What's wrong with Africa

[rezendi]

When I left the continent in 1998, I told people "I love Africa, but it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better." Score one for me. I didn't really understand why, though. Now I think I do.



Go for a long walk through rural Kenya, or a town in Rwanda, or downtown Lusaka, or just about anywhere in poor Africa, and at some point one or more of a group of children will approach you to say "Give me money," "Donnes-moi d'argent." Not beggars, I hasten to add; they're not there on the street looking for rich people; they're just hanging out, playing, and when they see you, they rush to make their appeal.

It's easy, and wrong, to generalize from that to Africa-looking-for-a-handout. The famous "culture of dependency," the notion that white people screwed up the place, so white people should throw money around to fix it. That culture of dependency certainly does exist; and Western governments and aid agencies do nothing but amplify it; but it's just a symptom of a larger problem.

The fundamental problem with Africa is the omnipresent notion that good things do not come from striving, but only from Providence. That the key to success and happiness is "seize opportunity when it comes," not "fight to make what you want happen." Oh, you get the same lottery mentality in much of the West, but it's far more widespread here - virtually universal.

Ever heard of attribution theory? It's the enormously successful psychological theory that how people perceive the causes of what happens to them - internal vs. external, and ongoing vs. fluke - is a major determinant of their happiness. Happy people view good things as the result of internal ongoing sources, and bad things as caused by external flukes. Depressed people see the exact reverse.

Well, if there's such a thing as cultural attribution, Africa has a strange and pathological condition; its inhabitants tend to see *everything* as the result of external chance. "Striving doesn't work" is just the flip side of exactly the same fatalism that helps Africans get by (and is infectious, believe me, after just a couple of months in-continent.)

Why do Africans believe this? Because it's true. Fortune is so fickle here that striving is rarely rewarded. So many things can and do torpedo attempts to get ahead: disease, drought, natural disaster, tribal politics, corruption, bad tourist PR, power cuts, Mugabe-esque leaders, etc. etc. etc. No maintenance of engines and pumps and power stations? Its root cause: this same fatalism. Que sera, sera, and there ain't nothin' you can do about it.

Even if you *do* somehow get ahead, you're hamstrung by Big Man syndrome. An enormously powerful cultural imperative requires you must provide - food, shelter, upbringing, all manner of support - for your extended family, dozens of cousins and aunts and nieces. This is the social safety net that keeps many Africans alive. It is also a massive disincentive. Ryszard Kapuscinski tells a story of a man who gave up a store in Dar es Salaam to sell oranges in a different Tanzanian town, just to get away from his rapacious family; he was happier and wealthier selling oranges on the street than running a business.


Is there hope? Of course there's hope. The hope is a middle class that grows up with the notions of opportunity, striving for success, taking risks. It's a very slow hope. Even in poster-child Uganda, 20 years on from Museveni's relatively enlightened takeover, there's only a miniscule (but promising) middle class. They, plus the diaspora, plus GSM and the Internet, equal hope.

Western aid does not give me hope. NGOs do not give me hope. I'm with Paul Theroux, and Graham Hancock, and Michael Maren, and to be honest just about everybody I met in Africa who is not involved with the aid industry: most development aid is actively harmful. Even when it's not a horrible clusterfuck, which it usually is, its side-effect costs usually far exceed its benefits. I'll make an exception for genuine disaster relief, and for environmental aid (I think paying to maintain rainforests is an eminently sensible idea). I accept that aid has gotten better in the last decade - it could hardly have gotten worse - with microprojects, microfinance, co-ops, community efforts instead of big honking dams. There might even be a few projects that are actually worth the time and effort poured into them. But overall? I say kill it all. You want to do Africa a favour? End all development aid, right now.

