My Beauty Best Teacher

William Easterly writes on the rebirth of utopianism"...it is in 2005 that utopia seems to have made its big breakthrough into mainstream discourse. In March, Columbia University Professor Jeffrey Sachs, celebrity economist and intellectual leader of the utopians, published a book called The End of Poverty, in which he called for a big push of increased foreign aid to meet the Millennium Development Goals and end the miseries of the poor...British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown likewise called in January for a major increase in aid, a “Marshall Plan” for Africa. Brown was so confident he knew how to save the world’s poor that he even called for borrowing against future aid commitments to finance massive increases in aid today...We have already seen the failure of comprehensive utopian packages in the last two decades: the failure of “shock therapy” to convert the former Soviet Union from communism to capitalism and the failure of IMF/World Bank “structural adjustment” to transform nations in Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America into free-market paragons. All of these regions have suffered from poor economic growth since utopian efforts began...With all the political and popular support for such ambitious programs, why then do comprehensive packages almost always fail to accomplish much good, much less attain Utopia? They get the political and economic incentives all wrong. The biggest problem is that the rich people paying the bills do not share the same goals as the poor people they are trying to help...ree markets and democracy are far from an overnight solution to poverty—they require among many other things the bottom-up evolution of the rules of the game, including contract enforcement and fair political competition. Nor can democratic capitalism be imposed by outsiders (as the World Bank, IMF, and U.S. Army should now have learned). The evolution of markets and democracy took many decades in rich countries, and it did not happen through “big pushes” by outsiders...The problems of the poor nations have deep institutional roots at home, where markets don’t work well and politicians and civil servants aren’t accountable to their citizens. That makes utopian plans even more starry-eyed, as the “big push” must ultimately rely on dysfunctional local institutions..."
Via Bullets and Honey

Chukwu-Emeka Chikezie writes "...Today the authority and legitimacy of public officials in Africa must be negotiated with a rich texture of regional, communal and social associations; rapid progress in communications technology is providing Africans with new opportunities for networking and enterprise; and, perhaps above all, increasing numbers of Africans in the diaspora are reconnecting to their home countries in imaginative new ways involving creative “peer-to-peer” development strategies.All these transformations are fuelling changes in the ways Africans nurture the relationships of accountability – embodying practices of obligation, respect, responsibility and mutuality – that underpin their connection to each other...With the rise and rise of remittance flows over the last few years, Africans in the diaspora are Africa’s biggest aid donors and investors. They are, in effect, Africa’s biggest taxpayers, hit by a double whammy. First, they contribute to the overseas aid budget through their tax contributions to their new home government. Second, they make direct contributions via their individual and collective remittances(PDF). The latter far outstrip the former in terms of absolute volumes...African governments are far more accountable and responsive to their bilateral and multilateral aid donors than they are to African taxpayers at home or abroad...Africans have developed fairly sophisticated strategies for avoiding a state that seems hell-bent on obstructing their lives. Income from informal economic activity and remittances; healthcare and education provided by modern-day missionaries (as well as many new Pentecostal churches and their charismatic pastors); law provided by sharia courts and imams; protection provided by vigilante groups and their magic potions. All this and more happens with little state involvement. Africans weave together the fabric of their lives far from the state’s purview..."
Via OpenDemocracy

Chippla comments on the hypocrisy of Nigerians and their supposed religiosity"...Nigeria may boast more places of worship per square kilometer than any other nation on earth but the amount of sins being committed in it each day calls into question the efficacy of these 'Houses of God.' ...while most Nigerians describe themselves as believers (predominantly of the Christian and Islamic faiths, sometimes doused with traditional beliefs), faith and good works seem confined to churches and mosques. Outside of these, greed, malice, deceit and looting have become the norm..."

