Free Aid Decimates Local African Mosquito Net Business!

Here is a typical problem of free aid.....local businesses are bankrupted because aid projects come in and offer it free. How can local business thrive i we do not support the local markets and mechanisms? 

"There's a mosquito net maker in Africa. He manufactures around 500 nets a week. He employs ten people, who (as with many African countries) each have to support upwards of fifteen relatives. However hard they work, they can't make enough nets to combat the malaria-carrying mosquito.Enter vociferous Hollywood movie star who rallies the masses, and goads Western governments to collect and send 100,000 mosquito nets to the afflicted region, at a cost of a million dollars. The nets arrive, the nets are distributed, and a 'good' deed is done. 

With the market flooded with foreign nets, however, our mosquito net maker is promptly put out of business. His ten workers can no longer support their 150 dependents (who are now forced to depend on handouts), and one mustn't forget that in a maximum of five years the majority of the imported nets will be torn, damaged and of no further use. 

This is the micro-macro paradox. A short-term efficacious intervention may have few discern able, sustainable long-term benefits  Worse still,it can unintentionally undermine whatever fragile chance for sustainable development may already be in play......In terms of the mosquito net example, instead of giving malaria nets, donors could buy from local producers of malaria nets then sell the nets on or donate them locally. There needs to be much more of this type of thinking."

 (Dead Aid. Dambisa Moyo. 2009, pg44)