Shipping a laptop to a refugee camp in Uganda • Hacker News Board

Re: Shipping a laptop to a refugee camp in Uganda

#111

Post by refurb » Sat, May 23, 2026, 5:23 AM UTC

virgildotcodes wrote: post #83

ksdfjaafs wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Are you under the impression that western activity in Africa ceased with the end of colonialism? No fomented coups, conflicts, revolutions, arms and funding for rebel groups, continuous bribes and support to corrupt government officials to secure the flow of oil, minerals, etc. out of those countries into western hands? No proxy wars between the west and the USSR? Read more about the history of the continent.

Africa is a continent. Be specific which countries and what coups and revolutions.

If I look at a country like Zimbabwe, it’s in worse shape than when it became independent and the West had not interfered. If anything it supported it with development funds.

Re: Shipping a laptop to a refugee camp in Uganda

#112

Post by halayli » Sat, May 23, 2026, 5:26 AM UTC

xp84 wrote: post #9

Two main takeaways: 1. Never underestimate developing countries' governments' willingness to absolutely bend their people over to extract tax revenue (and then their corrupt representatives extract bribes on top of it) 2. Django's gratitude and positivity in the face of all of it is an inspiration. I suspect I and most everyone I know would be in tears and would have given up in exasperation halfway through his quest…

> Never underestimate developing countries' governments' willingness to absolutely bend their people over to extract tax revenue (and then their corrupt representatives extract bribes on top of it)

being a developing country or not is orthogonal to what you have described. The top developed nations have one or more of these issues.

Re: Shipping a laptop to a refugee camp in Uganda

#113

Post by skybrian » Sat, May 23, 2026, 5:28 AM UTC

mr_00ff00 wrote: post #25

xp84 wrote: post #9

Two main takeaways: 1. Never underestimate developing countries' governments' willingness to absolutely bend their people over to extract tax revenue (and then their corrupt representatives extract bribes on top of it) 2. Django's gratitude and positivity in the face of all of it is an inspiration. I suspect I and most everyone I know would be in tears and would have given up in exasperation halfway through his quest…

In regard to number 1, it really is such a hard problem to get money and aid to those that need it. Autocrats and every person with power along the way is happy to pocket it.

It seems like GiveDirectly has figured it out somehow?

Re: Shipping a laptop to a refugee camp in Uganda

#114

Post by pjc50 » Sat, May 23, 2026, 5:30 AM UTC

ckemere wrote: post #94

Lots of complaints about corruption. It’s worth imagining how you would run a very low income developing country. Remittances and tariffs are the easiest items to tax for revenue. I’d love suggestions for better alternatives…

There's an important difference between tax (predictable, evenly applied) and corruption (uneven, unpredictable, and doesn't go to the government but individuals)

Re: Shipping a laptop to a refugee camp in Uganda

#115

Post by MikeNotThePope » Sat, May 23, 2026, 5:32 AM UTC

I learned the hard way that I couldn't just ship a laptop to myself from the USA to Mexico. I had a nice, new-ish Macbook Pro that I wanted to use sitting in the USA, and the laptop I was using in Mexico was getting old. What I should have done was just fly to the USA to get the nice laptop and then hand carry it back. What I did instead was ship the laptop via Fedex to my address in Mexico. Big mistake.

Fedex informed me that my laptop was stuck in customs. This wasn't a pay-a-fee-and-get-your-stuff kind of stuck. I couldn't pay any amount of money to get the laptop out. I had to find a local import partner which could take weeks or months to do just to get this stupid computer out of customs. And that's assuming they didn't destroy the laptop before I could claim it. There was literally no way for me to just pay some big ol' tax to get the computer.

Eventually I asked if I could have the laptop shipped back to the USA, and they were happy to do this. So I shipped the laptop from the USA to Mexico, from Mexico to a friend's place, and then I bought my frienbd a roundtrip ticket to Mexico to enjoy a vacation on the condition that he brought my damn computer with him.