Kofi Akosah-Sarpong indicts journalists for their complicitness in perpetuating the memes of superstition, a phenomenon all too common across Africa. "...All intellectual laziness aside, what worries me, and I have a lot of worries as a Ghanaian/African development journalist, is a lack of a questioning, critical response to such supernatual interpretation of events that affects practically all that matters in Ghana/Africa...While most Ghanaians accept journalistic inquiry into various wrong doings or oversights or the implications of petroluem prices on the average Ghanaian, journalists have failed in asking about the implications of the rain of prophetic and other spiritual activities in Ghana's development process... By throwing journalistic inquiry on prophetic, juju-marabou mediums, religion and other spiritual activities that are inhibiting the Ghanaian development process, Ghanaian journalists will help open up the dark recesses of the paranoids and conspiracy theorists who feed on Ghanaians deep-seated beliefs in the superstitions such as witchcraft and prophetic revelations that block people from finding rational, reasonable solutions to their problems..."
Via GhanaWeb

Thompson Ayodele writes "...The resources needed for development in Africa can be generated within the continent. From 1970 to 2000 Africa received about U$400 billion in aid. Africa has got enough financial help from overseas. Africa’s lack of development clearly does not stem from lack of funds. More foreign aid will not eliminate poverty and launch African countries to productivity and growth...development in the continent is possible through change which must come from within Africa. If anyone really wants to help poor Africans out of the vicious circle of poverty he must promote free commerce, protect property rights, encourage openness to trade, allow markets to flourish and reduce government intervention in the economy..."He"...berates the proponents of ‘trade justice’ such as the Make Poverty History coalition who push for more barriers to trade. This would, according to Ayodele, further harm and impoverish the poor and vulnerable. “If countries should relax barriers to trade, it would kick-start entrepreneurial activities. People would discover where goods are most needed and innovate how best to produce those goods. The competition for supply would spur improvements in local production, investment and technology transfer with consequent benefits for
everyone, particularly the poor..."
Via Institute of Public Policy Analysis

Moeletsi Mbeki writes(pdf) "...When the colonies in Africa and Asia became independent, their political leaders were faced with two main challenges: achieving domestic political stability and transforming their economies from the production of raw materials to industrial production...At the root of Africa’s problems is ruling political elites that have misused the economic surplus generated by the African continent over the last 40 years. African political elites have exploited their position in order to
■ bolster their standard of living to Western levels,
■ undertake loss-making industrialisation projects that were not supported by the necessary technical,managerial, and educational development, and
■ transfer vast amounts of money from agriculture and mineral extraction to overseas private bank accounts, while borrowing vast amounts from developed countries.What were the results of those predatory policies? According to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which have become Africa’s fairy godparents, Africans are poor and getting poorer..."
Via Global Growth Org

Dikembe Mutombo "... has long been dedicated to improving the health, education and quality of life for the people in his birthplace, the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Created in 1997, the Dikembe Mutombo Foundation is attempting to eradicate many childhood diseases that have virtually disappeared in developed countries while those diseases are still life threatening to children in the Congo everyday..."
Also Covered at All African Bazaar

Speaking at the Pan-African Women Invent and Innovative (PAWII) Exhibition Hajia Alima Mahama stated that "...Several trends in global restructuring present challenge for African women in particular, challenges of competitive pressures of globalisation, rapid changes in technology and emerging dominant pressures of IT...it is most appropriate as it (GWIIN) provides a platform to showcase and market ideas, innovations and inventions initiated and implemented by women in Africa who contribute immensely to the socio economic development of their countries...This potential is largely constrained and their ingenuity mostly go unnoticed and un-rewarded..."

I was privileged to listen to Wangari Maathai the Nobel Laureate in conversation, she exemplifies what African's seek in their leaders. In her words "...Africa needs to rebuild responsible leadership to regenerate her cultures of peace, justice and equitable governance...Good governance requires responsible leadership. This has been undermined over the last 100 years in Africa. We need to recuperate the values that restore dignity and wisdom to our leaders.Citizen education should help people understand their rights and their responsibility to hold government accountable to them and to future generations..."

The Economic Commission for Africa reports "...The private sector only gets a brief mention in the Millennium Development Goals. Yet it is business – entrepreneurs, employers, investors and workers – who are best positioned to help Africa achieve the Goals...One area where private sector intervention could really make a difference is boosting the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) as proposed in Goal 8...ICTs are crucial for developing countries. They help reduce costs, improve productivity and increase access to domestic and international markets, thus contributing to economic growth and competition in the global economy...It’s indisputable that the private sector has played a major role in the evolution of ICTs, particularly in the mushrooming mobile phone networks. Nigeria has the world’s fastest growing mobile market, increasing by about 143 percent in 2003. That’s the kind of growth that will bring the MDGs within reach...So why is Africa finding it hard to achieve the necessary growth rates? Tariff barriers and border restrictions, heavy and indiscriminate taxation, complex, time-consuming regulations and bureaucracy have all played a part.Vigorous entrepreneurship can be seen in the informal sector all over the continent but these constraints, as well as disincentives discouraging investors, prevent small operators from thriving and expanding their businesses to become energetic - small and medium-sized enterprises and the engine of African growth.Africa does not just need growth per-se, but specifically growth in labour-intensive sectors that leads to job creation and wage improvement. This link is vital because the fastest exit from poverty is through employment and higher salaries..."

