people like uh George Clooney, you know, and uh uh was very was very active in that space.
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And also um, you know, Bono uh had had engaged in his uh, I think it was the Red campaign, you know, working in Africa.
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So it was a thing that I um that I was, you know, people reached out to me and said, would you would you help us, you know, participate in this?
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I was a little bit reluctant because I didn't want to thrust myself out.
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There often there's like an eagerness for people who can get attention and you know um have the cameras sort of pointed at them, particularly for those now I understand why working in the philanthropic space is quite hard to get global attention around any of these issues, even oftentimes when you know uh it's it the need is striking.
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Um but I uh you know being invited to sort of investigate this stuff and participate and lend my voice to it, I was mindful of not wanting to be, you know, fraudulent and a dilettante who just showed up and took a photograph in a hospital and really didn't understand anything about what what the issues, the fundamental issues at play were, any of the nuance, you know, there's a danger of stepping into something and inadvertently advocating for something that's actually harmful uh when you don't understand what it is that you're doing.
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So the long and the short of it was through a number of these groups, you know, I received a number of invitations to travel and come to Africa, and so I did, you know, and I really wanted to learn and understand uh what it was that people are engaging with and what would be the most effective form of engagement and what might be a wise thing for which uh I could advocate.
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Um and the long and the short of it was I traveled all over the continent.
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I was exposed to many of the things that people were working on, and and when I got there, and I tr I went to six or seven countries and spent uh quite some time there and and went and met with, you know, in the ground and saw people that were working, you know, in the field and spoke to people in government and spoke to academics.
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You know, one thing kept sort of um popping up and getting my attention, which was people would often liken uh what they were doing or the the or would often talk about need, uh, and one of the things that they would reference was this terrible war and destabilization that was happening in Congo, in particular uh in eastern Congo at the time, which was the sort of epicenter of the conflict for a number of reasons.
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And and it was a conflict that, you know, in that in the Great War that brought in eight or nine countries.
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And uh and yet no one was actually working in DC.
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You know, many of these uh philanthropic organizations w didn't even have a presence there.
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Uh and they would say, well, it's not stable, it's not safe, it's not this, it's not that.
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And I don't know what it says about me, but I thought, well, that seems to be a place uh that actually has real need and actually has a paucity of voices uh to to draw attention to it.
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And so at that point I made the decision to investigate DRC and kind of set about on a sort of a two-year mission uh to educate myself and see what the need might might be.
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And and more than that, like what was an appropriate role for someone like me to play?
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I didn't want to take the assumption that like by dint of just showing up somewhere, I was improving, you know, the the space, you know, just by walking in and carrying a camera, I was somehow uh you know lending grace and uh uh it was going to be a great boon to the people there.
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Um I wanted to investigate what it was that could be done.
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And what was one of the things I had seen was that many of these uh large uh international organizations often came in both with an approach, a strategy, and a staff.
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And they would find a region, and then they would say, well, this meets our strategic goals.
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Their strategic goals often were developed absent considerations of you know the actual circumstances in the country.
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And then they would bring you know a lot of people from Western Europe or the United States to Africa, and so the money that was invested, essentially, would both be in terms of largely the impact would remain effectively in the economies of the countries native to the where the philanthropies came from.
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In other words, they're paying their own employees and people that they bring in.
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So there was a lack of real investment, of lasting and sustainable investment.
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And that troubled me as a as an approach.
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And the second thing that troubled me was uh it it reminded me, I sort of thought about, well, what if the United States were in some form of crisis, an agricultural crisis or a political crisis, uh, and China decided, well, we're gonna do philanthropy in the United States.
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And they showed up at a factory or a farm in Iowa or factory in Detroit and said, this is how we do it, and we're gonna bring a lot of Chinese people in here and Chinese managers, and we're gonna train you and show you what to do.
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Uh and I thought that that would be a failure because it would fail to understand the politics of the region, the social politics, the community uh networks, uh, the f the critical people with whom one had to get traction in order for something to be successful.
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And it would uh, you know, to distill it all down, I thought that it was wiser to listen first and to learn first what was happening there, and then develop a strategy around that, and then think about what it was that that particular philanthropic organization brought to bear in terms of the benefits they might actually be able to contribute.
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And then it that it should, in fact, be the investment should flow into the country and into that country's economy, whether it's an investment of capacity building or training or education or uh or infrastructure or or anything else, that it needed to be lasting and it needed to be impactful.
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One of the statistics you would often hear is well, you know, there's X billion dollars that have been invested, and look at how little the returns are.
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But if you you just scrape the surface of that investment, the investment is in fact 90% of it going into the ecosystem that is really fundamentally tied to the native countries uh uh where from where the philanthropies came.
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Okay.
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So that was my my I sought to address those issues, and I sought to do that in Eastern Congo where I thought the need was greatest.
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So you have just framed, uh, Brother Ben, you framed a lot of issues that the development aid sector and industries grapple with.
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So let's unpack some of those.
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You said you studied by educating yourself.
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You discovered, quote unquote.
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I mean, we in Africa they don't like this term discover because people are not being discovered.
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But this you you stumble into this issue which was the war.
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Yes.
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Which was the which was the war and the conflict that long lasted already at that point.
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So you set out to educate yourself and find the appropriate way uh to engage.
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But then you also saw all this issue that you mentioned, you know, the money staying in the donor country, hiring more people, and then having less impact.
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So let's start by the educating side.
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How did you go about educating yourself?
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And then we can go through the various issues you just flashed out and our Eastern Congo initiative is uh grappling with those.
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So let's start with the education.
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Well, the education, you know, I was very, very mindful of what I didn't know.
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Uh, you know, people, yeah, I can certainly understand sensitivity around using the word discover as if it ever never existed, uh, but it's a personal discovery.
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Uh, and uh, and by the way of learning, which is, you know, uh I, you know, one a person's born learning nothing and discovers everything about the world.
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And so for me, this was a learning process.
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And so I went and I had the benefit of uh of a partner who had done a lot who already had a lot of exposure to a lot of really interesting uh groups and people and and and organizations that were working in Africa and connections so that I I had access to, and that's what I really used the sort of celebrity card to access was you know, I went and visited, you know, a lot of organizations on the ground.
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First of all, just getting to DRC, you know, I had to sort of, you know, lie and sneak and do a lot of sorts of things because everybody said you can't go, you can't get in, it's too dangerous.
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And so I, you know, it wasn't easy.
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There were a lot of sort of impediments on on the side of the sort of Western philanthropy culture that didn't want to support that.
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But ultimately, who I I got, I started with the UN, who obviously had a very big presence there, and then I wanted to drill down into the specific programs, whether it was, you know, UNHCR or the World Food Program, or um in and then really that opened the door into because I I wanted to do it in a micro way.
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And I also wanted to meet with um and so see what it was that was taking place there and see what the issues were on the ground.
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So we went to all the the sort the sort of overflowing uh you know uh camps in Eastern DRC at the time were filled with internally displaced persons.
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And then I met with uh key political leaders, like went and met with Kabila at the time and Kigami at the time, because I was curious.
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And then I met went and met with uh rebel leaders who who, in an effort to hear for myself what it was that you know, each of these folks had their agenda and their point of view and to kind of understand, well, what's at the root of this conflict actually?
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And then after that, I went and met with um academics and professors and people who were learning, who were expert in this, either whether they were teaching elsewhere or they were present in Africa.
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And that was the sort of second layer to get another perspective on, you know, that wasn't a political perspective on what was happening.
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And then I went and met individually with the people that were actually on the ground, whether it was a hospital called Heal Africa or whether it was um, you know, my my my good friend, you know, at um at the Ponzi uh Foundation, Dr.
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McQuege, who was just beginning to um to get some attention for the extraordinary work that he was doing, you know, healing at the time, principally women who uh doing fistula surgeries.
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I thought he was doing, I think, 15 or 16 a day there.
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The fistula is an injury common to places where you either have women uh uh in childbirth at premature ages or um women who are victims of of sexually based violence.
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And that was quite striking and stirring.
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And then, you know, um I started, I was struck by just being present in in Goma and in Bukavu and uh throughout Kivus, uh, that there were very many small organizations, quite well connected, doing really efficient, smart work, whose strategic goals, although they may not have been sort of constructed at, you know, uh some academic institution, you know, were really they were built around efficacy.
