For some companies aid is big business, as Robert Lacville discovers on a visit to World-Aid 96 in Geneva
ACCORDING to Norway’s Trygvie Nordbye, chairman of the International Council for Voluntary Agencies (ICVA), 300-million people are hurt by war, earthquake or famine each year. The 1996 world budget for emergency relief and rehabilitation is $8- billion.
Western companies dominate the market for supplying goods and services to help the devastated. The United States leads with 18%, followed by Italy, 12%; Croatia and the UK, 5% each; France and Germany, 4%. The strong presence at World-Aid 96 of the Benelux countries and Scandinavia (both 4%) shows that they are out to increase their share of the aid business.
India led the way among the Third World exhibitors: there were Tata vehicles from Bombay, Rajan agricultural machines from Madras, Ajanta medicines made in Bombay, Mauritius and Uzbekistan.
World-Aid has a strong Bosnian influence, a distinct military flavour. This lies strangely with the humanitarian non- governmental organisations (NGOs) – ActionAid, Oxfam, Save the Children, Acord, Care and World Vision. They usually try to avoid soldiers.
Military influence is really hi-tech. Never mind the sophisticated telecom equipment: just the camping gear was amazing. Canadian tents like winter palaces. Finnish sleeping bags thick enough for the Himalayas, which double as stretchers. And the clothing – World-Aid offered fire-proof jackets and helmets and shrapnel-proof knickers.
Under Bosnian influence, AES of Weybridge unveiled its new “NGO Flatbed” truck made in Turkey by British Motor Corporation. Such things blow the mind of a simple African development worker. For just 49 000 you can have a 6m container for goods or transform it into a mobile clinic or workshop. It can be adapted for fuel or drinking water, or a load of 60 refugees.
The most spectacular example of military partnership is the Bofors de-mining vehicle. Bofors is a well-known Swedish manufacturer of guns. The company offered to help Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA) develop a vehicle to explode land-mines, based on the adaptation of a German Leopard II tank. The prototype weighs 55 tons, and will start work at the end of October in Bosnia. Its rotary front is composed of a mass of metal lumps that should detonate every mine in its path.
NPA has contracted to buy a second type of vehicle from Aardvark of Scotland, which is adapting forestry technology to create a machine that will thrash the ground with mine-detonating chains. This will be tested in Angola in 1997.
Beside the land-mine exhibit, a hospital tent was equipped for amputating children’s feet. The operating theatre is fuelled by solar panels. The Norwegians have a remarkable partnership between the Trade Council, commercial suppliers and NGOs, supported by the government. They have put together a unique system through which commercial companies hold stocks of approved disaster equipment.
The NGOs approve the equipment specifications, the companies guarantee delivery within 24 hours of a disaster, and the government provides most of the money. So successful is the system that it has become a substantial export earner. In 1995, 50% of its emergency supplies were sold to non-Norwegian sources.
At one end of the hospital tent I found a solar fridge made by NAPS. “This is the Camel Fridge,” said Torill Furuland. “You put the fridge on one side of the camel, the battery pack on the other side, and the three solar panels sit across the top. This is how they vaccinated all the refugee children in Somalia: with 35 fridges sitting on 35 camels. There is space for the vaccines for 2 000 children in this fridge, with four shots for each child.”
I looked at the other solar devices for disaster relief: computers, radio telephones and fax machines can all be run in the middle of the Sahara desert these days. “Governments will not put money into this solar business,” said Furuland. “If they did, we would all be using solar energy in our houses.
“The problems are in the storage of energy and the efficiency of solar panels. Lots of university engineers have prototype solutions, but it takes a lot of money to turn a boffin’s theory into a commercial reality.”
But I need solar energy now; I cannot wait for the cheaper version. In my house in Mali, I already have 12-volt solar lighting, and an efficient solar water heater.
In the NAPS catalogue I saw a beautiful solar 60-litre fridge that I want to buy for my bush-house. And then, in the hospital tent, I found a beautiful cooker that concentrates the heat of the sun on to the cooking pot. I bought it on the spot for 99. It will save me burning gas, wood and charcoal. I have asked Torill Furuland to quote for 20 more to be delivered to Africa.