The horror stories are legion. Vast amounts of donated clothes destroyed the entire West African textile industry. An MSF relief mission entered a troubled area and gave away drugs for free, just long enough that all the local pharmacies were forced to close, and then declared the disaster over and packed up. Food convoys into Sudan regularly lost 90% of their cargo to the warring forces in exchange for safe passage, perpetuating the very conflict they were trying to alleviate. Shells of buildings, silted dams, and "pilot projects" dot the African landscape, going nowhere. Young white people on what amount to paid exotic vacations drive fleets of NGO Assault Vehicles - brand-new 4WDs with big radio antennas - to hundred-dollar-a-night hotels for feasts of steak and lobster. "Administrative costs" eat up two-thirds of donations before anyone even thinks about getting some into Africa. Food aid must be purchased from America and shipped around the world, via the incredibly bureaucratic UN process, in some infamous cases a year after all its intended recipients had starved. Peace Corps yahoos bomb around on their famous mountain bikes, trained for months and flown to remote villages at the cost of tens of thousands of dollars, so they can teach people how to give Western haircuts, or dig wells that the villagers will never use.

And that's without going into the soft side effects. The horrifying culture of dependency that results; I am reminded of a project in Zimbabwe, before Mugabe went mad, when local people deliberately allowed water to build up and destroy a dam built at great cost by Norwegians, because they knew then the Norwegians would have to come back to fix it, and would start spending money there again. The self-perpetuation; there is always a great need for more aid, just ask any aid worker. The fact that an NGO job is the best job you can get, so the most capable Africans try to work for them rather than build something themselves. The doctors and teachers that leave the country to find work because NGO volunteers at home have replaced them for free. And most of all the continuation, the amplification, of the notion that change must always come from outside. whythawk once called it, accurately, "the recolonization of Africa through aid."

Is aid salvageable? Maybe. If it was less scattershot, more concentrated; if, say, Canada decided to focus all of its international aid on just three or four countries for five or ten years, and made it very clear it would then move on to other countries; that kind of qualitatively different approach, with a single donor, run efficiently, with low corruption tolerance, temporary presence, a long-term plan and deep resources, might make a difference. But the aid industry doesn't work that way, and doesn't want to work that way. It lives on, and is a, waste.

It would be good to cancel all Africa's foreign debt. It would be good to open up international markets to genuine free trade. But eliminating all development aid, tomorrow, might be an even better thing to do for the continent. No joke. You want to do something for Africa? For God's sake don't give anything to CARE or World Vision or Save The Children. (Amnesty International, Transparency International, even MSF, whose disaster relief probably outweighs their bad ideas - OK.) Buy something that was made there. Or better yet, go travel there awhile, and spend your money personally.


Anyway. Back to what's really wrong with the place - because while aid is a net negative, it's also basically ineffectual and irrelevant - back to the fatalism and its causes. Governments are largely at fault, of course. You could argue that the whole point of government is to create an environment where striving for success is a realistic option. African governments, by and large, fail spectacularly. Tribal, incompetent and inefficient, unbelievably bureaucratic, jawdroppingly corrupt, often viewed as a way to milk the people rather than help them.

Again you need the middle class. They'll help stabilize politics, through personal/economic influence, if they're part of the same ethnic group as the government. (As opposed to the way things are now; Asians run most of the businesses in East Africa, and Lebanese in the west, but not being black, they'll never play a major role in politics.)

How do you get a middle class? Education, clearly, is important - witness India's legendary IIT and its role as gateway to the IT boom there - but it isn't enough. A pretty-smart kid with time, tools, and a full belly will outperform a genius kid who comes in hungry from fieldwork ten times out of ten. (And yes, education is exactly where aid should help. And doesn't.) No, to get a middle class, first you do what every smart African who can does, and you get the hell out of the place.

Africa's hope lies in technology and the double diaspora. Let's look at the latter first. All the businesses I saw in Africa that were actually run by Africans had some family connection to someone overseas. Maybe they send money; maybe they come back and divide their time. They're connected, that's the important thing, thanks to phone cards and the Internet, and there's a lot to draw them there. Africa is rarely a place you run away from and stay away from; despite media coverage, Africa is life, not war and death.