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And I saw that there were a tremendous number of organizations there, community-based organizations, were probably doing the very best work because I was able to look at like, what are your goals and then how is it working?
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How successful is it?
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And uh, how much money are you distributing?
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And you know, for your philanthropic dollar, what's the impact?
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And that's where I really it was impressed on me that the most impactful, effective work, the work that was, and the investments that were really sustainable investments into the economy of DRC were happening on a kind of a micro level.
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Um, and I was able to look at those organizations through the prism of understanding that I had developed by the earlier waves of meetings, you know, as you said, on sort of higher levels that allowed me to get a real perspective and context for what I was seeing.
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Of course, I also talked to people at you know, USAID or at uh the Gates Foundation.
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At the time Gates Foundation, it wasn't present at all in DOC.
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Um and that kind of uh was patient and it was it was thoughtful and it was led by Whitney Williams, who who you know, who none of this would have happened without.
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Uh and she and I really um you know went and sat down with and we mean we talked to the you know the the peacekeeping forces and and uh you know and DRC and um you know I wanted to understand in a personal way the perspective that all the key actors had in this space so that I could actually try to form my own informed view of what would be the right way to insert myself or to try to become an an advocate for the region and to try to, if I was going to go ask people to contribute money, I needed to be able to look them in the eye and tell them that I believe the money was going to be well spent.
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Uh and that sort of two years process uh left me with a sense of a clear mission and goal and a sense that there was a space that wasn't being filled.
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And that's when I decided to, you know, create Eastern Congo Initiative with Whitney and to start raising money and hiring staff and start trying to implement some of the things that I thought would be impactful.
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Okay, great.
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So Whitney Williams is your co-founder, uh partner in this uh Eastern Congo Initiative.
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You engage, you go do this learning, so to speak, talking to everyone, meeting President Kabila and President Kagame, military leaders, militias, and so on.
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What surprises you, what surprises you the most at this point, and as you launch Eastern uh Eastern Congo Initiative, what are those early challenges that you face?
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They disgrade smaller organizations, of course, places like DRC and other countries in conflict survive primarily to the great work of civil society and these NGOs and non-for-profits small but with big impact.
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What surprises you the most as you start engaging?
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Well, I mean, there were so many things that I didn't know.
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Uh so they were all kind of surprises.
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And but broadly speaking, you know, I guess I'd have to say that coming from the United States and my only education around Africa uh culturally and perceptually, uh was really rooted, I think, in this sort of we're the world, USA for Africa kind of perspective, which was here's this continent full of people who are suffering broadly, uh, but but but what was unspoken but but very implicit in the cultural understanding that we get in the United States, or that I got, was that you know, there's a helplessness in Africa.
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And and connected to that is a kind of uh hopelessness, right?
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And you would hear things of there was a senator named Jesse Helms who famously opposed uh foreign aid because he called it money down a rattle.
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So there was this perspective, and now you have like President Trump who who gives gives voice to that perspective, who referred to countries as shitholes, et cetera, et cetera.
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You know, it's openly condescending and um dismissive of and disrespectful toward other countries in the world who are dealing with these issues.
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And what I found really ran entirely counter to that, which was even even stepping back from DRC broadly in the continent of Africa, it did not comport with the view that I grew up sort of internalizing.
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Where it in fact it was quite the opposite.
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And DRC was emblematic to me of the ways in which it ran counter to that, which were I came to a place that was vibrant, that was full of people with an enormous amount of intelligence, talent, but most of all willingness.
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Not only willingness, but an almost desperate and urgent desire.
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And of course, it makes sense naturally to to improve uh their conditions.
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And that in fact, the principal hurdles to people having the kind of life to which I think all human beings are fundamentally entitled, you know, and which is to say, sort of, um No different than what Thomas Jefferson envisioned for uh uh the nascent United States, which is he said, you know, which behold these truths to be self-evident that uh, you know, all men are created equal and all men are endowed by the Creator with seven inalienable rights life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, right?
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I have the light, I have the right to my life to live and to be able to live simply.
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That means health, you know, that means um, you know, the basic needs of health and food and and so forth.
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Um, I have the right to liberty, which is to be free from oppression, um, and and to happiness, to have some purpose in my life, to have some joy, to be able to experience those things.
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That's not a great deal to ask, really, but they'll they are the key, I suppose, at least from my point of view, the key human rights.
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And what I saw was people who were who were pursuing those rights with with enormous vigor.
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Uh, you know, in it in you would go to Congo, and of course I later discovered Congo by reputation, it was known as a very vibrant place, you know, a place we used to do, you go, there were, you know, great parties and wonderful dance and great uh, you know, wardrobe, and all the things that we associate with cultural centers that are appealing and fun, and you want to visit.
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Um, it also had, you know, at a time like very robust economies in in coffee and you know, and agricultural exports of other kinds.
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Um, so what where what I found was that like there were people who had remembered what that was like and were seeking to do it to the very best of their ability and pushing very hard against the limits, and that the limits, and this is the key part, the things that were causing the perception on the outside of poverty, you know, destabilization, hopelessness, corruption, et cetera, et cetera, were in fact largely external forces.
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They were not native to DRC.
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They were not a function of somehow the people's nature there, that in fact there are a whole set of reasons, some of which including the economic agendas of international actors who sought to exploit those countries for their vast mineral wealth, which has only become more meaningful now, uh, given how key mineral rights are viewed for global economic development in the age of AI and smartphones and so forth, and as well as the old-fashioned mineral rights uh around, you know, copper, gold, diamonds, timber, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
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Um, coal tank, you know.
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So that that was a part of what was at play.
00:24:29.039 --> 00:24:37.839
Uh, and then that you had international actors in the form of states who were seeking hegemony in this area and in conflict for their own purposes.
00:24:38.000 --> 00:24:43.920
And the result of that was to totally destabilize these communities because of the ongoing war.
00:24:44.079 --> 00:24:59.359
You know, where you where where a native person in DRC just doesn't have the same freedoms to be entrepreneurial or to even go to the job that they have or to even stay in their home for any extended period of time because you have fear of instability and violence and so on.
00:24:59.680 --> 00:25:29.359
So, what I saw was people who wanted to work really hard, who cared deeply about their community, but who really lacked power in terms of affecting the larger factors that were causing the issues that they were having, A, and B, um didn't, you know, because of prior generations and prior the vestigial impacts of colonialism, you had an education system that, for example, like wasn't really guaranteed to all because you had to pay for it.
00:25:29.519 --> 00:25:41.519
You had a failing healthcare system, um, not because there weren't people there who were doctors and who were smart, but because of the impediments logistically to getting to these areas.
00:25:41.680 --> 00:26:07.200
And you had the impact of a prior conflict, you know, stemming both from the, you know, the sort of way in which Mobutu destabilized and sort of um sapped the economy, and then really uh the Rwanda, the genocide in Rwanda, the spillover into the East, and the fact that that precipitated a multinational war, giant war in that country.
00:26:07.359 --> 00:26:10.960
So, in other words, people just didn't have a lot to work with.
00:26:11.119 --> 00:26:30.079
But what I was surprised by was the spirit and energy and dedication and desire and intelligence and talents and dedication people had to making their lives better, which told me all these people need really is access to the same basic things that we all have and that we in the United States will take for granted.
00:26:30.240 --> 00:26:34.559
Um, and some of that in the in the simplest form meant capital.
00:26:34.720 --> 00:26:37.839
Uh, you know, you're a small little community-based organization.
00:26:37.920 --> 00:26:40.720
You can't, you don't have the profile to raise money.
00:26:40.799 --> 00:26:47.680
Uh, you know, and and in a much bigger sense, sort of, I thought about it as a very bottom-up and top-down.
00:26:47.839 --> 00:27:10.799
From the top down, there were no voices advocating for a building a constituency politically in the United States that was invested in the success or uh or of Africa writ large and DRC in specific, but who paid attention to uh the way that international conflicts are often mediated by other international parties.
00:27:10.960 --> 00:27:20.880
In other words, the United States government seemed to have no interest in finding a resolution to this war and to applying the levers that it very much has to seeking that.
00:27:21.039 --> 00:27:32.079
Uh it didn't, and and and there are other factors sort of associated with that apathy uh on a sort of political level in the United States that I thought were appropriate for me to address.