In a cautionary commentary Dana Blankenhorn analyses the causes of a lost democracy. "...No one can seize power alone, and toss a system of popular government on the ash heap. That only happens when there are enough people committed to the dictator's cause that they can overwhelm, through discipline, the vast majority. One of the most recent examples we have is in Zimbabwe...Without an open, transparent, and nominally democratic system, no country can move forward. All must regress into tribalism, into tyranny, into barely controlled chaos, starvation at the point of a gun..."

Demba Moussa Dembele critiques Aid dependency, "...So aid is an instrument, not a gift. For many Western countries and institutions, it plays a key role in their overall strategy to maintain and even expand their influence in Africa...the money disbursed as aid goes mainly to foreign-controlled enterprises and aid flows are used to buy goods and services from donor countries...the cost of complying with conditions imposed by donors and lenders and subsidies on domestic produce by OECD countries – help explain, among other things, the worsening of the debt crisis, which in turn has meant greater dependency on foreign aid...much of the so-called aid given by Western countries and the loans made by multilateral institutions are not based on developing countries’ real needs, nor on any performance criteria, but primarily on the interests of ‘donors’. It’s time, now, to consider some possible alternatives..."

"...Books For Africa. A simple name for a simple organization with a simple mission. We collect, sort, ship and distribute books to children in Africa. That's all we do. Our goal: to end the book famine in Africa...the book famine in Africa remains a reality. Where books are available, there are still very few. It is common across the continent to see five or six school children sharing one book. Empty library shelves are a constant reminder of Africa's desperate need for printed materials..."

Michael J. Isimbabi of the The African Leadership and Progress Network writes about Leadership and Governance. "...While the international community can provide much needed assistance, it is unrealistic to count on it to free African countries from bad leaderships and poor governance, given the hard realities of global geopolitics and economics. Whatever the underlying causes of slow progress in Africa may be, Africans themselves have to take responsibility for their own progress. In this regard, the development of indigenous capacity and homegrown policies informed by local knowledge and perspectives provides the best hope for poverty alleviation in poor countries...The onus therefore falls squarely on well-off and accomplished Africans to proactively take charge of fostering good governance and the evolution of visionary and transformational leaderships in their countries. The financial, intellectual, and other resources of accomplished Africans, especially those outside the continent ("Overseas" or "Diaspora" Africans), are yet to be fully tapped and effectively utilized toward fostering African progress, particularly leadership/governance capacity building with a strong private sector orientation."

The BBC reports that Foreign investment is failing to yield the expected benefits. "...The expectation for foreign direct investment to create growth, to create diversification, technology spillover and jobs has not really been fully realised according to expectations,"UNCTAD said.
The organisation pointed to the example of South Africa and Botswana, which encourage companies to do more of the 'value-adding' processing of diamonds domestically, rather than sending them abroad..."

Professor Stephen Commins addresses the options for services delivery in Africa, with an emphasis on water supply, an area covered earlier "...In the case of water and sanitation services in African urban locales, there is a widespread acceptance that the 'model' for water and sanitation services that has worked in developed countries cannot be adapted in the short to medium term for developing countries, especially in Africa...The potential roles of independent providers and their relationships to utilities vary considerably - influenced particularly by existing supply, capacity and attitudes. The second is the informal nature of many Non-State Providers and the lack of definitive information on the effects of formalization on the creative and responsive nature of their service. The tension around the issue of formalization is central to the discussion of a number of other thorny issues concerning Non-State Providers..."

