Desire Lines

From Wikipedia:

A desire path (also known as a desire line or social trail) is a path developed by erosion caused by animal or human footfall. The path usually represents the shortest or most easily navigated route between an origin and destination. The width and amount of erosion of the line represents the amount of demand. The term was coined by Gaston Bachelard in his book The Poetics of Space.[1] Desire paths can usually be found as shortcuts where constructed pathways take a circuitous route.

They are manifested on the surface of the earth in certain cases, e.g., as dirt pathways created by people walking through a field, when the original movement by individuals helps clear a path, thereby encouraging more travel. Explorers may tread a path through foliage or grass, leaving a trail "of least resistance" for followers.

The lines may be seen along an unpaved road shoulder or some other unpaved natural surface. The paths take on an organically grown appearance by being unbiased toward existing constructed routes. These are almost always the most direct and the shortest routes between two points, and may later be surfaced. Many streets in older cities began as desire lines, which evolved over the decades or centuries into the modern streets of today.

A short piece in the New York Times entitled "Ploughing Detroit into Farmland" points to this nice post from Sweet Juniper that explicates the emerging desire lines around the vacant urban landscape of Detroit and which can be seen in the photo above, also from Sweet Juniper.

It's not a term that I was familiar with, though one that I'm now glad I know as I've always been a bit of an intrepid desire path follower. If you've spent any time in a developing country, and Africa in particular I think, you know that desire lines are as ubiquitous as feet and you've no doubt seen vast stretches of forlorn untrodden sidewalk as everyone wisely follows their own much more efficient and no less demarcated desire paths across, around and over it. My own favorite encapsulation of the difference between desire paths and paved roads always came when asking if I was following the right road from one village to another village in the Botswana bush, the reply would inevitably be: "This is a road but it is not the road."

AIDS, Religion and Development

Via Travis Kavulla's Twitter feed I see that he has a long and worthwhile essay in the New Atlantis touching on one of my favorite talking points, the necessity of recognizing the role of religious beliefs, systems and structures when engaged in development work on the African continent:

The Western public-health lobby, bred in a culture that preaches unconstrained freedom of the individual in the realm of sexual relations, is put off by talk of moralizing policies, or of any policy that de-emphasizes condoms. But it needs a dose of its own advice. It must stop imposing its own agenda on Africa. It must realize that HIV has a social dimension that must be addressed, that Africans are naturally wont to view this disease, which perversely inverts the life-giving act of sex, as a moral calamity. The sooner the donor community realizes this, and reorients its policies to fit African realities, the better.

There is much more to engage with there than I have the time to do at the moment so please give it a read.

Congo Importing Farmers

It's not colonialism if you are invited, right?  (Or, is it the refusal to leave when asked?)  As the article points out there are problems with this plan but it seems potentially more desirable (with the possibility for greater long term local returns) than the wholesale leasing of huge tracts of arable land to sovereign states.

Spamming the White Man's Burden

Andy Baio documents the latest development in 419 spam with the receipt of this email:

From: jenifergoodluck (Your Big Fool)
Reply-to: jenifer.dagba@yahoo.com
Date: Mon, May 4, 2009 at 6:11 AM
Subject: You Owe Me

Since you haven't fallen for my stupid scam letter let me go ahead and be up front with you.

Because I am a Nigerian, you owe me something. The fact that my decadent forefathers sold their neighbors and relatives into slavery means that you owe me a lot of money, especially if you are white. I will accept $1000 USD from you per month for the next 12 months. That will settle your debt towards me that was created by our forefathers.

Moreover, it is imperative that you begin to acknowledge my inherited right to steal and be corrupt without oppression from anybody's legal system. I am entitled to instant riches at the expense of everyone outside West Africa.

This starts with you, my friend, so start paying up now by Western Union.

Check Andy's post for the full story but his theory is that this call for colonial reparations is actually a hackers retaliation to an earlier more standard 419 email.  Another possibility is that it is viral marketing for either Western Union or Dambisa Moya.  