00:27:32.319 --> 00:28:13.119
So uh I twinned with the the idea of you know doing grant making specifically to key uh community-based organizations that we had identified with my own role to advocate principally by publishing white papers and and testifying in front of the uh US Congress around why I thought it was important for the United States to engage in, frankly, just paying attention to and trying to contribute diplomatically to finding solutions to the conflicts that were having a massive negative impact on the people of DRC and why the United States should care.
00:28:13.440 --> 00:28:18.000
Okay, so again, there are a number of questions, Brother Ben, that you've raised.
00:28:18.400 --> 00:28:23.440
One is um the level of awareness or lack thereof, right?
00:28:23.599 --> 00:28:29.759
People, the image that people have of these far-flung places from the perspective of the US or Europe.
00:28:29.920 --> 00:28:31.680
These are faraway places.
00:28:31.920 --> 00:28:35.599
People are not like us, they're lazy, how do they have this crisis?
00:28:35.759 --> 00:28:37.119
Maybe they're not smart.
00:28:37.359 --> 00:28:40.000
So you have talked about meeting these doctors, you know.
00:28:40.079 --> 00:28:42.559
I'm thinking here about Panzi Hospital with Dr.
00:28:42.640 --> 00:28:50.319
Mkwege, the Nobel uh Peace Prize winning uh physician, uh, our friends at Hill Africa, Dr.
00:28:50.480 --> 00:28:52.640
Lucy, with his late wife.
00:28:52.880 --> 00:28:56.799
We've done a lot of work in this in the health sector.
00:28:57.039 --> 00:29:00.559
And it's not health the way we know health in the in where we live.
00:29:00.720 --> 00:29:24.799
It's health within an area that's affected by militias, brutality against women, and that uh you also mentioned Futula, but it's also an area where you have mines, um, critical minerals, that is, by what I mean by means, by mines, but you also have tremendous um sense of entrepreneurship, and we're gonna make this work.
00:29:25.440 --> 00:29:26.480
But they're small.
00:29:26.640 --> 00:29:29.119
So you bringing the the the bridge there.
00:29:29.440 --> 00:29:53.039
Can you talk a little bit of some of the other areas you've worked in and with what kind of local institutions you work with, the communities, and then we can come back and talk about how advocacy becomes important, not just for political uh on the political side in the US, but also in Congo, but also within the this the decision making in uh in the US as well.
00:29:53.279 --> 00:30:00.480
So let's start with uh the sectors you've worked in, you've worked in, ECI has worked in, and uh what impact do you see there?
00:30:00.960 --> 00:30:16.960
Well, I always believe that like an organization like this, you know, needs to be nimble and needs to be have the humility to correct uh or to adjust its the direction or its strategy based on what it sees on the ground rather than the other way around.
00:30:17.119 --> 00:30:28.640
Uh so when I went and traveled, you know, the first kind of criteria we set up for who with whom we wanted to work and the areas we wanted to work in were really based on the people that we met who we felt were doing good work.
00:30:28.799 --> 00:30:30.400
Uh, you know, it's as simple as that.
00:30:30.559 --> 00:30:33.440
It's like finding people who are good at their job and empowering them.
00:30:33.599 --> 00:30:51.119
And what I found, uh and so there's a couple of different areas we we've done a lot of different grants in a lot of different spaces, mostly with the strategic mindset that, you know, are they doing great work as a leading um indicator of where we wanted to contribute?
00:30:51.279 --> 00:30:54.480
But uh, you know, you've talked a little bit about Ponzi, obviously.
00:30:54.559 --> 00:30:57.920
We wanted to support them uh and Heal Africa again.
00:30:58.000 --> 00:31:07.359
Um, because you know, health, look, as you say, this isn't we're not talking about sort of Instagram wellness, you know, fruit drinks and you know uh yoga.
00:31:08.799 --> 00:31:13.759
Now those things are all lovely, uh, but that's I consider that sort of luxury health.
00:31:13.920 --> 00:31:20.240
In other words, I have my basic health needs met, and how can I, you know, have longevity and that sort of thing?
00:31:20.480 --> 00:31:25.440
Well, DRC, when I started working there, the life expectancy was 46 years old.
00:31:25.839 --> 00:31:29.920
One in five children would die before the ages of five years old.
00:31:30.160 --> 00:31:32.720
So you're talking about a very different kind of health.
00:31:32.799 --> 00:31:44.960
Uh and as such, you know, these uh organizations that are doing, you know, um uh health with early childhood development, they're not that this is critical health needs.
00:31:45.119 --> 00:31:59.680
And the needs that they're delivering, which led us to the later work that we did with the Silly of actually building healthcare clinics, uh, you know, really involve things, again, that we took for granted, like antibiotics so that infections don't become don't kill you.
00:31:59.839 --> 00:32:05.200
Um, and you know, basic vaccines and you know, maternal health.
00:32:05.440 --> 00:32:24.079
And uh, and as you say, when a conflict area, you know, you can have injuries that might be so damaging that you would find yourself ostracized or incapacitated that also require, you know, uh a 30-minute surgery in a in a hospital that could change your entire life.
00:32:24.240 --> 00:32:36.480
So again, what I saw was the healthcare needs there were by our standards quite small, but the impact of them was gigantic in terms of quality of life and and also, you know, access to clean water.
00:32:36.640 --> 00:32:41.119
Be, you know, one of these things that we here in the United States, we turn the tap on and the water is clean.
00:32:41.279 --> 00:32:49.359
And I talked to so many women who would often have to walk five or six hours in a day to go get water from a place that other people were bathing in, et cetera.
00:32:49.519 --> 00:32:56.799
So it was one of the laid the seeds for us to want to uh help improve the water infrastructure in Eastern Congo.
00:32:57.039 --> 00:33:03.200
And also, um other sectors that we started to get interested in work in, for example, was coffee.
00:33:03.440 --> 00:33:06.559
Coffee is a really good example, coffee and in and cacao.
00:33:06.720 --> 00:33:19.039
You know, uh it the DRC has a the perfect climate for growing these beans that go into products that are consumed globally at great scale uh for great profit.
00:33:19.119 --> 00:33:37.759
Uh and here are here were coffee collectives and some cacao farmers who had historically done this, whose parents or grandparents would have done it at a time when um, you know, the the circumstances were such that they could actually do it in a way that and sell it globally.
00:33:37.920 --> 00:33:54.559
But between the war and the the destruction of the internal infrastructure, and by that I mean roads, like the simple ability to put beans in a box and drive them to a port, that had become uh untenable and or impossible.
00:33:54.720 --> 00:34:15.840
And also, you know, some of the uh training and understanding of the of what the buyers at at like Starbucks or some of these fancier coffee places wanted, you know, that just wasn't understood uh because they hadn't they had no presence there and they hadn't communicated to them, well, we like our beans to be dried a little longer, et cetera, et cetera.
00:34:16.079 --> 00:34:21.360
And so what we did was we looked at the issue of like here you have people who can already farm coffee.
00:34:21.519 --> 00:34:24.960
They have the right, they're at the right uh uh altitude.
00:34:25.039 --> 00:34:27.599
They're they're they live in the region that's perfect for this.
00:34:27.760 --> 00:34:34.960
Um, but the situation in their country is such that unlike somewhere else where you don't have these issues, they're meaningfully hindered.
00:34:35.119 --> 00:34:48.960
And some of them are able to get a little bit of coffee somewhere, but they're getting the worst possible price, and it's going into the discount coffee that, you know, is is just ground up and dumped in with a bunch of other stuff, but that actually they could be selling, you know, at a much better price.
00:34:49.119 --> 00:35:16.159
So what we did was we went and reached out to, you know, using our relationships that we had with, you know, CEOs at big coffee and and chocolate companies, and saying, and you know, an espresso, et cetera, and then bringing those folks to DRC, you know, using some of the pressures around like this is something you should see and come on this trip, et cetera, et cetera, with the belief that when people saw with their own eyes what I had seen, it would change their view, and it did.
00:35:16.320 --> 00:35:30.880
And so all of a sudden we were able to secure millions of dollars in investment, uh, and in part because they were able to use this as an advertising tool, which I think is meaningful and perfectly reasonable, because if you're actually going to be doing social good, I see no reason consumers value that.
