At a recent international biofuels conference1 held in Cape Town a British businessman stood up and declared, “Sub-Saharan Africa has the potential to be the middle-East of biofuels.”
He bases his claim on soil analysis which demonstrates that less than 20% of some of the best agricultural land in the world is currently under plough. And all this land lies in a broad swathe across Angola, Zimbabwe, Malawi, , Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania and Mozambique. Most of the agricultural land in South Africa is already farmed but the country, with its deep-water ports and good infrastructure, would be a perfect gateway for agricultural manufactures to the rest of the world.
Instead of accepting this information gleefully and rushing off to grant investors concessions to set up biofuel farms, the Minister of Energy from Malawi said, “We don’t understand this technology. Please can you donate funds to help us?” Sounding less like a savvy business environment and more like a basket-case. This statement would be echoed, one way or another, by other African leaders during the event.
The image of Africa as some sort of delinquent and addled idiot-savant is epitomised in an advert from the Kamitei Foundation,2 a development organisation specialising in education in rural Tanzania: “We have riches but we’re too stupid to use them on our own. Please come do it for us.”
The South African government is attempting to go it alone but have adopted completely the other extreme. They refuse international assistance to the point of making investment almost impossible. The same British businessman who was so excited about the potential of Africa was less than excited about South Africa. “I am very impressed with Mozambique and will definitely be investing there,” he said to me. “But South Africa is impossible. Full of businessmen and politicians who talk big and then stand in the way doing nothing but demand hand-outs.”
It is, therefore, with a great degree of optimism that I observe the actions of the new Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-Moon, former foreign minister to the Republic of Korea. He has expressed outrage at events in Darfur and a vigorous interest in Africa. South Korea has gone from third-world kleptocracy to first-world Asian Tiger in only a generation. He is unlikely to view the mewling pleas for continual aid from Africa with any sympathy. After all, South Korea has become wildly successful without massive foreign aid, but with lots of investment.
Whatever its failings, the United Nations is still the best hope for international cooperation and Africa is the world’s difficult child that just doesn’t seem able to kick some vile habits.
I hope that Ban is able to bring a little tough-love to bear on this troubled continent.
1 Note that the Cape Argus articles linked on the conference page were written by Gavin Chait of Whythawk Ratings 2 Whythawk has not rated Kamitei and so expresses no opinion on the effectiveness of this organisation
Back in 1997, as a young engineering student, I conducted a cost-benefit analysis on the Freeplay Wind-up Radio, then in early release. It was being pitched as a low-cost way to bring the wonders of telecommunications and information to the poor masses of the developing world; after all, it didn’t need batteries to run and that must make it significantly cheaper.
Clearly, the thinking went, it is this lack of cheap information which is holding up development.
A wind-up radio retails for $ 90. You can get a cheap Chinese radio and PM 9 battery (which will last about six months) for about $ 8. In other words, you’d need to use that wind-up radio for ten years before it starts paying for itself ... and I’m not sure they last that long. Freeplay has subsequently marketed the radio as a novelty gift item and emergency radio in case of power failures … in rich countries.
Negroponte and the $ 100 laptop
Now we have the $ 100 laptop from Nicholas Negroponte and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). I admire and applaud the work that has gone in to producing a useable and versatile machine that can be produced for such a low price. As an engineering exercise it is awesome.
As a development exercise the whole project is on much shakier ground. The first point to consider is that there are already computers available in developing countries that cost significantly less than $ 100. Bridgeport Technical Services, based in Cape Town, has a PII entry-level desktop on offer for $ 45. Sure, not a brilliant computer if you’re used to the latest and greatest, but certainly very affordable and much better than the Intel 286 which was my first PC in 1991. And I managed to get a science degree using that one.
The computers are hand-me-downs but, if charities can distribute second-hand clothes to developing countries, I can’t imagine that anyone would turn up their nose at a used pc. We have bought several for the office and are extremely happy with them.
Negroponte claims: “Desktops are cheaper, but mobility is important, especially with regard to taking the computer home at night. Kids in the developing world need the newest technology, especially really rugged hardware and innovative software.”
He doesn’t explain why this is so other than to add the following: “In one Cambodian village where we have been working, there is no electricity, thus the laptop is, among other things, the brightest light source in the home.”