African Exports: Religion

The New York Times has had a couple of surprisingly good religion beat pieces in the last few weeks and today's long essay on the Nigerian based Redeemed Christian Church of God is another example.  It's a much better presentation of a genuinely relevant global religious trend than Jon Meacham's recent (and over covered) Newsweek piece on the end of "Christian America."  Pentecostalism is one of the four or five most important trends currently shaping Africa and the global south and thus, by definition (or population, if nothing else), the world.  If "Christianity" emerges as another truly global force in the future it will certainly not be an American variant but an African one.  This piece is a decent introduction and for further reading start with Philip Jenkins's The Next Christianity and The New Faces of Christianity.

That's What She Said: Pope Edition

William Easterly has already said everything that I wanted to say about the Pope's comments on condom usage in Africa.  However, here are a few semi-anecdotal asides:

1.  While living in Botswana, my base of operations, Francistown, had the highest HIV infection rate of 15-25 year olds in the world.  There was no shortage of condoms.  Nor was there a shortage of groups advocating for an A-B approach only (that's "abstain" and "be faithful" minus the C, "condom" for those not familiar with the infamous triad).  There was a shortage of groups offering real alternatives and solutions to the 15-25 year olds looking to avoid a positive diagnosis in the midst of rapidly changing cultural and social norms that had the deck stacked against them.  In a culture where women have few if any sexual rights how do you ask a man to put on a condom?  What's worse - the beating that is sure to follow such a request or the possibility of a disease somewhere down the road?

2.  Regardless of where you land on the condom argument the sad truth is that the Pope's statement probably hurt women and other sexually marginalized populations the most as they are the only ones who probably could have benefitted from a more nuanced message from the pontiff.

3.  Somewhere I have a photo I took of a group of boys playing soccer with a ball made entirely of condoms (thrown out by a clinic after they "expired").  Did I mention there were a lot of condoms around?

4.  The problem in my little slice of the world at that time was not condom usage.  It was a lot of things - a healthcare infrastructure scrambling to play catch up with relatively limited resources, finding an effective medium through which to educate a culture that never publicly discussed sexuality about the dangers of sexual intercourse, replacing the traditional sexual initiation/education model that rapid urbanization was demolishing, the necessity of economic transience, etc., etc., etc. -  and none of them were very effectively solved by the simple math of "do I or do I not use this piece of latex."

5.  Balloons.  You see a lot of condom balloons knocking about as well.

6.  To quote the Pope, HIV/AIDS is "a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems." Nor can it be overcome by the church alone, which even aggravates the problem.  One of the greatest tragedies of my time in Botswana was seeing how unwilling churches and secular NGO's were to work together and realizing how many instances there were where they could have been incredibly effective partners.  The lack of imagination and basic trust from both sides in the face of an unfolding epidemic was depressing to see.  In many places on the continent that has changed some, but not enough.

7.  Am I the only one that thinks the above sentence from the Pope would have been a good time for someone in the crowd to shout "That's what she said."  And if so, does that make me a bad person?

Gates @ TED

Video for the much talked about Gates presentation at TED is now available.  I can't help but like the guy and even if you don't agree with his methodology you've got to respect his passion and the considerable footprint he has in the development world.

I also noticed via the TED blog that Hans Rosling presented again this year and it sounds like he utilized Gapminder's recently updated HIV/AIDS data sets to do so, I love his presentations so I'll be keeping an eye out for it and hopefully he swallows another sword. 

Links: Food and Ag Edition

Lots going on around the UN's meeting in Madrid on global food security:

1.  Giving a cow a name increases her annual milk yield by almost 500 pints.  This is pretty cool but my guess would be that dairy farmers who call their cows by name and "treat them as family" are the types of farmers who are also taking greater care in other matters more central to an increase in milk production, if those were controlled for I hazard the increase would disappear.  But I like this bit:

Dr Douglas added: "Our data suggests that on the whole UK dairy farmers regard their cows as intelligent beings capable of experiencing a range of emotions."