00:35:31.280 --> 00:35:49.440
And then we were able to bring experts in how coffee is processed and manufactured, or how cacao's what's you know, valued in those crops to the farmers to help them understand, hey, if you do this in a different way or if you do that in a different way, you can get a better price.
00:35:49.599 --> 00:36:07.199
And then we were, we worked with them to to find ways and be more successful in transport, transporting the goods, you know, the hardest, even though this this these coffee beans are going to end up going 7,000 miles, the first 600, you know, are the were really the impediment to that.
00:36:07.440 --> 00:36:19.280
And uh and then we brought in uh local partners, you know, people like CRS or you know, who who had who was building uh, you know, they had the these pumps or these some equipment for drying stations.
00:36:19.679 --> 00:36:22.400
CRS being uh the Catholic relief services, right?
00:36:24.639 --> 00:36:24.880
Yes.
00:36:25.039 --> 00:36:33.920
And so, you know, because we're perfectly willing, in fact, not only willing to, but we were advertising to other philanthropic organizations, hey, come work here.
00:36:34.079 --> 00:36:35.599
You're not gonna get killed or blown up.
00:36:35.679 --> 00:36:38.400
It's not, it's not, you know, this this is meaningful.
00:36:38.639 --> 00:36:49.519
We wanted to be the one saying, well, Ben Affleck's wandering around in DRC, you're probably your, you know, stalwart international philanthropy, philanthropic organization, you can manage to get over here.
00:36:49.599 --> 00:36:52.159
It's just a border, you walk across it, it's not gonna kill you.
00:36:52.400 --> 00:36:54.719
And that's what we did.
00:36:54.960 --> 00:36:57.039
And we had enormous success in doing that.
00:36:57.199 --> 00:37:09.039
It really proved out the theory we had that, because it all relied on the local farmers, and that if the local farmers just had the tools available to any other farmers in the world, they could become prosperous.
00:37:09.119 --> 00:37:20.880
So we built, expanded on these um coffee collectives, you know, our coffee was was, you know, all of a sudden being sold all over the world, as I said by Nespresso and and and others.
00:37:21.199 --> 00:37:27.920
And, you know, it we meaningfully improved the economic day-to-day life of those people.
00:37:28.159 --> 00:37:31.920
And I say we, which is really not true.
00:37:32.079 --> 00:38:00.159
All we did was create the circumstances by which people in Congo, by simply giving them the tools available to any other uh coffee farmers in the world, to all of a sudden compete in the coffee market and in so doing secure revenue uh for their communities that stayed in their communities uh and foster and and and you know, really built a much more robust um coffee economy there in the Kivus.
00:38:00.480 --> 00:38:04.000
And and then, you know, those are those are two major ones.
00:38:04.079 --> 00:38:07.039
We talked about like health, and that's an economic uh growth.
00:38:07.119 --> 00:38:41.280
And then we did other small, you know, we were organization called AFEM, which is female journalists who were, who were trying to counter this sort of what had become a pervasive cultural impression because the the sort of social safety net had been so damaged by the presence of the Jenisader from Rwanda and the and just the fact that when you have a destabilized, when the state cannot provide security, local militias have to provide security, and local militias are often ungoverned.
00:38:41.440 --> 00:38:54.000
And then, you know, unfortunately, there was a sort of impression in some ways of uh, you know, there was a lack of education on sexual violence and the impact that sexual violence had on the survivors.
00:38:54.159 --> 00:39:00.719
And so these journalists were going out and recording on tape recorders, uh, statements from survivors of sexual violence.
00:39:00.880 --> 00:39:23.440
They're traveling hours and hours and hours into what they call the bush, meeting with people, talking about who would talk in the first person about their experiences, taking those accounts back to their radio stations, playing them, and the radio is an extremely effective tool in that region, so that people could hear and begin to understand and ideally start to develop some empathy around what happens to a person when you rape them.
00:39:23.599 --> 00:39:25.360
Uh, what is the impact of that?
00:39:25.519 --> 00:39:36.079
And to appeal to that sort of personal sense of understanding, which is, I think, how you start to foster a rebuilding of a sense of social responsibility.
00:39:36.239 --> 00:39:46.960
Because when we get into sort of groups, and this happens in the United States, it happens everywhere, uh, a tendency is to sort of dehumanize the people that are on the other side of your group.
00:39:47.039 --> 00:39:49.199
Uh, and and we wanted to counter that.
00:39:49.360 --> 00:39:58.960
That's one example of a smaller grant that we made, but that's uh I think a little a good encapsulation of the kinds of we started to do.
00:39:59.199 --> 00:39:59.360
Yeah.
00:39:59.519 --> 00:40:11.360
So, in terms of, of course, you have militias, local militias who a lot of them rise to protect the communities, but then become also purveyors of violence and abuses themselves.
00:40:11.679 --> 00:40:16.239
So this work is very important in that way, especially the radio, the communication.
00:40:16.320 --> 00:40:25.519
But I remember also early on, if my memory serves, ECI also given a grant to a smaller community radio, which was scheduling to the youth.
00:40:25.760 --> 00:40:31.360
Because youth obviously is the backbone, or the youths are the backbone of these communities.
00:40:31.519 --> 00:40:32.880
Africa is a young place.
00:40:33.039 --> 00:40:37.280
The DRC is equally young, you know, median age below 19, right?
00:40:37.599 --> 00:40:45.920
Um, so for the free trade, I think when we talk about coffee, when you're talking about is really allowing these communities, these cooperatives.
00:40:46.159 --> 00:41:01.199
I'd visited one in a place called Minova with Whitney actually uh a while back, and creating these pipelines, both financial and expertise-wise, getting them to get the product to the right places, right?
00:41:01.280 --> 00:41:05.119
So groups like Teo Chocolate, Nespresso, you mentioned a couple of those.
00:41:05.280 --> 00:41:10.239
But I remember seeing the chocolates and coffee in places like uh Whole Foods.
00:41:10.480 --> 00:41:16.639
Is that uh is that what the goal was to bring that cycle from one end to the other?
00:41:16.960 --> 00:41:17.440
Exactly.
00:41:17.519 --> 00:41:27.920
And that's that's really developed from that initial education phase where we asked this important question, which is what are our real strengths and what are our weaknesses?
00:41:28.000 --> 00:41:29.599
You know, what do we know and what do we not know?
00:41:29.679 --> 00:41:33.119
And what can we bring to bear to Africa that's not present there?
00:41:33.199 --> 00:41:45.119
As I said, like without assuming that if I just by my being there, they're they're gonna be blessed, you know, but rather well, what do I what do I have to offer that this that is very distant for folks here?
00:41:45.280 --> 00:41:56.320
And for that, that was like my ability to walk into the, you know, sit down with CEOs of of coffee and cocoa companies and say, hey, there's this great market, you know, that they do great work, they have great products.
00:41:56.480 --> 00:41:58.719
You're not getting them, uh, but you can.
00:41:58.880 --> 00:42:10.800
And not only that, you can you can lend some refracted glory on an advertise because your customers actually care about where you're getting your materials from.
00:42:11.039 --> 00:42:12.800
And so they understood it both.
00:42:12.960 --> 00:42:25.920
I could articulate it to them in a sort of the language of advertising, which I understand really well, and the the sort of corporate Western culture uh language that I spoke pretty fluently.
00:42:26.079 --> 00:42:43.519
And and so I was that was, and that's something that's uh quite difficult for somebody who's a farmer, you know, on a collective, on an island in Lake Kivu, farming coffee, to think, well, I should just reach out to the CEO of Nespresso, or I should just talk to the CEO of uh Theo Chocolates.
00:42:43.679 --> 00:42:56.079
And and to make that cross that bridge, which then creates a demand, not only demand, but a relationship between the supplier and the producer, that that's critical for business.
00:42:56.159 --> 00:43:08.079
Uh and that's the kind of thing that typically, if you're a worker at a farm, you're depending on the manager's boss's manager's boss to make those deals and secure those relationships.
00:43:08.239 --> 00:43:25.199
And I wanted to leap all of those, all of that bureaucracy and go right to the top because I, by having traveled there and by having accrued enough like media and material that I could show people and go and prove it out to them, and then say, look, I'll go with you.
