Documentary follows the ambiguous impact of an American non-profit’s grand largesse to a Kenyan village
rom each, nothing according to ability; to each, a pretty decent amount regardless of need. This is the experiment in radical giving being carried out by the US non-profit organisation GiveDirectly and its perma-smiley co-founder Michael Faye. The group donates free money directly as universal basic income to villages and needy communities all over the world, without the costly admin of means testing.
It sounds like the premise of a quirky British comedy like Local Hero or Whisky Galore!, only with money instead of whisky. The lucky lottery winners of Kogutu are delighted, of course, and no one in this film appears to be frittering the money away on booze or drugs, many are using it for home improvements and to help their families. Universal Basic Income is an idea whose time has, arguably, come.
But this film also shows the drawbacks. There is a hint of white-saviourism in GiveDirectly’s work; a sense that Africans, longtime western charity consumers, are expected to be passively grateful and if there is a problem or disorder of some kind, then GiveDirectly can simply wash their hands of the whole thing in their distant offices and start again somewhere new.
GiveDirectly could be playing God and creating a two-tier society: and yet they can argue that something bold needs to be done to lift people out of poverty. Perhaps this brief documentary does not fully investigate the implications, but it is an intriguing case study.
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