Re: Shipping a laptop to a refugee camp in Uganda

#116

Post by seany » Sat, May 23, 2026, 5:42 AM UTC

margalabargala wrote: post #62

fvdessen wrote: post #24

I help a good friend run a small business in Africa, and this story is exactly why, every time I go visit, I fill my luggage with stuff she needs. Laptops, car engine turbos, espresso machines, fryers, bottles of shampoo, printers, anything. The cheapest and most reliable way to deliver things there is to take a plane yourself and carry the things with you. This whole mess is why, despite being a poor continent, the…

> It is also quite sad that the western NGOs, which all have their own very functional and heavily subsidised delivery channels, keep it to themselves For every dozen people mailing in a laptop, there'll be someone mailing in guns. They don't want that liability. It would damage their ability to do what they do.

On the plus side that kind of thing is getting more and more "printable"

Re: Shipping a laptop to a refugee camp in Uganda

#117

Post by scarier » Sat, May 23, 2026, 5:48 AM UTC

ktpsns wrote: post #109

Long-distance shipping is even a pain in the (so-called) developed world, for instance from Europe to the US. As soon as your shipping value exceeds a treshold (IIRC about 1000€), you have to electronically declare the customs. There are agencies specialized to do this for sth like 20€ per shipping just because it is not reasonable to get all the accounts if you do it only once in a while. However, in my experience,…

No kidding. My old company needed to replace an aircraft engine part for a customer in Japan, and it ended up being something like a third of the cost and time to give one of our mechanics essentially a weeklong vacation rather than ship it (as a bonus, he was able to hand carry the broken part back for failure analysis, rather than having to deal with equally expensive and slow return shipping).

Re: Shipping a laptop to a refugee camp in Uganda

#118

Post by rexpop » Sat, May 23, 2026, 6:01 AM UTC

mikepurvis wrote: post #100

MichaelZuo wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the implication is true… Shouldn’t people stop helping further entrench these shady practices? If Ugandan decision makers know the people will effectively always be underwritten to receive some bread and water… no matter what happens… Then what exactly is stopping them from piling on more and more nonsense?

I don't pretend to have all the answers, but what I've decided works for me personally is supporting a handful of hyper-focused charities that run very lean in terms of western staff and employ local skilled labour. One example is the Canadian charity One4Another which performs surgeries to reverse some common birth defects in kids and babies in Uganda. They're not trying to feed the world, they're not interfering wi…

OP is talking about corrupt officials, not charity workers, so how does "running lean" evade or obviate corruption?

Edit: my point is just that bribery and blackmail aren't the same as Global Northerners treating charities as synecures.

Re: Shipping a laptop to a refugee camp in Uganda

#119

Post by zeafoamrun » Sat, May 23, 2026, 6:04 AM UTC

overfeed wrote: post #55

nradov wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is unfortunately also one of the biggest problems with donating to NGOs that operate in many foreign countries. Much of the aid money gets stolen by corrupt officials and local criminals. Donors have to check carefully that NGOs are legitimately benefiting the intended recipients.

Which is why, naturally, the American Red Cross is the gold standard for NGO donation efficiency.

You're joking about this right? An old colleague did a lot of work with them and he told me how incredibly corrupt they are and to stay away.

Re: Shipping a laptop to a refugee camp in Uganda

#120

Post by madradavid » Sat, May 23, 2026, 6:06 AM UTC

wildzzz wrote: post #22

My question, does Uganda not have used laptops available for sale? At the point where you're about to spend $200 on shipping, why not consider just doing a money order so the guy can find one locally. Shipping things overseas is such a convoluted process. My wife wanted to send a company Christmas gift bundle (literally just company merch and some candy) to two Filipino employees. One of the workers says that only DH…

I am Ugandan, that $200 could have gone a long way buying used locally , case in point https://jiji.ug/central-division/computers-and-laptops/lapto... , a used Macbook pro with some change to spare.