2.  The Feeding of the Nine Billion.  A summary post by Alex Evans on the release of his excellent year long study report (pdf) of the same name looking at global food prices and scarcity.  Definitely worth a download and read.  I especially like this bit from the executive summary on the need for a 21st-century Green Revolution (emphasis mine):

Invest in a 21st-century Green Revolution. The 20th-century Green Revolution achieved astonishing yield increases. Now, a 21st-century equivalent is needed – one that not only increases yields, but that also moves from an agricultural model that is input-intensive (in water, fertilizer, pesticide and energy) to one that is knowledge-intensive. Genetically modified crops may have a role, but ecologically integrated approaches – such as integrated pest management, minimum tillage, drip irrigation and integrated soil fertility management – often score higher in terms of resilience and equitability, as they put power in the hands of farmers rather than seed companies. Additional funds for public research and development are also vital: the budget of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research has fallen by 50% over the last 15 years, for example.

3.  Getting fat in rural America.  Blog for Rural America points to the release of the Center for Rural Affairs' new report Nutrition, Physical Activity and Obesity in Rural America (pdf) - also worth a read.

4.  When banks manage the food crisis - from the Food First Institute.

5.  Tom Philpott over at Grist has some thoughts on the Gates Foundation's plans to boost food production in Africa as outlined in their annual letter.

6.  Farmers don't use much water.

7.  Reason on agricultural subsidies, a topic that rarely comes up outside of Farm Bill discussion.

8.  Smashed chickpea salad.

Global Soil Maps

Global Soil Maps:  of particular interest to those exploring issues relating to agriculture, climate and sustainability but with a wide variety of maps that could be used for more general purposes.  

It comes to my attention as a number of global development heavyweights are investing in a project to more thoroughly map the (often) depleted soils of Africa.  Though I don't quite share this level of optimism:  

"The digital soil map has brought soil science to the 21st century," he said. "At the push of a button, you have answers on soil erosion, where to farm and what crops to grow on what type of soils."

it should prove useful.  Any farmer worth their salt, or 6'th grade science student for that matter, will tell you it does little good to plant crops in soils that don't have the fertility necessary to bring them to maturity, but then again, any farmer worth their salt won't need a digital soil map to tell them where and what to plant.  It's certainly good information to have, especially on the meta level, but I've never spoken to a farmer on any continent who didn't already know what and where to plant.  Which isn't to say that there aren't new technologies which might help increase yields, there almost always are, but it is to acknowledge that most farmers on the African continent farm the way they do out of necessity, i.e. they want to feed their family today and tomorrow will worry about itself.  

(via)

Urban Hunger in Africa

If I remember correctly, somewhere around 40% of Africa's population live in urban areas, a number that was in the low teens circa 1950. So it's no surprise that the U.N. is struggling to find solutions for the rising problem of urban hunger across the continent and in doing so finding that it's a different beast altogether from the rural hunger that the international development industry has principally been "designed" to combat:

Escalating hunger in African cities is forcing aid agencies accustomed to tackling food shortages in rural areas to scramble for strategies to address the more complex hunger problems in sprawling slums.

The United Nations World Food Program, the world's largest food-aid group, has plenty of experience trucking food into rural Africa, responding to shortages sparked by drought, famine and war. But in urban areas -- where, despite widespread poverty, hunger wasn't a significant issue until recently -- the hurdles are different.

In the vast and crowded slums, with many unnamed streets and dwellings without running water or electricity, it is difficult to identify who's most in need of help. Simply handing out food can disrupt cities' informal markets, cutting into the livelihoods of those who earn a few dollars each day selling peanuts or fresh fish, or of small farmers who haul their produce to the city.

