Ethical issues and challenges while providing aid work to families with children in Africa: Literature Review
Kipchumba, Ascar; Haidari, Madina; Ademuiya, Adetoun (2025)
2025
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https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-202601151365
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-202601151365
Tiivistelmä
Purpose and objective: The purpose of this thesis was to do a literature review to explore the challenges and ethical issues of providing aid work to families with children in Africa. The objective was to find solutions for Home Street Home to develop their work on implementing aid works for families with children in Africa
Data search and analysis methods: A systematic data search was conducted by forming a broad query search terms inputted into two databases; Google Scholar and SAMK Finna using the set inclusion and exclusion criteria for data selection. The thesis employed descriptive narrative literature review. Quality appraisal was conducted for the selected articles. Inductive content analysis was further used to analyse the findings. The findings for this thesis are based on the four articles included for the literature review.
The results from this review showed that the ethical issues challenges in implementing aid work were: dominance among the donors and inability to fit in aid framework according to the needs of the locals, limitations and weaknesses of aid organizational structure, misuse and misdistribution of aid, tension between short-term pro-ductions and long-term structural change, power dynamics in aid deliver, unintended social harm, individualization of social problems. Ways to implement aid work for families with children in Africa were by a combination of short-term assistance and long-term structural assistance, monitoring and evaluation of project activities, and creating awareness and prioritization of the needs assessed
In conclusion, the findings from this literature review have shown that ethical issues were often resulting from donor-driven priorities and compliance to their inflexible accountability requirements. However, the identified ways to implement aid work for these families could help navigate some of the ethical issues embedded in aid delivery
Data search and analysis methods: A systematic data search was conducted by forming a broad query search terms inputted into two databases; Google Scholar and SAMK Finna using the set inclusion and exclusion criteria for data selection. The thesis employed descriptive narrative literature review. Quality appraisal was conducted for the selected articles. Inductive content analysis was further used to analyse the findings. The findings for this thesis are based on the four articles included for the literature review.
The results from this review showed that the ethical issues challenges in implementing aid work were: dominance among the donors and inability to fit in aid framework according to the needs of the locals, limitations and weaknesses of aid organizational structure, misuse and misdistribution of aid, tension between short-term pro-ductions and long-term structural change, power dynamics in aid deliver, unintended social harm, individualization of social problems. Ways to implement aid work for families with children in Africa were by a combination of short-term assistance and long-term structural assistance, monitoring and evaluation of project activities, and creating awareness and prioritization of the needs assessed
In conclusion, the findings from this literature review have shown that ethical issues were often resulting from donor-driven priorities and compliance to their inflexible accountability requirements. However, the identified ways to implement aid work for these families could help navigate some of the ethical issues embedded in aid delivery