The second diaspora, just as important, is rural to urban. Gargantuan shantytowns grow around every big city in Africa, anarchic, filthy, often violent places, populated by young people who have given up on their rural hometown and come to the city. I used to wonder why such places existed - I'd far rather live in a rural village than a shantytown - but now I understand, and I salute them. These are the people who come to look for a job, a career, a new life. Who, in short, take a chance, risk life in the shantytown, for success. Most of them will fail. But even if they wind up going home with nothing but dire tales from the big city, they're important. Because they're what connects the cities to the villages; Like the overseas diaspora, if they get work, they too send remittances home; they support others from their family or village who want to come and try their luck; they're how ideas, money, and education flow from town to mud hut.

Them plus the revolution.


Don't look now, but there is an actual, genuine revolution sweeping across the Dark Continent. The GSM revolution. Hop in a matatu, walk down a road, stop in a remote village for a Coke, and what do you see? Mobile phones. Thousands of them. Worn on lanyards by individuals, or rented by the minute at colourfully painted roadside stalls. It's quite incredible. In 1998, when I spent six months in Africa, I didn't see a single one. Now they're ubiquitous. High in the Virunga volcano range, a guide's phone beeps. "They come out of a bush out of walking half a day just to reach a road, and then they pull out a mobile," marvels a friend of mine who lives there. Much of the continent has jumped straight to mobile phones without ever having had a land line. For the first time in Africa's history, people can talk to their family and friends across the country. Yes, it's still too expensive; but it's a revolution nonetheless.

Then there's the Internet. Seven years ago, finding a Net cafe was cause for celebration. Now they're in towns everywhere. All the smart kids are playing online. They're not in villages, yet, and to be honest there's no point in putting them there; I mean, whenever you read about "wired villages" someone always winds up defending their existence with "they can use them to check crop prices," which is both bizarre and insulting - they do that already, thank you very much, via text message. No, what matters is that education, technical and non, is seeping into the towns, into all the wired kids who work and hang around in the Internet cafes. Is it casual, shallow, informal? You bet. Is it a whole lot better than what came before? Absolutely. And it's how the overseas diaspora stays connected. The better the communication links, the tighter the bonds, the more good the diaspora will do; the more the extended families of overseas Africans will get pulled up into the middle class; and the more that their extended families in rural villages will get drawn into position for their next generation to do the same. That's the great hope.

Will it happen? God knows. AIDS alone may destroy that hope entirely. (There's another example of the same horrific fatalism; its prevalence, despite massive public education, is another artifact of the que-sera-sera mindset.) Corruption, tribalism, or sheer brutal dictatorship might destroy it, as in Zimbabwe. But it's hope, at least, and it's real and tangible. The important thing to remember is that it lies within Africa. We can do our bit to help, by buying African, spending tourist dollars, and helping with natural disasters; but real hope doesn't come from outside, and never will.

Comments

[ilcylic.livejournal.com]

Far from offending, I agree with every thing you've said here.

-Ogre

[feyandstrange.livejournal.com]

I agree with you for the most part, but I disagree with Theroux's more extremist stance.
There's a decent rebuttal to Theroux here:
http://3quarksdaily.blogs.com/3quarksdaily/2006/01/monday_musing_i.html

which touches on at least some of the reasons I think Theroux is talking out his ass a little. Yes, food aid doesn't work. But that's a completely different animal from debt forgiveness, for example. This article extensively quotes from _The End of Poverty_ by Jeffrey Sachs, which I have heard from relatively reliable sources is quite sound in its economics.

I think there's a place for the sorts of aid projects that "teach them to fish", that build local industries, that improve basic conditions (drilling wells for drinking water) so that people can do something besides substience. I will contribute towards "buying chickens or a cow", micro-banks, and local artisan industry, all of which seem to have worked nicely in India, and ought to work in Africa reasonably well, I think.

http://outside.away.com/outside/destinations/200512/himalayan-cataract-project-1.html
is a somewhat long-winded article on a project which has not only performed cataract surgery for thousands of Himalayans, but set up a factory for the replacement lenses used in India rather than importing them from the First World. It's a nice example of medical aid, decorated with completely suuperfluous white tourists who are contributing money to the project. (You could probably sell that magazine some stuff, next time you travel.)