As Bill Easterly is fond of saying, poverty is more than a technical engineering problem that is simply waiting for the right answer to come along. Effective ground level solutions have to find ways to knit together the socio-cultural fabric that has been torn apart by poverty and hunger, unfortunately that is a really hard task to accomplish if the needed threads have been left behind in the village.

In rural areas, aid groups can rely on the communities to help single out the neediest people and quickly distribute aid. That's more difficult in cities, where more nuanced surveys are needed to find the most vulnerable.

One suggestion, Ms. Sheeran, might be to call the church.

Conversion as a Bridge to Development?

Here's the title and byline from Matthew Parris's current piece in the Times Online:

As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God

Missionaries, not aid money, are the solution to Africa's biggest problem - the crushing passivity of the people's mindset.

Aside: It's probably no fault of Parris, as titles and summaries are usually the provence of editors, but there is plenty to quibble with in those first thirty words or so before we even get to the article itself, something of an inauspicious beginning. Not the least of which is to bemoan yet another occurrence of run of the mill adult behavior somehow being deemed worthy of laudatory attention ("Cat says, 'Dogs not that bad, really!'"). The ability to see both sides of an issue and muster up the intellectual imagination necessary to conceive of how someone approaching said issue might arrive at a different conclusion, given their own unique starting point, was at some point in the past not a feat of staggering genius but a minor point of good manners. Alas, that and the hills requiring us to walk up them both ways in the snow appear to be no more and so matters of intellectual civility are reduced to little more than a writers conceit. Bah, bring me my lap blanket!

However, even though I appear to be on the other side of the spectrum when it comes to the matter of religious faith, I'm not sure that we are interpreting the cause and effect of religious involvement, in this case a decidedly Christian faith, in a similar fashion. Since I'm just re-entering the digital world after a bit of a holiday fast here are a couple of random, disjointed, very inside-baseball thoughts drawn from my own time working with faith based groups on the African continent:

1. Africa has "had God" for quite a while now. Depending on your reading of history the African church has been around since the first century, Mark the evangelist is traditionally thought to have founded the Coptic Church in Alexandria between 40-50 AD. So, either God's not doing that great a job or there is more going on across Africa than a dearth of missionaries (a point I'm sure Parris wouldn't argue). I'm actually a fan of the reading of history which gives the Christian faith a place of importance in the cultivation, development and spread of the best of our modern society (and admittedly a not infrequent tool used to decimate some of the worst) but it did so amidst the seedbed of more than a few other important factors, many of which Africa lacks. Faith, Africa has in spades.

Aside: If you're curious about the historical importance of Christian thought that has taken place on the African continent, Thomas Oden released a good book at the beginning of this year entitled How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind.

2. I can't help but hear my neo-colonialism bells ringing when I read Parris's article - no accusation there, just my own reading. Admittedly, they are occasionally tuned a little too finely but when Parris recounts returning to his boyhood home after being away for 45 years and comes away impressed by the Africans who have thrown off the bondages of traditionalism, be they religious or communal, and embraced the well spoken niceties of western European conventions it is hard for me to hear him saying anything other than, "I like the Africans who are more like me and less like their uncles."

3. Parris attributes this escape from the "crushing passivity" of the African mindset to Christian conversion. Undoubtedly, there's some merit to that claim as exposure to the Christian faith has traditionally meant exposure to Europeans and Americans (Aside: this is increasingly not the case however, as the majority of Christian "evangelism" taking place on the African continent is now African to African.) and this exposure has brought along with it not only a new found faith but a variety of invaluable social capital that might push them ahead of their more traditional neighbors. The same thing happens to individuals in developing countries who find work with NGO's. Their English gets better, even if passively so they are more aware of both the hurdles and opportunities for bettering themselves and again, by association if nothing else, they are better equipped to avoid the former and embrace the latter. In a developing context where a weeks delay in the rainfall can be the difference between famine and plenty, how much more meaningful could a relationship with a wealthy, accommodating Westerner be in terms of incremental change?

