Fake Blog Post

This is not an update! Even though I owe you, gentle readers, many. Baal ma! (Sorry). I'm having a bad day, though, with some computer problems and an uncertain prognosis for the Maids Literacy class I was helping out with. Still, I always find something interesting in the Times to take my mind off it.

Op-Ed Column, "Rebranding Africa", by Bono

Interesting article. I'm excited that Obama will be in West Africa, even though he won't be in Senegal. Here is the comment I posted to the article:

Dakar, Senegal
July 10th, 2009
1:41 pm
I am an American college student interning for the summer in Dakar, Senegal. It is my second trip to Senegal, which is the only place I have traveled within the continent of Africa. Reading over the article and the comments, a few things struck me.

I, too, was wary of the title of the article, and the concept of "branding" and "re-branding". However, I don't disagree with Bono on any one point. He is not suggesting that it is a good idea for Americans to make generalizations about Africa - only that since the "Western" population seems to make so many generalizations anyway, we might as well make them well-rounded generalizations. I agree with the people above who have remarked on the concept of speaking about Africa as though it were one country and not a diverse continent with many countries and a multitude of both problems and progress. Educating Americans, among others, about the positive happenings in African nations like Ghana will help lead to a further understanding of how different each nation is, and the diverse issues each state needs to address.

Second, the concepts of "aid" and "development" are often tossed around, especially when we talk about U.S. financing programs in "developing" countries. Dambisa Moyo has recently received a lot of attention for her book, Dead Aid, which criticizes, I believe, American foreign/economic policy towards Africa. Although Moyo comes on a bit strong, I think that an increased effort must be made to scrutinize where American money is actually going. When we supply mosquito nets, are we driving a local pharmacy that sells them out of business? Is the money ending up in the hands of corrupt local officials? Are NGOs starting well-intentioned programs that will founder if the NGO loses interest or funding? I have seen villages where NGOs had introduced solar panels - but once the NGOs folded a few years later, the villagers had no way to get broken solar panels fixed, or update their technology. We need to make sure that economic aid is creating local jobs, sustainable profits, and environmentally friendly business practices.

Lastly, full disclosure: I am interning for a micro-finance organization. While the micro-credit initiatives here in Senegal are not perfect, I have seen many things that give me hope for the future. Kiva.org and their local affiliates are doing an amazing job of making it easy to fund entrepreneurs all over the world with the click of a mouse.

I hope that President Obama makes mention of micro-credit initiatives in his speech, and talks about the need for bottom-up development. We, as Americans, can throw money at the worlds problems all we want (and, sometimes, I think we should) but the real "development" is going to come from within the countries, and the continent. The keys to this, IMHO, are education and empowering women. (I'd love to be a fly on the wall if Bono and Nick Kristof ever get to talking about those subjects!)

/rant&ramble. Hope to see more columns like this in the future. Let's not wait for celebrity guest columnists to see articles about these topics!