[rezendi.livejournal.com]

I wish. Outside is actually a pretty major market; it's where Jon Krakauer, among others, hangs out when not writing brilliant books.

I'm in favour of debt relief, and, as this post makes clear, I think Africans leaving Africa is the great hope of Africa; and I haven't read Sachs' book (have wishlisted it though), only its reviews; but I can't say I agree with what I gather is its thesis. (And its apparent use of Bolivia as a success story sets off my bullshit detector. I've been to Bolivia. It ain't no success.)

I think India is succeeding (using the word advisedly - India has all kinds or problems) in spite of aid, which is/was much less prevalent there than in Africa, not because of it.

I mean, I'd like to be wrong, but ... take "drilling wells for drinking water." It sounds like a great idea. In practice, it's often badly done. Villages, for very obvious reasons, tend to be put where there already is a source of water (a local stream, for instance); some well-meaning 21-year-old Brit comes along and drigs a well/borehole, sets up a bucket or hand pump, explains to them how to use it; villagers are very grateful; villagers then go straight back to getting their water from the local stream, because it's easier, or they prefer its taste, or it's where the women socialize every morning; and when a drought comes and the well is needed, it has rusted into disuse. Classic example, cited to me a couple times recently.

And suppose the well actually does come in handy, and people start to use it. What happens when it breaks, or rusts out, just as people have begun to depend on it? Who's going to maintain it? Are you going to send another Westerner every year or so to check on it? Are you going to train a local to do it? If so, why in God's name would a trained local return to their rural village when they can now get a job as a plumber in the big city, and then return to their village with (relative) pots of money?

And what about the object lesson you've just given to the village, that their best hope for the future comes from some random foreigner envoy for some aid project popping up out of nowhere, rather than, say, deciding on their own what they need, and then saving up money to buy something/hire someone themselves, maybe with the aid of a microfinance bank? (There's definitely an important place for microfinance in development; it's not clear to me that Westerners need to have anything to do with it. Why not have African-owned, African-run microfinance banks? Because the aid-financed ones tend to shoulder them aside in the market, perchance?)

Even if you solve that problem - and village water should be a simple problem, but just look at all the worms in that can - what do you do about the far more complex and intractable problems of poverty in Africa's enormous, and ever-growing, shantytowns? By going in and giving them stuff, and wiping out all the local businesses?

Sell something in a foreign market - a good, a service - for less than its cost of production, and it's called "dumping", and it's universally agreed that this is very bad for the locally based competitors and should be prohibited. Give it away for free, and suddenly it's called "aid", and people think it's a good thing.


Medical aid is admittedly a different kettle of fish. I'm not sure entirely where I stand on it; I think it's full of edge cases. That cataract surgery looks like a good thing.

[feyandstrange.livejournal.com]

...there are idiots drilling wells when there's already a tolerable water source? Argh! I admittedly pulled that example out of my ass, but I had heard something about wells being dug for places whose primary water source was now polluted, where the "aid" being provided was a hired local digging machine and somebody to teach some basic water purification stuff. (Charcoal. IIRC. Low-tech stuff.)

The microfinance aid project I ran across was funding some "city" locals (IIRC) to go teach the basic concepts of banking/microfinance to locals, and possibly supply a starter loan for the bank. It may have specifically targeted women.

I have mysteriously started receiving a subscription to _Outside_ in the last few months. I hadn't seen any "big names" and assumed it was a well-funded startup. But hey, submitting a query letter doesn't hurt.