00:43:25.440 --> 00:43:39.599
I'll go with you personally, I will take you to this place, I will show you what's happening there, knowing that once that happened, I would cement they folks would have the same reaction I had, which is astonishment and enthusiasm.
00:43:39.679 --> 00:43:51.679
Uh, and and actually they get a sense of professional reward because A, they're doing something innovative, B, they're doing something they can help advertise their business, which is really what they're you have to be mindful of like what do these people really want?
00:43:51.840 --> 00:43:54.559
Otherwise, they're just gonna be polite and say goodbye.
00:43:54.719 --> 00:43:59.599
And and then foster these relationships where they're gonna get a sense of personal reward.
00:44:00.239 --> 00:44:09.679
By feeling the same gratification and joy of seeing people's lives become incrementally better by doing business with their company.
00:44:09.840 --> 00:44:15.280
That to me was like I'm offering you a gift by giving you this and bringing you here.
00:44:15.519 --> 00:44:19.199
And often people would get back to me and go, this has changed my life.
00:44:19.360 --> 00:44:22.400
You've changed my business and you've and you've given me more purpose.
00:44:22.480 --> 00:44:30.400
And you know, the idea, these people are sitting around, they're often bored, they're talking about money all the time, they're meeting a bunch of other executives, and they have a lot of pressure.
00:44:30.559 --> 00:44:35.039
They don't have these opportunities to feel that their life can be changed in a meaningful way.
00:44:35.280 --> 00:44:43.039
And knowing and expecting that I had that to bear, to bring, I believed 100% in this approach.
00:44:43.199 --> 00:44:51.039
And all of a sudden, you have these coffee collectives who have a direct relationship with a buyer that's enormously meaningful for their business, manufacturing coffee or coconut con.
00:44:51.920 --> 00:44:57.840
When you engage with these small community-based organizations, what's the range of grants?
00:44:57.920 --> 00:44:59.199
You mentioned grant making.
00:44:59.360 --> 00:45:09.840
So Eastern Congo initiative, as far as your vision and that of your partner, as you looked at this, was it what was the vision?
00:45:10.000 --> 00:45:14.880
Was it to teach people how to fish and let them continue fishing?
00:45:15.039 --> 00:45:17.039
Or was this something else beyond that?
00:45:17.280 --> 00:45:20.400
Because here I see you're doing many things.
00:45:21.280 --> 00:45:24.079
It's you as an individual, of course, using your star power.
00:45:24.480 --> 00:45:28.960
Is the institution and then there gotta be some underpinning with that vision?
00:45:29.119 --> 00:45:30.480
What was the vision?
00:45:30.880 --> 00:45:40.719
Yeah, I mean it's it's interesting because it is it is even beyond the sort of um to teaching people to fish, because what I found was that people already knew how to fish.
00:45:40.960 --> 00:45:44.159
You know, it was they didn't require being taught how to fish.
00:45:44.320 --> 00:45:49.599
They did not have a lack of willingness to get in the boat, go out there, throw the net in the water, and start fishing.
00:45:49.760 --> 00:45:52.559
Uh what they didn't have was a market at which to sell the fish.
00:45:52.719 --> 00:45:57.679
What they didn't have was the ability to get their fish from you know where they need to be to get to the market.
00:45:57.840 --> 00:46:03.760
What they didn't have um what were the relationships that were necessary for that.
00:46:03.840 --> 00:46:09.760
And and there was also in some cases, we know how to fish, but we don't have rods and tackle.
00:46:09.920 --> 00:46:27.599
You know, so that's where um uh when you talk about grant making, and and in and people think of that in in a lot of different ways because some people do, you think about grant making, it might be we're gonna do a grant to Gay's Foundation, or we're gonna do a grant to um, you know, uh World Food Program or something like that.
00:46:27.840 --> 00:46:30.639
This is still kind of an anonymous grant, right?
00:46:30.800 --> 00:46:40.639
Where you're funding a large philanthropy, and there has become some some fatigue around that because frankly, look, you have to be mindful of human nature.
00:46:40.800 --> 00:47:01.199
And part of what I've what I've seen in terms of asking people to make grants, not dissimilar to the CEOs I talked about earlier, is you have to be in business, you've got to understand that both parties that are, if you're gonna be in between two parties, they both have to feel that they're getting something for this transaction.
00:47:01.519 --> 00:47:10.800
And I don't mind, or and I have long past the sort of childish notion that I should be able to tell them, well, just do it, it's the right thing, you should do it.
00:47:11.039 --> 00:47:15.920
As it turns out, people won't, and they don't like being hectored or lectured or guilted into doing things.
00:47:16.000 --> 00:47:18.320
Uh, and in fact, that just fosters resentment.
00:47:18.480 --> 00:47:21.360
And it what it doesn't create is long-term commitment.
00:47:21.599 --> 00:47:30.400
What I did want to do was show them what was meaningful about what they were doing so that they could feel that impact and have some reward themselves.
00:47:30.559 --> 00:47:38.320
I do believe that you know, this does as much for the donors in many ways as it does, as it does for the grantees in terms of personal satisfaction.
00:47:38.480 --> 00:48:09.679
And what we did was then say, okay, there there may be, you know, speaking to your question about grants and the sizes, there may be organizations to whom$500 or$1,000 is, which seems quite small in the scope of grant making, so small that often it wouldn't even merit the sort of cost you'd spend internally in the bureaucracy to distribute that grant, particularly with philanthropies that require, you know, such rigorous uh paperwork and diligence around this grant making.
00:48:09.760 --> 00:48:11.920
It was one of the things that I sought to do away with.
00:48:12.159 --> 00:48:21.840
It's ironic that that USAID was sort of pilloried for being uh wasteful and capricious.
00:48:22.000 --> 00:48:46.559
And, you know, I because what I found about USAID, it if there were something to be critical of, I felt that they required too much in the way of reporting, too much in the way of you were expected to be able to put together a set of um you know papers and effectively like a deck that the vast majority of Americans would never be able to fill out successfully.
00:48:46.719 --> 00:48:56.079
Uh it just the amount of diligence essentially meant it was impossible for small organizations to hope to see some access to any of that money.
00:48:56.159 --> 00:49:08.079
Uh so one of the things that led us to, and I don't want to go too far down a tangent, but was we did a lot of work helping people uh go through the process with USAID where they could finally qualify for USAD money.
00:49:08.159 --> 00:49:23.519
When we came to Heal Africa and we were giving them grants, and they were they were looking at grants that they needed in the scope of a million dollars, which sounds like a lot, but if you think about United States hospitals, it's it's I mean, that's what they spend in a day.
00:49:23.760 --> 00:49:28.800
Um because and and to go to get a grant of that size, you'd have to go to USAID.
00:49:28.880 --> 00:49:36.800
And here you had an established hospital with doctors and nurses in a building that were having difficulty getting through the diligence process with USAID.
00:49:36.880 --> 00:49:39.360
So we stepped in and helped them get those grants.
00:49:39.440 --> 00:49:45.920
And sometimes it meant going right to the head of USAID and saying, hey, you've got this great organization here that's stuck in this limbo.
00:49:46.159 --> 00:49:46.719
What's wrong with you?
00:49:46.880 --> 00:49:47.679
Why can't you know?
00:49:47.840 --> 00:49:55.360
And and sometimes what you have to do with bureaucracy is like kick the stools of the chair out and wake people up uh and and give them a sense of urgency.
00:49:55.519 --> 00:49:58.719
And I I have no problem doing that and picking up the phone.
00:49:58.880 --> 00:50:08.320
And but but in terms of grant making for us, it was more about there's no way that somebody who's who's, for example, doing trade education for child soldiers.
00:50:08.480 --> 00:50:09.760
Child soldiers is a big issue.
00:50:10.000 --> 00:50:22.880
What they call child soldiers are people, young people that have had probably a lot of PS uh PTSD, been exposed to conflict and combat, whether as sex slaves for militia or or porters or even fighters.
00:50:23.039 --> 00:50:40.800
And and then when you want to try to uh end this conflict, a big problem is that you've got young people who've been traumatized and who the only thing they've known is this kind of life in a quasi-combat who need to find purpose and meaning and economic viability in society.
00:50:40.880 --> 00:50:52.320
So you're taking, we had it, there were groups that were taking child soldiers and doing what like what I would have called vote vocational technical training at my high school, teaching them how to fix cars, you know, parks in cars.