CK Prahalad comments that China and India "...represent 900 million people in poverty, a larger number than the entire population of Africa. There are about 600 million in Africa who live on less than $3 per day. Why, then, do China and India evoke fear and anger, while Africa elicits pity and guilt?...Despite the magnitude of their respective poverty problems, China and India may have a chance of meeting the Millennium Development Goals established by U.N. Their economies are following the lead of other countries that have raised their populations into a middle-class economic base. For example, between 1975 and 2004, GDP per capita in South Korea increased fourfold. Over the same period, Malaysian incomes rose threefold.
On the other hand, in those decades, per capita incomes in Nigeria declined by a tenth. Why? During the period 1955-2004, the West and multilateral institutions invested more than $1 trillion in aid and subsidies in emerging economies. But poverty persists. It would seem, therefore, that we need to challenge the role of aid and subsidies in promoting sustainable economic development. If poverty cannot be eradicated with humanitarian handouts alone, what is the alternative?...The G-8, led by Tony Blair and supported by Jeffery Sachs and Bono, believe that debt relief and a doubling of aid from rich countries to poor, especially in Africa, is the way to go. A less popular alternative focuses on the involvement of the private sector in poverty alleviation through the development of market-based ecosystems.
Irrespective of which route we take, we need to build an infrastructure to deal with poverty. There is an implicit aid overhead. According to Prof. Sachs, out of every dollar of aid given to Africa, an estimated 16% went to consultants from donor countries, 26% went into emergency aid and relief operations, and 14% went into debt servicing. How much of the remaining 40% escaped corrupt officials to benefit the intended recipients is not known..."
Via NextBillion

George Monbiot writes about the almost non-existent follow-up to the G8 summit, "...Two months have not elapsed since the G8 summit, and already almost everything has turned to ashes. Even the crustiest sceptics have been shocked by the speed with which its promises have been broken..."...The objectives of the whole Live 8 campaign had little to do with poverty reduction in Africa. It was a scheme intended to project Geldof and Blair as humanitarian figures coming to the rescue of 'poor and helpless' Africans..."Says Moussa Dembele "Right from the beginning," says Kofi Mawuli Klu of the Forum of African Human Rights Defenders, "he has acted in his own selfish interests. It was all about self-promotion, about usurping the place of Africans. His message was 'shut up and watch me'. Without even understanding the root causes of the problems, he used his role to drown the voices of the African people and replace them with his own..."

Rochelle Mutton writes The "...Chinese are forging a "colonial extractive relationship" with Zimbabwe, which has sold forward more than a year's worth of gold and tobacco production in exchange for Chinese military hardware and diplomatic support..."The Chinese have a huge interest in extractive industries everywhere. Their influence is certainly growing in Africa, not just in Zimbabwe but Angola, Sudan and elsewhere," he said yesterday. "But of course it will be at high cost to Zimbabwe. It's almost a colonial extractive relationship that seems to be developing..."
Via The Age

Fredrik Segerfeldt makes the case for water privitization "...Ninety-seven per cent of all water distribution in poor countries is managed by the public sector, which is largely responsible for more than a billion people being without water. Some governments of impoverished nations have turned to business for help, usually with good results. In poor countries with private investments in the water sector, more people have access to water than in those without such investments. Moreover, there are many examples of local businesses improving water distribution. Superior competence, better incentives and better access to capital for investment have allowed private distributors to enhance both the quality of the water and the scope of its distribution. Millions of people who lacked water mains within reach are now getting clean and safe water delivered within a convenient distance..."the argument against it being that"...privatization increases prices, making water unaffordable for millions of poor people. In some cases, it is true that prices have gone up after privatization; in others not. But the price of water for those already connected to a mains network should not be the immediate concern. Instead, we should focus on those who lack access to mains water, usually the poorest in poor countries. It is primarily those people who die, suffer from disease and are trapped in poverty.They usually purchase their lower-quality water from small-time vendors, paying on average 12 times more than for water from regular mains, and often more than that. When the price of water for those already connected goes up, the distributor gets both the resources to enlarge the network and the incentives to reach as many new customers as possible. When prices are too low to cover the costs of laying new pipes, each new customer entails a loss rather than a profit, which makes the distributor unwilling to extend the network. Therefore, even a doubling of the price of mains water could actually give poor people access to cheaper water than before..."
Via Cato.org

A recent report underscores the need for economic freedom, it states that it "... is the key to peace as well as to prosperity: "When measures of both economic freedom and democracy are included in a statistical study, economic freedom is about 50 times more effective than democracy in diminishing violent conflict. The impact of economic freedom on whether states fight or have a military dispute is highly significant, while democracy is not a statistically significant predictor of conflict."..."
Via Globalization Institute

Kwesi Kwaa Prah writes "...Africa represents today the only major historical and cultural area of the world where despite their indigenous socio-cultural majorities, countries prefer to use the languages of their erstwhile masters in their attempts to develop and make social progress. The result of this neo-colonial approach to culture and democracy is that the scientific and technological culture of Africans is hardly advancing.Actually, Africa, by and large, is retrogressing or stagnating. Mass society and its culture is shut off, and condemned to cultural backwardness and alienation from the life of the elite. The elite in turn is bent on what many social critics regard as mindless imitation of the colonial and metropolitan cultures of the west. This is an orientation, which in effect integrates the elite more into the culture of the former colonial masters than the indigenous cultures from where this elite historically and socially derives..."

