Noun.
A special class of person employed by international donor agencies and NGOs.
They begin their employment on a mission to end poverty, but soon find themselves living the high life in gated compounds with 24/7 security and an entourage of maids, cooks, nannies, gardeners and chauffeur driven SUVs (despite pushing ‘climate-smart’ solutions on everyone else). Within days of arriving they find a handful of restaurants and cafes catering specifically to them, serving up fillet steak and quinoa salad so there is never any need to suffer the local cuisine.
Their job is to save the rural poor by designing ‘development’ programmes from swanky air conditioned offices in the capital city without ever having to experience life in rural areas. They hire favoured consultants to implement these programmes, avoiding any accountability for the rural poor only ever becoming poorer.
Their control over giant honey pots of foreign currency further elevates their prestige and they are soon to be found wining and dining or hosting cocktail evenings with local CEOs, bankers and government ministers.
Had they stayed home, they would be low to middle ranking bureaucrats, but here they achieve celebrity status, with the pomp and ceremony of the glitterati and the unelected economic and social power of an illuminati. We call them the Donorati.