00:50:52.480 --> 00:51:06.559
Well, those grants were$1,000,$1,500, and it would be impossible for an organization that size to go through the process of getting that grant or have the relationships with anyone to get a grant like that, because ironically, it'd be too small.
00:51:06.719 --> 00:51:21.280
Uh, and so we wanted to be the organization that A could identify people based on our understanding and knowledge of the people that were working there, distribute those grants, take the risk that some of it might be misappropriated, uh, and accept that risk.
00:51:21.519 --> 00:51:35.920
You know, uh it's no greater a risk than I saw growing up in Boston, it where the political life and the municipal life involved a hell of a lot more graft and corruption than I ever saw in DRC, uh in dollar amounts.
00:51:36.079 --> 00:51:37.199
I promise you that.
00:51:37.440 --> 00:51:42.639
Um so I was not put off by this prejudice around like corruption.
00:51:42.800 --> 00:51:44.880
I mean, in fact, I find it offensive, really.
00:51:44.960 --> 00:52:12.400
Like, I find it offensive that there I will talk to people whose wealth is staggering and who are themselves knowingly engaged in what I would call deeply corrupt practices of, well, you know, we've got to sort of indicate or we've got to say that we're gonna do this, or I mean, look no further than the world now, where, you know, you're expected to make some settlement with the president of the United States in an order of tens of millions, if not more, in order to protect your business interests.
00:52:12.559 --> 00:52:19.519
Uh, that is a great, uh, a naked form of corruption to rival or exceed any of that that I saw in Africa.
00:52:19.679 --> 00:52:24.000
So I I found it offensive when people like that would say, well, how do you know where the money is going?
00:52:24.400 --> 00:52:31.440
Because we know the people, we've been in the organizations because we've talked to them and we've seen the results of it, and it's$1,500.
00:52:32.079 --> 00:52:34.719
And if it gets stolen, you know what?
00:52:34.880 --> 00:53:06.559
At least it's gonna be spent on money in the economy and the DRC at the markets, which is better than what a lot of organizations, frankly, are doing, you know, even given all of their diligence and the examination they've done, because really they're just paying some kid from Norway to come in there for three months and they're gonna give him$60,000 to come in and sort of walk around and write a paper about whether or not the Norwegian way of working, you know, has found any traction in DRC or some other equally meaningless, you know, uh circular academic exercise.
00:53:06.719 --> 00:53:25.199
So I had very little tolerance for that, those kinds of fears and questions, um, and was willing to brave that and also understood that you can have huge impact at a$500,000,$2,000,$25,000 level, uh, which was far below the level that you know other folks were able to do.
00:53:25.599 --> 00:53:39.440
So with the re with the um the reinsertion of this former militia, this young man and young women, uh, is actually redirecting, I think, the purpose of life for them, kind of giving them a chance and to look at the world differently.
00:53:39.840 --> 00:53:44.000
Um ECI and yourself, you you push for that.
00:53:44.480 --> 00:53:46.239
But you said something important.
00:53:46.400 --> 00:53:50.480
Uh this let's call it crisis, for lack of a better word.
00:53:50.559 --> 00:53:54.559
I don't like that word because there's challenges, but people are people are leaving.
00:53:54.719 --> 00:54:06.559
You know, I remember being in Bukavu in Goma with my crew of reporters, and we're filming, and it happened to be, it happened to be a Saturday, and there were these honks everywhere, cars honking.
00:54:06.639 --> 00:54:08.880
Then I realized people were being married.
00:54:08.960 --> 00:54:19.039
There were, you know, motorcade and motorcades of this young couple who just got married in their gown, and I'm like, it dawned on me like, hey, life goes on here.
00:54:19.119 --> 00:54:20.159
It's amazing, you know.
00:54:20.400 --> 00:54:22.400
You go, you go to a restaurant, it's full.
00:54:22.559 --> 00:54:26.960
He's like, if nobody told you the M23 is in the mountain, you will not know, right?
00:54:27.199 --> 00:54:28.320
I know that was the thing.
00:54:28.480 --> 00:54:40.559
That's really it that grabbed me when I went there because before I got there, everyone was like, it's war, watch out, bring security, you would, you know, and we would go there, and yes, we went up into the mountains and we saw, oh, look, here is their sheet up, there's bullet holes up here.
00:54:40.719 --> 00:54:41.519
I thought, holy shit.
00:54:41.599 --> 00:54:55.440
And you go through Goma, and there's tanks like, you know, MNUSCO's plowing through with these tanks that they never really used for any peacekeeping, but because the means as soon as there was combat would break out, they immediately bolt back to the uh barracks.
00:54:55.760 --> 00:55:00.719
But the truth was, you look around and you would never know it because people are out in their stores selling things.
00:55:00.800 --> 00:55:04.639
People are like, life has to go on, and people want to live.
00:55:04.800 --> 00:55:13.440
People out there selling their goods, you know, you see all kinds of manufactured goods, second-hand goods, music is playing.
00:55:13.679 --> 00:55:19.360
The what it taught me was, you know, we get fear takes over oftentimes.
00:55:19.599 --> 00:55:20.400
You know, here we are.
00:55:20.480 --> 00:55:49.039
I I use an example the other day, you know, because of this war in Iran that's going on right now, or I I guess maybe the maybe this isn't gonna be live, so I guess I won't mention the immediate thing, but I'll say what struck me was that, you know, here in the United States, if we get the slightest indicator of, you know, oh, there's gonna be extreme weather warnings or there's gonna be a hurricane, everyone goes and buys out all the water at the grocery store, right?
00:55:49.199 --> 00:55:59.760
Or if you people will say, like, you know, I remember when they said, you know, there's a risk of uh of drone attacks from Iran being launched from boats in Southern California.
00:56:00.000 --> 00:56:02.000
And that's people calling me, are you gonna go out?
00:56:02.079 --> 00:56:03.039
Should we go to work?
00:56:03.280 --> 00:56:04.559
Should we go to work?
00:56:04.960 --> 00:56:11.760
Because you think that a drone's gonna come off of the California coast and land and what and you mean hit what?
00:56:11.920 --> 00:56:12.320
Where?
00:56:12.559 --> 00:56:21.760
The odds of you being hit by a car, I can tell you, are so much greater than you being struck by this phantom drone that's gonna come in from Iran.
00:56:21.920 --> 00:56:22.800
We're okay.
00:56:23.039 --> 00:56:29.360
And what they had learned by living in conflict, what I had seen, was that actually the human spirit is enormously resilient.
00:56:29.519 --> 00:56:39.360
And that what happens is that yes, there's conflict going on, but unless it's right here and my life is in immediate danger, I'm gonna go to work, I'm gonna get married, I'm gonna take care of my kids.
00:56:39.519 --> 00:56:55.840
And the spirit, the resilience that I saw, like the profound desire to live one's life and to meet one's needs, whether that's and and also to go out and go dancing or play basketball or play soccer or do all those things, are so alive and present at DRC.
00:56:55.920 --> 00:57:08.800
I took it not as I started to realize that this was a place, not that I was going to bring great lessons from how we do things in the United States, but to go to learn how to live life more wisely and better.
00:57:08.960 --> 00:57:11.440
I thought we could learn so much from this.
00:57:11.599 --> 00:57:14.400
You know, we get so paralyzed by fears.
00:57:14.559 --> 00:57:21.679
Uh we're we're we live in our culture with this constant sense of, well, everything's fine now, but Armageddon might be coming at any minute.
00:57:21.840 --> 00:57:23.519
What if AI comes and destroys us all?
00:57:23.599 --> 00:57:26.639
What if I just think we live, we live in the future some often.
00:57:27.119 --> 00:57:27.360
Exactly.
00:57:27.760 --> 00:57:34.960
You the thing that I learned at DRC is live in the now, and it's my job to go out and take care of myself and my family and make things better.
00:57:35.119 --> 00:57:39.760
And it just doesn't do to be worrying about the fighting in the mountains.
00:57:39.920 --> 00:57:44.159
When you be you have nothing that you can do to affect that, what you can do is to affect your life now.