I'm in favor of medical aid in the most basic forms because it benefits us as well. I want to wipe out polio, and there's no reason anybody should die of measles these days. There's a vaccine-thing vs. diahrrea coming out that also looks really promising. I'm completely in favor of patent-breaking in life-saving situations. (Had there been an African polio vaccine factory, we might have persuaded those Sharia idiots to use the stuff sooner. Maybe. I take no bets on what religious nutbars will do when confronted with logic. Still, switching them to the India-produced vaccine and letting local labs test it was a good step in the process.) I'd also like to see some funding for basic medical training - really basic and preventative stuff - circuit-rider nurses perhaps, and some sort of deal where they get a scholarship for the training but have to serve a few years in the villages to pay for it. Teaching a village how to re-hydrate dehydrated people might save hundreds of lives and can be done pretty easily and cheaply; if the village doesn't have salt, a sugar and cleanish water, it's got a lot more problems.

MInd you, I suck at economics, and I know this. My dad majored in it, and his textbooks have always terrified me. But I completely agree that handouts are idiotic and harmful, whereas "teach them to fish and suggest they teach others" solutions seem to work.

[rezendi.livejournal.com]

Nothing to do with Africa: the most infamous article ever to appear in Outside (http://www.randomhouse.ca/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780812991529&view=excerpt).

[feyandstrange.livejournal.com]

...dear God, I see why.

Wow.

[j-shelbourne.livejournal.com]

Not meaning in any way to be facetious, but have you considered this as part of your Fermi paradox solution? No galactic aid; it just destroys the locals. (I think that's already implied in one of the other common Fermi solutions.)

I heard Stephen Lewis speak recently and had several days of missionary zeal, figuring out if I could get to Africa and spend six months doing...well, something. Going to Africa is still on the list of things to do, but more researching is in order before I figure out what I'm going to do there.

[stylishbastard.livejournal.com]

The fact that an NGO job is the best job you can get, so the most capable Africans try to work for them rather than build something theirselves

I find this stuff distressing...aid as a cottage industry.

[phrawzty.livejournal.com]

Insightful, as usual!

[frumiousb.livejournal.com]

Interesting. Thanks. Have you read The Elusive Quest for Growth?

[rezendi.livejournal.com]

Not yet. Just wishlisted it though.

[kateo.livejournal.com]

Nothing I'd given any real thought to, but now must. Thank you.

[expat-in-africa.livejournal.com]

Many of the Africans I meet in Lagos are not Nigerian. They have come from all over to find jobs in Lagos, the big city. And I've seen the mobile phone and communications industry explode even since I got here almost three years ago. There are three times as many companies here now. I think that's a good thing, which seems to be what you're saying, I think.

I agree partly with your argument against the wrong forms of aid, but I think you're generalizing a bit much about the African mentality of "striving doesn't work." There is a saying I see on the public buses (vans) that says, "No Food For Lazy Man." I know a man from Benin now living in Nigeria who makes only about $150 a month and sacrifices a good portion of that so he won't have to send his kid to the horrible public schools here. He believes a better life is possible through education. He wants his son to reach that middle class of which you speak.

I've seen many times kids at my car window saying, to my horror, "Masta, gimme money." I've seen many others too expecting a dash, as it's called here. So I know the mentality is prevelant, but it's not pervasive.

I think we have to stop speaking of Africa as a monolith. You've just been through the continent; I'm sure you witnessed the differences and diversity. When we talk about aid for Africa, we should specify which kind of aid to what part. Aid can have adverse effects, and I know you specified "developmental aid," but I wouldn't be opposed to sending food to Ethiopa and Somalia right now to prevent mass starvation.

[rezendi.livejournal.com]

I think that's a good thing, which seems to be what you're saying, I think.

Yes, absolutely.

I am generalizing a bit much, no question. A lot of Africans are fighting very hard to make life better for their families. There are well-run African countries (Botswana) and others that look quite hopeful (maybe Nigeria - it was a hellhole when I was there in '98, but I gather it's improved immensely.)

I think we have to stop speaking of Africa as a monolith.

Well, yes and no. Kapuscinski said the same thing early on in The Shadow Of The Sun - and then went and spent the rest of the book talking about Africa as a monolith. It's hard to avoid.