Bart Dijkstra of Free Voice gave a speech where he outlined crucial components of democracy "...good government is all about respecting the freedom of others and to realise that your freedom is not an absolute right. In Africa this is known by the concept of Ubuntu. This means that if you overstep your boundaries, inflict hardship on others or deprive others what is rightfully theirs you inflict this hardship on yourself; you deprive yourself of what you deny others. I see this concept of Ubuntu very much alive in the countries in Africa I know. I lived some years in Zimbabwe and others countries in the South and I have noticed that this concept is an important cornerstone of the bottom-up democratic process, which even when the top down process fails, which happens to many countries on this continent at present, still will guarantee that democracy has a very good change to emerge even if the top-down process is in shambles..."

Evelyn Kiapi Matsamura writes "...Decentralisation - the transfer of power from governments in often distant capitals to local authorities - is frequently depicted as one of the strategies that hold the greatest promise for helping the rural poor. At present, most of these people rely on agriculture for their livelihood. Yet, they have tended to exercise little control over the policies which are drawn up for rural areas, and which have a direct effect on the success of farming (for example)..."

Dozie Azike asks the question What do African leaders think? "...We have megalomaniacs leading as leaders. Leaders who have stolen the wealth of their countries and kept them in foreign accounts and are begging for debt forgiveness. Leaders who are richer than their counterparts from developed countries they are asking for debt forgiveness. Leaders who are living more lavishly than their counterparts from creditor nations. Leaders who are richer than their countries. Leaders who go on vacation to developed countries, because there are no infrastructures. Leaders whose kids have gone abroad to study so that they will come back and take over from them. Leaders who are so myopic and uninformed. Leaders who see grants and loans as free gift because they will ultimately end up in their own pockets. Leaders who can go to IMF and World Bank to borrow money to construct palaces and houses for their wives and concubines, to construct mushroom projects that might have been awarded to their cronies. Leaders who are despotic. Leaders who glorify that their own people have not seen the light. Leaders who cannot be differentiated from devil..."

Successful leadership ultimately depends on a leaders inherent abilities, the framework in which they operate and the effectiveness of associated checks and balances. Swaziland is an example of a traditional system gone awry, where a constitutional monarch has evolved into the worst type of destructive autocrat. As Babs Ajayi elucidates the slide into misrule began when the "...king was able to dissolve the Supreme Council of State (SCS), the Liqoqo. The legislative structure of the state was skewed in favour of the royal family and their sidekicks but a call for restructuring the legislature was rejected. The Swaziland Federation of Trade Unions (SFTU) have been on strike again and again pressing for reforms and demanding accountability, demanding that the state be separated from the palace and insisting that a people-oriented constitutional review be embarked upon. In 2001, the nation's Constitutional Review Commission enhanced King Mswati's powers. The Commission went on to extend the ban on all political parties in Swaziland..."

Chris Ngwodo writes "...we should realize that the current prominence of debt relief in international circles is driven by much more than altruism...debt relief is aimed at altering the social climates that support the spread of extremism and terror all over the third world without altering the global economic balance of power...ongoing campaign for debt relief must be articulated from the perspective of its moral economy. Much of those debts are odious because they were incurred by dictatorships which were unrepresentative of the masses now groaning under the debt burden...debt relief must be accompanied by the institution of justice in the global economic system. The pious hypocrisy of the west in championing free markets in Africa while maintaining subsidies and guarding its own markets strategically is obvious...The willingness of so many western countries and banks to receive stolen funds is as criminal as the original theft itself. The debt issue should be tied to the repatriation of Africa's stolen wealth that has been piling up in foreign vaults...African nations must look inward and tackle decisively the culture of graft that is destroying governance and impoverishing their people. It would be profound to see past leaders and government operatives being put on trial and convicted for economic crimes, theft and embezzlement..."
Via Pambazuka News