Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Word of the Day: development tourist

Development tourist (n.) – An intern or short-term employee on a contract of up to 1 year, who wants to “experience the developing world” and “help out”, and who will afterwards leave the country, leave Africa and/or even leave development aid work altogether. By some estimates, development tourists make up over one third of the white population of Rwanda.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Maurice, I just found your blog and I really enjoy it. I'm a writer living in Kigali, and I'd love to hear more about what you do here, your thoughts on Rwanda, etc... I've only been here a month, so I'm a newbie. Could we coordinate a meeting up?

Scarlett Lion said...

Hey Maurice,

Found your blog through my friend Jina Moore's blog and I enjoyed it - posted about it on my blog:

http://ugandascarlettlion.blogspot.com/2008/03/development-tourist.html

Take Care!
SL

Damian said...

Found you via Scarlett and am now a reader. Here's a wee trackback.

jke said...

One third, hmm, would be nice to hear about the ratio of that in countries like Ethiopia and Kenya. Any numbers?

Maurice said...

Unfortunately I have no numbers. I wouldn't expect staff numbers and contract durations to be collected anywhere centrally: in Rwanda and other countries it is hard to even get definitive data on how much donor funds are actually spent on the country.

Anyone else out there know where to get figures on this?