When I say "Africa" in the above post, I mean sub-Saharan, or, put more crudely, black Africa. The Maghreb and the Middle East have their own, different, problems. It does make some sense to speak of it as a monolith. Culturally and linguistic sense, for one, thanks to the Bantu takeover of the continent some seven hundred years ago. Many Africans think of the continent monolithically, in certain contexts. There's an African Union and a (theoretical) African Parliament. Most African countries face similar challenges. Travel in Africa, and you see the same things everywhere; markets (and their contents) and taxi parks in Cote d'Ivoire, Uganda, and Zambia have a whole lot more in common than those in, say, Calcutta, Hong Kong and Port Moresby, or even Cuzco, La Paz and Belize City.

Obviously you're right; when you start drilling down to details, enormous differences arise - Nigeria and Malawi are pretty damn different and when I say "I'm generalizing a bit much," that's exactly why. But at least to a first approximation, talking about "Africa" is both meaningful and hard to avoid. The trick, absolutely, is to ensure that you always remember that doing so is still just a very crude approximation.

I wouldn't be opposed to sending food to Ethiopa and Somalia right now

I do make a point of excepting genuine disaster relief from my anti-development-aid stance.

[douglasjames.livejournal.com]

all very interesting

what would be good to see are africans bypassing all the trouble of the industrial ages and going from the agricultural straight to the digital one, you've alluded this is already occuring

[wildpaletz.livejournal.com]

cultural attribution

In fact, my advisor in grad school did work on this. The internal/external attribution thing--so, in American, *on average*, there's this thing called the Fundamental Attribution Error, where when bad things happen to you, you say it's luck, but when good things happen to you, you say it's because of your virtue (more or less)--but people make the opposite attributions with regards to others (mostly others they don't know, rather than friends or family). The Fundamental Attribution Error, as it's called, has NOT been replicated in China or Japan. Why not? Because they don't make those errors, because while in the US there's a tendency to make internal attributions, in those countries there's a tendency to make external attributions.

It seems from what you're saying that lots of Africa is more similar to China that way. I find that fascinating. One of the main complaints about cultural psychology right now is that it's very East Asia vs. US/Canada/England. Sure, there's bits of other places--Greece, India, Israel. But almost nothing from Africa or South America. It'd be awesome to start going there, too, and saying--hey, these things that psychologists in the US say are 'human nature' and common to everyone, are they? In what ways? Why and why not?

I gotta make me some connections. And learn some languages.

[rezendi.livejournal.com]

I'd love to know what the cultural-psychology distinctions within Africa are like, too.

I would have expected that cultural psychologists would have really gone out of their way to try to study the potential edge cases - solitary Papua New Guinea communities, Batwa pygmies in the Congo, Amazonian natives, remote Indian Ocean island tribes, Australian aboriginals, the Inuit - if they're trying to define human nature. I guess that's many lifetimes of difficult expensive work though.

[el-christador.livejournal.com]

I had the impression that Donald E. Brown's list of "Human Universals (http://condor.depaul.edu/~mfiddler/hyphen/humunivers.htm)" contained things that were supposed to have been seen in all, or nearly all, cultures. I'd assumed this included some (or in fact, plenty) of obscure ones, but I don't know this definitely to be true. Of course, that only pertains to things that are the same throughout, not to the question of what things are different where.

[wildpaletz.livejournal.com]

Honestly, cultural psych is relatively new. It hasn't gotten to all those places yet. Also, they/we often use surveys, which limits where you can get data. It's different methods from anthropology, certainly, though I have some friends who are anthropologists who don't seem to hold it against me :)

[feyandstrange.livejournal.com]

Due to the historical rivalry between archeologists and anthropologists, I'll back you against the anthro geeks any day. :)

Although now I have this silly, silly mental image of you trying to give surveys to freshly dug-up Mayan graves, for example. Hee.

Wow, if there really were still-sort-of-living mummies, what a great resource they'd be! Ooh! Let's capture one and run some tests on it and ask it to take a survey!

