Category Archives: Africa

Click over to The ONE Campaign and tell President Bush and the other seven G8 leaders the time has come to put muscle behind the programs to bring the poorest nations out of their misery.

My view is captured well by the old aphorism about teaching a man to fish rather than handing over the fish. Plenty of gifts have been given already but have generally disappeared into a tangle of corrupt pockets or flowed back into Western accounts through purposely overpriced public works contracts.

The current situation is so dire, though, that the rest of us need to do both. Otherwise in fairly short order there won’t be anyone left to teach. The recent cancellation of $18 billion of past loans was a positive step but only a good start.

President Bush speaks often and loudly of the need for all nations to become real democracies (off topic: as he moves the USA away from it) and this to me is the key. The residents of the poorest nations, in Africa, Asia and elsewhere, are blocked from developing more often because of local elites content with their own status and power.

So part of the G8 muscle needs to be behind efforts to remove the dictators, juntas and tribal warriors who rape, kill and imprison. Too often the drive for democracy is ignored because such regimes (smartly) offer short term benefits.

Pakistan is a perfect example: superficially an ally in the war on terror, in reality providing cover for Osama bin Laden, hiding nuclear proliferator AQ Khan, and supporting continuing Kashmiri terrorist groups. Sudan is another, as NY Times columnist Bob Herbert has detailed over the last few years, the central government blatantly dithering as Darfur is destroyed and the Chinese become the latest foreign resource exploiters.

Raise your voice. Nobody else is going to make the future you want for you.