00:57:44.320 --> 00:58:10.559
And that that resilience, that determination that I saw at DRC is what convinced me wholly that all of the things that I had been told were wrong about hopelessness and and and a you know and lack of willingness or lack of ability, that in fact I thought, boy, we could use a hell of a lot of the spirit and energy and tenor and character that I've seen in the people in DRC where I come from.
00:58:10.719 --> 00:58:14.079
We would be a lot better off if we were more like these folks.
00:58:14.400 --> 00:58:22.159
Now, the um that of course, I think really encapsulates the spirit of DRC, the spirit of the Congolese, right?
00:58:22.320 --> 00:58:31.679
They can achieve so much with so little, even though they have so much more potential, and they never, you know, they've they never underutilize that, you know.
00:58:31.760 --> 00:58:44.400
And you go, and I think the conflict zone is is an epitome of that because you see that you're like, wow, these people, if only they had then the right governance structure, what else can happen here?
00:58:44.639 --> 00:58:51.760
So speaking of that, and we you had mentioned raising awareness, and but you raise awareness through advocacy.
00:58:51.840 --> 00:58:55.199
In your case, I'll be curious about two things before we close.
00:58:55.440 --> 00:58:59.440
One is how do you raise this advocacy with your peers?
00:58:59.760 --> 00:59:03.760
Because you are really a messenger on behalf of these people.
00:59:03.920 --> 00:59:14.960
You know, the fishermen we talked about, the women in the coffee and cocoa cooperatives, who cannot meet the CEO, who cannot go to meet uh everybody else who may be interested, right?
00:59:15.039 --> 00:59:21.119
You can go directly to USAID uh director and tell him or her, this is what we're thinking.
00:59:21.360 --> 00:59:23.519
You can see Samantha Power, you can see all these people.
00:59:23.920 --> 00:59:25.280
USAID used to exist.
00:59:25.519 --> 00:59:27.039
Yeah, when he used to exist, right?
00:59:27.199 --> 00:59:29.920
So, but then you also go to your friends in Hollywood.
00:59:30.159 --> 00:59:33.920
But one element, the other side of it is decision makers.
00:59:34.079 --> 00:59:36.960
I mentioned earlier, Congress, the State Department.
00:59:37.039 --> 00:59:41.280
How do you engage in this space on behalf of this work that you're doing?
00:59:41.679 --> 00:59:44.400
Well, that's really where formal advocacy comes into play.
00:59:44.480 --> 00:59:57.440
And one of the things that like this is a very unusual thing for me to be doing, like on a podcast, you know, but I love you and you're you're you do such a great job, and I love this podcast, and uh I it's just an honor to be asked to be on this.
00:59:57.760 --> 01:00:06.000
But I think in general, why I'm wary is because A, I'm wary of appearing to be self-congratulatory.
01:00:06.239 --> 01:00:15.599
I feel like so many people who are advocates for various philanthropies, you know, they're getting a hell of a lot more out of these media exposure than the philanthropy is, right?
01:00:15.679 --> 01:00:26.400
Than the organization is, because what they're getting is a little bit of virtue washing and uh, you know, uh refracted glory for their, you know, professed selflessness.
01:00:26.559 --> 01:00:34.320
And I didn't want to portray myself as somebody who is, you know, some great saint who's doing so much for others, because that's just not true.
01:00:34.559 --> 01:00:41.039
Uh and and also if that becomes the goal, well, then it's dishonest and it's wrong.
01:00:41.280 --> 01:00:45.840
So I'm reluctant to sort of use my, and even people would often say, what do you have to be?
01:00:46.079 --> 01:00:46.800
Use your platform.
01:00:46.880 --> 01:01:00.239
And I thought, like, there are a lot more useful things that I have to offer than to be sort of on Instagram, somebody talking about like, hey, look at what's going on over here, because it doesn't work, interestingly enough.
01:01:00.400 --> 01:01:07.519
What does work in my experience and what I do have to bear bring or have had in the past is access, again, to the U.S.
01:01:07.599 --> 01:01:25.920
government and the knowledge and awareness that the government likes to get attention itself and likes to be on television and also likes to appear to be engaged in meaningful philanthropic issues, since most of the time they're wholly consumed with raising money and arguing with one another and posturing.
01:01:26.239 --> 01:01:48.480
But what I wanted to do was because I knew that I could, you know, that I could be invited to show up and testify in front of the Armed Services Committee, you know, and or foreign relations, where you have very, very, you know, senators with a lot of influence and who do have uh whose discretion and whose passions could drive them to make meaningful decisions.
01:01:48.639 --> 01:01:52.880
And that this is the one issue that was not wholly partisan.
01:01:53.039 --> 01:02:06.719
You know, one of the problems with government is it's paralyzed by these factions and sort of the rigid nature of how one has to hew to the needs and the expectations of one's party.
01:02:06.880 --> 01:02:14.079
And therefore, you know, ahead of time, oftentimes you think, well, here's how the votes are going to fall down because we're all on one side or the other of this.
01:02:14.400 --> 01:02:20.000
What I was really proud of was the ability to have real, genuine bipartisanship.
01:02:20.239 --> 01:02:23.599
And that's not because of the good grace of folks.
01:02:23.760 --> 01:02:32.559
It's because, you know, being involved with and be appearing to be involved with this work might appeal to people they call both sides of the aisle.
01:02:32.719 --> 01:02:52.239
And so we had Republicans and we had Democrats who were equally engaged, and we tried to frame these issues in ways that would allow those senators and other political actors to frame it to their constituency in a way that was congruent with the perceived needs and values of that constituency.
01:02:52.480 --> 01:02:56.639
By that I mean some people thought of it as a religious mission idea.
01:02:56.719 --> 01:03:01.440
Some people think of it engagement in terms of foreign defense.
01:03:01.599 --> 01:03:07.360
Some people think of it as minerals and gaining traction and like the Chinese are coming in.
01:03:07.519 --> 01:03:19.679
And some people's constituency really does value and respect the notion that our government is meeting the needs in some small way of the world's neediest people.
01:03:19.840 --> 01:03:28.480
Although that, unfortunately, that was principal USAID, and that's that's been capriciously, callously, recklessly, and wrongly dismantled.
01:03:28.719 --> 01:03:33.280
Um you know, the only impact of Doge, frankly, was to destroy USAID.
01:03:33.440 --> 01:03:50.480
If what happened with Doge is they showed up, they destroyed USAID, and then they sort of made a big fuss about, you know, oh, Social Security, a few other things, but there was no no legitimate meaningful impact to Doge, with the exception of dismantling USAID.
01:03:50.800 --> 01:03:58.000
So one can step back and look at that and say, well, if we're judging by actions, that appears to have been the only real goal.
01:03:58.239 --> 01:04:00.719
USAD's annual budget was$40 billion.
01:04:01.440 --> 01:04:06.239
The United States' uh, I mean, budget overall years around$6 trillion.
01:04:06.800 --> 01:04:15.760
Uh it's a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of even the$800,$900 billion discretionary side of the U.S.
01:04:15.840 --> 01:04:29.119
budget, not to mention, of course, the roughly equal$900 billion defense side of the budget, which is also equal to what we're about$800 or$900 billion that we pay to pay down the debt, which is actually only half of the U.S.
01:04:29.199 --> 01:04:29.519
budget.
01:04:29.599 --> 01:04:35.280
The other half is what they call entitlements, about$1.5 trillion in Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare.
01:04:35.360 --> 01:04:44.800
So we got about$6 trillion, uh, about a you know, a trillion, two trillion of which we can't afford from tax revenue, so that's added to the debt.
01:04:45.039 --> 01:04:51.360
But the point I'm trying to make is that six trillion dollars, I think that's 12 zeros on a trillion.
01:04:51.519 --> 01:04:58.960
Uh to get a sense of like a billion, a million, a billion, a trillion, uh, I think a million seconds is something like 11 days.
01:04:59.199 --> 01:05:04.880
A billion seconds is 36 years, a trillion seconds is 36,000 years.
01:05:05.119 --> 01:05:14.480
Uh so the$40 billion that was annually going to USAD, that I can tell you from personal experience was doing an enormous amount of real good work.
01:05:14.880 --> 01:05:17.280
Um, and sure, was there some waste in there?
01:05:17.519 --> 01:05:19.199
Doubt uh doubtlessly.
01:05:19.440 --> 01:05:25.679
I would say a lot less than is present in the contracting practices in the defense industry, for example.