That has to count as probably the silliest reason in the world to waste all this time and effort producing a $ 100 laptop. There are many technological breakthroughs in the $ 100 laptop that I hope will be introduced into commercial mainstream notebooks – using them as a light-bulb isn’t high on my list.
There is also the question of moral hazard, that niggling thing that economists worry about. If you give your child a mobile-phone and they know you’ll simply replace it without comment if it disappears I can guarantee that they’ll lose it pretty quickly (especially if they see an upgrade they prefer). Negroponte says of his freely distributed laptop: “There are many reasons it is important for a child to own something - like a football, doll, or book - not the least of which being that these belongings will be well-maintained through love and care.”
Negroponte’s naïve faith in humanity extends to the governments he expects will distribute these computers “like textbooks”. These are the same governments who fail to distribute textbooks as well.
It has been remarked in previous posts that education is of critical importance to development but it can, and does, take place effectively without technology. As Hernando de Soto expressed in the seminal “The Mystery of Capital”, plenty of countries got rich without the benefit of any technology at all.
The $ 100 laptop sounds like a bright engineering idea in search of a reason to exist.
Oprah Winfrey has just opened a school for girls in South Africa. The Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy is based in Meyerton, Gauteng and offers 150 “academically talented girls an opportunity to develop their full intellectual, social, and leadership potential.”
Even given the spurious claim that leadership is something that can be painted on, the academy is an expensive way to achieve its objectives. The most expensive private schools in the country charge around $ 6 900 per year for tuition and produce internationally sought-after graduates. The majority charge only $ 1 150 per year. The Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy charges $ 7 500 a year – the entire fee paid for by Oprah Winfrey’s Foundation.
This is not to single out Oprah Winfrey. There are many schools operating in this way in South Africa. The CIDA City Campus in Johannesburg offers a "free" business degree to its students. It is difficult to assess how much tuition costs when so much is donated (including their entire $ 14 million building, and all the teaching) but you can sponsor one of their 2 000 learners for $ 1 150 a year. The total cost runs into significantly more than this.
Michael Strong, of FLOW, writes that Walmart has, by the simple expedient of purchasing $ 23 billion of goods a year from China, assisted 460 000 Chinese a year out of poverty through jobs created in factories dedicated to supplying Walmart.
He cites the following: “Ashoka, the highly regarded social entrepreneurship organisation certified as among the "Best in America" charities, highlights among its hundreds of projects a worker's cooperative in Brazil that is growing rapidly: each member contracts individually with Coopa-Roca, but the collective meets weekly. Membership in the cooperative grew from eight members in 1982 to 16 in 2000, and has surged to 70 steady members today.”
Strong concludes by asking, “Is it heroic to raise one person up out of poverty each month, but merely a statistic to raise up a million?”
The rush to set up specialised teaching facilities in developing countries seems more about personal visions and dreams than about the real requirements of development. Leadership is not something that can be taught. It is not a technical skill. It is something that is earned through fire and experience.
Education is not an outcome, it is a process. The most important skill learned through education is an ability to learn. South Africa has adequate private schools and universities.
Walmart did not create all those jobs by providing a requirement for high-level technical skills at one business, but for thousands of suppliers at thousands of different low-level businesses.
It is much cheaper to send a child to an existing school or university than it is to build and staff a new one. There is also the terrible attraction that the founders have of meddling in their students’ education and attempting to fill their heads with all the hopes and aspirations they have for that society rather than allowing the child to find their own interests and dreams.
In CIDA's case the dream of the founders was to create a society based on transcendental meditation. Two years ago the students rose up in rebellion against the imposition on their time and the pseudo-religious overtones it was taking on. One of the major sponsors, KPMG, became so concerned about what was happening that they withdrew their sponsorship. That was the year that the first crop of students were due to graduate. None did. The conflict died down but suspicions still linger.
In the case of charitable educational institutions the focus becomes more about the charity rather than the education. Let's admit it, it costs money to get a good education and we should not be embarrassed to admit it. If both CIDA and Oprah’s Leadership Academy were really about the needs of the children rather than about the marketing and idealism of their founders then they would be low-profile low-cost bursary schemes in which the students got to choose their own direction and their own beliefs.
The ability to make free choices about what to learn and where will teach far more than the imposition of a faux-free education filled with pseudo dreams.
At a recent 
”, plenty of countries got rich without the benefit of any technology at all.
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