...me, punchy? Why yes.

[ex-greythist387.livejournal.com]

Interesting. Would you say that stuff produced under the Creative Commons license for "developing" markets counts as useful facilitation or as developmental aid? See also (http://creativecommons.org/license/devnations).

[rezendi.livejournal.com]

Er. Mostly I would say it's completely irrelevant.

On one hand, obviously when you're talking about extreme poverty, AIDS orphans in villages with no power or running water, you're talking about people who are not in a position to even begin to engage with, or care about, the notion of intellectual property licensing.

On the other, when you're talking about the kids in the Internet cafes everywhere, and using cell phones - I wouldn't call liberal licensing aid (just as I wouldn't call Linux aid), but for the moment, and foreseeable future, I don't see it making any difference at all. Net cafes in African tend to run on (recent) pirated copies of Windows XP, occasionally with Firefox instead of IE if the owner is particularly tech-aware. Cell phones are used for talk and text messages, no fancy Java apps. I can't really imagine anything whose release under a Creative Commons license would make any difference at all to more than a tiny handful of people in poor Africa.

I suppose it matters for things like government departments, but it's not like they make a big difference. (And most of them probably have little to no compunction about using pirated software anyway.) I guess if it were to somehow become relevant in any way, it doesn't feel like aid because a) it's not squeezing out any kind of homegrown version b) the people using it will actively seek these tools out and get it for projects they already have in mind, rather than it being given to them by Westerners with a "now you go do this!" mentality c) there's no obvious opportunity cost, or any kind of cost for that matter.

[ex-greythist387.livejournal.com]

Ah. Thanks for clarifying. Certainly the software aspect seems misplaced, in manner of the $100 crank laptop issue--but the CC license can go on films, novels, music, and other produced things. I think the idea is that entrepreneurial marketers can seize someone else's thing released under the CC Dev Nations license and use it for profit in the relevant markets. There's room for exploitation, clearly (will only people with a standing start be able to market things successfully?), but as idea it's interesting.

[rezendi.livejournal.com]

films, novels, music

Hmm. Yeah, didn't think about those. My engineering background is showing...

Films are pretty much nonexistent outside the big cities; even there, they're usually ancient pirated Chinese tapes or new pirated Malaysian DVDs.

Novels...alas, are also pretty much nonexistent outside the big cities, which generally have one or two new bookstores with a pretty good selection, catering mostly to the expat/NGO market, plus some used-book street stalls. I didn't see any pirated novels (I have seen such things in India/Nepal.) Weird places have big libraries; Fort Portal, Uganda, has a fairly impressive one, whereas Kigali has none. Authorial royalties are usually only about 10-12% anyhow, so a royalty-free license isn't that big a deal. But reading in a second language is tough, and English or French is almost always a second language in Africa.

Music is a much, much bigger market in Africa than films and novels combined. Most of it is Congolese, and either repetitive or mesmerizing depending on who you talk to. I would frown on making Western music cheaper than African music with a royalty-free license, and cite this as a classic example of bad aid - if I thought there was any chance of this actually influencing African tastes, which I strongly doubt, and if most of it wasn't pirated in the first place anyhow.

Oh, and there's a huge amount of Christian books/music, but most of that is basically purchased by Christian donors, in- or out-of-country, and given away.

[flipzagging.livejournal.com]

Wonderful article! Keep 'em coming.

Since you talked a bit about how Africans use technology, what do you think of the One Laptop Per Child (http://laptop.media.mit.edu/) idea? My employer sponsors it, but I have grave doubts about it.

It's clearly designed to wow the grant committees. And even assuming they worked (highly doubtful) it's not obvious to me that any African ever asked for a product like this.

[rezendi.livejournal.com]

I think if a representative sample of Africans were to compile a list of things they need, $100 laptops would not appear; if they were to then compile a list of things they want, $100 laptops would still be near the bottom of the page.

