Everybody has donated money to a charity or invested in a good cause. Unfortunately, we are not always sufficiently convinced that the money is actually spent for what it was meant for. This ceratainly also applies to development aid. Evaluating several decades of development aid teaches us that stimulating economic growth may be the only way to combat poverty. We cannot achieve this by just giving away money. We should make the beneficiaries responsible for thier own increase in wealth. Our aid may otherwise not have a long lasting impact. We have seen this in Africa. Even after many decades of development aid, Africa is poorer than before. Food aid to Africa is good as emergency aid to a natural or man-made disaster. However they will never lead to proverty reduction or economic growth.

The problem with those conventional development methods (e.g. food aid) is that they hardly ever focus on economic growth. There are 2 main reasons why Western aid does not focus on economic growth of third world countries:

1) There is a fear that corrupt (or large rich landowners) many only benefit from aid whilst the rural poor remain poor en exploited.

2) The West is not really interested in developing foriegn markets that may end up becoming competitiors of the own domestic market.

The solution to this problem is simple: mutual growth! Economic aid should lead to the growth of both parties. In doing so we should ensure that we do not damage our nature and future.

Our company KETSO is founded on these priciples of mutual growth. We use capital from the West to invest in agricuture (in Sierra Leone). This will increase local employment and improve the economic sitiation of farmers. The local party therefore is interested in a healthy growth of the company. The investors will also recieve return on their investments. These are green investments, trees, a cause I strongly support !