Development in Africa doesn't sound like the most suitable subject for a reality TV show - but perhaps the attraction of D-list celebrities being force fed insects in far-flung jungles is finally starting to wear thin.

Television bosses might be hoping they can rejuvenate a tired format by focusing on something a little more "worthy". Whatever the motivation, getting relief and development issues onto mainstream TV is so tough these days, you can hardly blame aid agency World Vision for co-operating with producers who wanted to make a show challenging entrepreneurs to come up with a fresh approach to reducing poverty.

In Millionaires' Mission, a four-part television series being aired on Britain's Channel 4, eight successful British business people - worth more than £600 million between them - grapple with the challenge of improving living standards in Rukiga, a remote farming community in southwestern Uganda.

With only three weeks and a total budget of £120,000, it's quite a task. Luckily, World Vision's national director for Uganda, Rudo Kwaramba, is on hand to give the budding Bonos a crash course in aid "dos and don'ts", and (one hopes) to stop them doing anything really crazy.

Mind you, that doesn't prevent construction tycoon Steve Morgan from furtively handing out dollars to one particularly needy woman, nor rashly promising to deliver the majority of the community's wish list, including a decent water supply and renovations to the school, health centre and roads, as well as repairs to the village ambulance.

But let's face it, without the blunders, what would viewers learn? In an interview with AlertNet, Kwaramba explains that the show's producers kept her somewhat distant from the entrepreneurs during filming, with the aim, she suspects, of letting them make some mistakes.

Even as an experienced professional, Kwaramba says being involved in the programme led her to realise a few home truths about aid.

"It would be easy to condemn the guy who handed money to the woman with the hungry child, but NGOs (non-governmental organisations) do it too - just in a more ordered way. It's called relief," she explains.

In the show, she provides a nifty explanation of the difference between short-term aid and longer-term development. Getting such nuggets of wisdom on prime-time TV is no mean feat.

I admit I watched the first episode with some trepidation. It didn't take long for someone to come out with a corker. "I just wonder to how much of an extent people choose to live like this rather than are forced to live like this," wonders Dominic McVey, a 22-year-old who's made a small fortune from micro-scooters, as he gazes out of the window at a fairly typical Ugandan street scene.

Other cringe-worthy moments include the sight of pub-chain owner Tony Callaghan weeping with emotion at a cheery welcome extended by the local community. As his colleague Deirdre Bounds - owner of a travel volunteer company - points out, the performance is a smart business move. Not something to cry about, you'd have thought.

The entrepreneurs again show themselves up by getting angry when most of the local chiefs don't turn up to a meeting they've called - for which Kwaramba gives them an equally indignant ticking off. "I responded off the cuff," she tells me during our phone interview. "The fact that you turn up with money doesn't mean village life stops."

WHOSE AGENDA?

Kwaramba says that participating in the programme has made her question how aid agencies often parachute into communities with their own agendas, expecting local people to jump to their tune.

"We don't put enough effort into moving at the pace of the community, but we also put in too much money," she argues. "We need more of the community's resolve and a lot less money to make things more sustainable. We're weighing down communities with outside resources."

Sadly, in the first episode of Millionaire's Mission, Rukiga's residents are treated as little more than a supporting cast for the foreign stars of the show. We learn next to nothing about the community and its people, who are presented as a generic bunch of poor Africans.

And it's pretty clear that, despite three days of "consultation", they won't get much of a say in what the entrepreneurs end up doing to "help them".

The Brits row over whether they should use their money to install a new system to cut the time it takes villagers to fetch water (Morgan is pretty much a lone champion of this idea), or set up a hotel for foreign volunteers who'd also teach English in the local school. The latter didn't feature on the community's list of priorities, but is still the group's project of choice.

As the entrepreneurs point out, they're not aid workers and were brought in to come up with something innovative. But given that, what was the point in asking local people what they wanted, thereby raising false expectations?

"Whenever development interrupts people's lives, we've failed," observes Karamba in our interview. "It should be about what they'd have done - but helping them to do it faster and working together."

Aid critics might argue that volunteer tourism is more likely to benefit Rukiga than traditional health or education projects. By episode four, hopefully we'll be able to judge for ourselves.

But, entertainment value aside, Millionaires' Mission does nothing to buck the development status quo of outsiders deciding what's best for impoverished Africans.

Millionaires' Mission is being screened on Britain's Channel 4 on Wednesday evenings at 9pm local time (ending on October 10). The series also has a website.

World Vision UK offers more background information, as well as a video interview with entrepreneur Deirdre Bounds.

Rudo Kwaramba says there's no definite plan to show the series in Uganda, but hopes this will change.

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