01:05:25.840 --> 01:05:27.760
But that's another another story.
01:05:28.079 --> 01:05:40.960
The point being USAID's budget as being perceived as this is the linchpin or this is what the meaningful impact, it's not meaningful to the United States in terms of how functional our economy is.
01:05:41.119 --> 01:05:51.840
Um but optically, uh unfortunately, there was the perceived, there was the perception that that eliminating USAD was okay because we were getting rid of a massive amount of waste.
01:05:52.079 --> 01:05:59.679
Why it broke my heart is because I I often thought USAD as probably, you know, if you're judging how much percent.
01:06:00.480 --> 01:06:03.039
Of a government's work is good work.
01:06:03.280 --> 01:06:07.199
I'd say USAD is one of the highest that I'd ever seen.
01:06:07.840 --> 01:06:15.119
So the dismantling of that was a real tragedy and had real impacts on people's lives.
01:06:15.280 --> 01:06:23.360
And it was also something where, you know, the US government had contracted, had made commitments, had given its word to organizations.
01:06:23.519 --> 01:06:34.960
And so to set the precedent that if you have a deal on a contract with the United States, that could be subject to the United States changing its mind later, which you can't do in if you're doing business.
01:06:35.119 --> 01:06:39.119
If I have a contract with you and I don't and I don't follow through with it, you can sue me, right, for that.
01:06:39.280 --> 01:06:43.039
And we understand that that's wrong in a fundamental way.
01:06:43.360 --> 01:06:44.880
Our laws reflect that.
01:06:45.119 --> 01:06:55.760
And yet we did that and we left a lot of people on the lurch, a lot of people who had matching funds, a lot of people who were gonna, some was gonna dig the well and USAID was gonna run the pipes, for example, well, there's no pipes.
01:06:55.920 --> 01:07:02.559
Uh so the impact really was broader and had a multiplier on it than$40 billion.
01:07:03.599 --> 01:07:15.119
That being said, it it only highlights to me the and then there was a point where somebody told me, oh, you know, ECI is now the the biggest donor in Eastern Congress.
01:07:16.480 --> 01:07:22.800
Well, if that's true, that's so we are so small that that is staggering and shocking.
01:07:22.880 --> 01:07:24.400
And that's scary.
01:07:27.360 --> 01:07:32.480
So to me, it reflects the ongoing need for this work.
01:07:33.039 --> 01:07:55.199
And and really, frankly, it's a ra it's a reflection on uh the fundamental failure of our ability to advocate effectively and the need for ongoing advocacy, because when I say create a constituency politically in the United States that that values this particular kind of work, uh that's why.
01:07:55.440 --> 01:08:09.599
So that people don't feel as if we can wipe$40 billion out of USAID and there won't be a politically negative impact to us, is because there is not a constituency that cares enough about this work in the United States today.
01:08:09.760 --> 01:08:14.800
So I would say the the need for ongoing advocacy is probably greater, in my view.
01:08:15.280 --> 01:08:17.359
Well, thank you for all the good work you're doing.
01:08:17.520 --> 01:08:18.000
I love you.
01:08:18.159 --> 01:08:20.319
I love you for this, I love you for many other things.
01:08:20.479 --> 01:08:21.199
I love Argo.
01:08:21.439 --> 01:08:27.039
We're talking about Iran now, you know, when you're mentioning Iran, I'm like, okay, here we go, Argo.
01:08:27.359 --> 01:08:32.159
Um but Brother Ben, look, you've done such a tremendous work, and the work is not done.
01:08:32.319 --> 01:08:42.159
Describing the challenges, just the going, the this the demise of USA, the impact it will have in this area ECI works in is tremendous.
01:08:42.399 --> 01:08:51.199
But as we close, as you look at uh into the future, if you can look in your crystal ball, what is the legacy for you in this space?
01:08:51.520 --> 01:08:59.279
You always often say the idea for ECI is in an ideal world is to get itself out of business, right?
01:08:59.439 --> 01:09:14.960
Uh that so that it doesn't continue in perpetuity, people are able to then do what they need to do without this outside, which is difficult to do in any part in the world, uh, because even Silicon Valley get a hand from from from the US government, right?
01:09:15.119 --> 01:09:16.560
Uh in contract and stuff.
01:09:16.800 --> 01:09:18.079
So what is the legacy here?
01:09:18.319 --> 01:09:25.520
US the US government is a massive funder of Silicon Valley companies across the board.
01:09:25.600 --> 01:09:26.319
In fact, the U.S.
01:09:26.399 --> 01:09:29.840
government, you know, has often uh been the first founder.
01:09:29.920 --> 01:09:33.119
I mean, US government, CIA was the first founder of Oracle.
01:09:33.359 --> 01:09:47.840
Uh the and the the US government now, and by way of contracts, whether it's SpaceX or or buying, you know, uh ChatGBT's um, you know, the contract to do AI for the government, on and on, you know, U.S.
01:09:47.920 --> 01:09:53.359
government contracts are a huge supporter of of uh Silicon Valley.
01:09:53.439 --> 01:09:57.840
And yes, uh for me, you know, legacy-wise, not something I really think about.
01:09:57.920 --> 01:10:10.479
I really don't, I'm even uncomfortable thinking about it because I just am so aversive to the feeling or to the instinct that I have that like, you know, for some folks that this becomes just about like how does this reflect on me?
01:10:10.640 --> 01:10:53.119
I look my legacy is that um, you know, my hope is that people will actually talk about and point to some of the things that ECI has done that were really effective from the how uh the bringing to maturity of Silly and it's and it's providing clean water and health clinics in a sustainable way, um and and our bringing that organization to it to its kind of mature place and you know, wishing them well and sending them off in the into the world to sustain themselves, or or this model of grant making, or this approach that that is centers on humility, I hope is that because of the success it's had, it it will be a dot uh mirrored by others.
01:10:53.279 --> 01:10:57.199
And yes, I don't I don't want a world where philanthropy is necessary at all.
01:10:57.359 --> 01:11:13.119
In a more equal, fair, just, healthy, wonderful world, we don't have places where people are living on a dollar a day, where they can't get water, or where they're subject to conflicts uh that are killing them and destabilizing them and moving them out of homes over which they have no control.
01:11:13.600 --> 01:11:15.680
Um, I would love for that day to happen.
01:11:15.840 --> 01:11:17.439
I'm sure I'll be long gone.
01:11:17.600 --> 01:11:22.800
Uh, but but but I think all philanthropies should be out of business uh ultimately.
01:11:22.960 --> 01:11:36.319
Um and I hope that it that the ideas, some of the ideas present in this that have led to some of the real concrete improvements and gains that we've seen are the legacy.
01:11:36.960 --> 01:11:43.199
On that note, I want to thank you again, uh brother Ben, for joining us, for making time for us.
01:11:43.359 --> 01:11:44.640
We really appreciate this.
01:11:44.720 --> 01:11:47.680
And uh again, great work at ECI.
01:11:47.840 --> 01:11:50.880
DRC needs it, and uh the world needs it.
01:11:51.039 --> 01:11:54.159
We're not out of the woods yet, anywhere in the world, as we can see.
01:11:54.479 --> 01:11:55.359
Thank you, Abemba.
01:11:55.520 --> 01:11:56.239
It's always a pleasure.
01:11:56.319 --> 01:11:57.520
It's good to talk to you, my man.
01:11:57.760 --> 01:11:58.479
Same here.
01:11:58.640 --> 01:11:59.359
All right, brother.
01:11:59.520 --> 01:11:59.840
Thank you.
01:12:00.479 --> 01:12:01.439
All right, later.
01:12:04.000 --> 01:12:05.680
Thank you for joining us.
01:12:05.840 --> 01:12:08.960
We would like to continue this important conversation.
01:12:09.279 --> 01:12:18.159
Please subscribe to the Africa Program Podcast, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you like to listen.
01:12:18.399 --> 01:12:25.920
Our analysis and reports are available online at www.disolele.com.
01:12:26.479 --> 01:12:31.439
That is d-zol e.com.
01:12:31.840 --> 01:12:38.159
The Africa Program podcast is produced by Sarah Baker and Vember Peso Dizolele.
01:12:38.640 --> 01:12:40.239
Until next time.

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