Charities and African Development

In what light should we regard those charities whose mission is to help people in Africa? Are they an integral part of the future of Africa, or are they a tool of imperialism to keep Africans dependent on the giving of the west? Should we be for them or should we be against them? Or are there in the imaginary gray area between accepting and refusing them?
My take on them is that they are a necessary part that is about to run out. They are not there to empower, they are not there to motivate the people. They are necessary for now because our people need bread and water for strength. We need clothes to help get us out of this winter. When this cold night is over and our hunger and thirst are no more, then the need for these charities will be no more.
What we need are organizations that empower the people to take their fates into their own hands. I don't mean political organizations, I mean private organizations that move away from giving to educating. See, we need motivators, people who are good at persuading, people who know how to teach others to sit by the stream waiting patiently for the fish to bite the bait. We don't need people who already know how to fish and don't know how to teach others how to do it. There is enough fish in the river that we can all get enough to feed ourselves without killing off the fish and ourselves in the process.
We need charities that go there and show people how to stop desertification. We need people to go there and show people how to protect themselves from the devastation of soil erosion. We need people to go there and show our people that all these divisions are given their enormous magnitude by outsiders who know little about us. We need people to go in and show that AIDS is not as invincible as it seems. We need these organizations that go there and help the people cultivate their lands. We need organizations that will show women how to take care of their children. We need organizations that go there and show that African men were always the cornerstone of the traditional African home and that abandoning their families is an unhonorable thing to do.
We need motivators and empowerers. We need people proud to be African. Fearless to be African. We need people not drawn by the pull of selfish gains. People not motivated by exploitation to gain an upper hand on their fellow brothers and sisters. We need people who are dreamers. We need people who are doers. We need people who are both. We need these people in these organizations. We need people who are more concerned with helping people than in raising money. Remember if you read the bible when Jesus says that if people were to stop praising God the stones would sing the praises. If you are worried about raising money to help others, what's gonna happen when you can't raise that money? Are you going to stop helping? What will become of your organization then?
This is why we need organizations that put helping people ahead of raising funds. When you help people, the funds will come in. When you obsess with raising funds, the funds will stop one day and so will your helping people. We, therefore, need organizations that put the needs of people first, because once they do that, everything else will fall in place.
For now, however, we do appreciate what these charities are doing, but, like imperialism, their days are numbered.