I mean, priorities, people. A malaria vaccine? Bring it on. Cheap computers? What the hell? Africans in villages have never seen a computer, and expecting the appearance of one to change their life is pollyannaish in the extreme. I think there are implicit assumptions here that children in Africa have i) space to put a laptop where it won't be destroyed, lost, stolen, or quickly rendered unusable by ambient filth, ii) time to play with one, iii) power, iv) Net access, v) any capacity to tangibly benefit from a laptop even if they had i)-iv), vi) parents with a spare $100.

I suppose the intent is for communities to buy a computer to share, or something, 'cause Net cafes aren't working, or something, and communities are hive minds, or something. You want African communities to have computers? Here's how: make them richer. Don't waste your time trying make a computer cheaper. Especially if you're MIT. Dell will probably beat you too it anyways.

Sorry, that got a little ranty. But, yeah, stunningly obtuse idea.

[flipzagging.livejournal.com]

The laptops are not going to be available for sale. See the FAQ (http://laptop.media.mit.edu/faq.html): "The laptops will be sold to governments and issued to children by schools on a basis of 'one laptop per child.'"

I think some guy did an economic analysis that proved if these laptops performed as stated, they would all be sold instantly. We're talking about countries where people usually use extra purchasing power for food.

[rezendi.livejournal.com]

(correcting spelling/grammar, and adding a thought or two)

Hmm. First time through the info, I missed that it was Brazil and Thailand who had expressed the most interest, and that the laptops were powered by hand cranks not plugs.

It might actually make some sense in Brazil and Thailand - they have First World infrastructures and vibrant economies; computer skills are going to be vital for all their next generation; cheap computers will actually fill a need. Zambia, not so much. Nigeria, with all its oil money, maaaaaybe.

I think most people who haven't been don't quite understand that the economic gaps among the group of countries labelled as "developing" are qualitatively larger than the gap between "developing" and "developed." The highest-paid CEO in Kenya, arguably the most developed country in East Atrica, gets US$35,000 a year. (Source; local newspapers when I was there.) I don't know what the best-paid CEO in Brazil or Thailand takes home, but I guarantee you it's one hell of a lot more than that.

[whythawk.livejournal.com]

I'll respond, at some stage ;P, with a long article of my own. It's long, complex and frustrating. Has to do with short-term over long term - for instance, democracy by vote actually encourages short-termism. A five year plan won't "save" Africa. Politicians and diplomats need to look beyond their own re-election and behave responsibly. Now, who do you know that is willing to let the next crop of politicians take the credit? In any country?

Anyhow, I'm still alive. I'll send you an email with some of the details.

[cipherpunk.livejournal.com]

Word.

More will be coming via email. No offense, but a lot of my beliefs on this--while paralleling your own, for the most part--are so politically unspeakable in the States that there's no way I'm going to say them in a public forum.

The censorship imposed by the Left is every bit as terrifying and repressive as that imposed by the Right.

[retrophoto.livejournal.com]

I need to digest your post more to comment further, but I remrmber hearing about medical aid workers saying that they had to bring their own gloves as there weren't any available at one remote AIDS clinic. Apprently the African clinic workers don't even bother with wearing gloves at some places, as they feel contracting HIV is sort of inevitable.

Not sure if that's true or not, but would certainly be the "que sera sera" attitude taken to an extreme.

[mdevnich.livejournal.com]

I was a Peace Corps volunteer in West Africa, and I agree with you (but I liked my mountain bike). A lot of us ended up very disillusioned about Africa's chances, and about our and the NGOs' work.

The fundamental problem with Africa is the omnipresent notion that good things do not come from striving, but only from Providence.

We called this the "inshallah attitude" (inshallah = "God willing").

[razorsmile.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and friend you now (no objections, I trust?). Then, when I have something intelligent to say, I'll say it.

For now, all I will say is:

maybe Nigeria - it was a hellhole when I was there in '98, but I gather it's improved immensely

Improved!? Are you kidding me? It was pretty good in 1998 - things only went downhill from there.