4. Missionaries frequent the lobbies of expensive hotels quite a bit. Which is not to say that they do not live lives of spartan sacrifice in relation to what they may have left behind in their native lands and in service to their calling; but it is simply to acknowledge that they too attend conferences and discuss strategy, take the occasional vacation, entertain a donor here and there, and are no more ignorant of the exchange rate than their NGO counterparts.

5. I don't think "tribal value systems" should be beyond critique either but neither do I think that the Christian gospel is inherently destructive to traditional cultures. There is no denying that in the hands of the over zealous it has often been so, as they introduced not only the gospel message but their own culturally conditioned interpretation of the gospel as being both singular and normative, but at its heart the gospel is a message of redemption and reconciliation for both individuals and cultures.

Aside: One valid critique of Christianity in Africa by Christian African academics is that its failure to move beyond superficial transformation in many African cultures is a result of its failure to adapt itself to what Parris bemoans as the "rural-traditional mindset" (or rather re-adapt, since it is hard to read the biblical narrative as anything other than speaking to and out of a "rural-traditional mindset"). They claim that an individualistic, community eschewing faith (which it pains me to say has been the most prevalently espoused Western interpretation) is not what Africa needs, but a faith that redeems the strength of community and enables the community to move beyond the corrupt, monopolies of individuals who have learned to manipulate the strengths of community against itself.

6. A final quibble:

Christianity, post-Reformation and post-Luther, with its teaching of a direct, personal, two-way link between the individual and God, unmediated by the collective, and unsubordinate to any other human being, smashes straight through the philosphical/spiritual framework I've just described. It offers something to hold on to to those anxious to cast off a crushing tribal groupthink. That is why and how it liberates.

Since Parris is a self-professed atheist he can be excused for the over simplification, but that isn't Christianity, it's not the gospel, or at least it's not all of it. As I mentioned above, the heart of the gospel is redemption and reconciliation but it's not simply a restoration of the link between God and humanity - it is certainly that, but it is also the reconciliation of humanity to others, to creation and to itself. Christianity does not call us out of the tribe, out of community, but it calls us into "true" community. The faith described by Parris above will certainly position Africa to be a continent of independent, self-interested, potential consumer-capitalists but I don't think it will make them overly Christian or developed.

The bulk of Parris's article is interesting if problematic in places - though if taken to its logical conclusion I fear it would be bad for both religion and development on the African continent. I tend to agree with the overall gist of his premise - that there is something both good and necessary, both affecting and effective, inherent in the faith based work that takes place across the developing world, and the African continent in particular. As I've said before, (here, here and here for starters) I think that religion can (and must) be one of the key bridges to continued development success when operating in cultures as intrinsically religious as those found throughout much of Africa. To ignore religion is to do more than fail to acknowledge the elephant in the room it is to fail to arrive at the house all together. More could be said but this has gone on far too long already, apologies.

Festus for the rest of us

Congrats to Festus Mogae for winning this years Mo Ibrahim Prize.

Aya of Yop City

I mentioned the graphic novel Aya a while back and it's nice to see that Marguerite Abouet has penned another volume to be released by Drawn and Quarterly.  

Vulture has an excerpt.

When It Hurts So Bad, Why's It Feel So Good?

One of the many things that has gotten set aside in the last few weeks amidst the business of moving to a new state and city was a post on Adrian Wood's piece in the Financial Times entitled, How Donors Should Cap Aid in Africa.  Here's the gist:

Ministers from developed and developing countries are gathered this week in Accra, Ghana’s capital, for the latest high-level forum on aid effectiveness. Learning from past successes and failures, reformers are pressing for more ownership by developing countries of aid relationships, more predictability of aid flows and less fragment ation of aid delivery. This agenda is important. If implemented, these reforms would give the taxpayers of rich countries better value for money and increase the benefits of aid to people in poor ones. Aid cannot on its own cause development, but if properly delivered and well used it can be enormously beneficial.

However, one can have too much of a good thing. Some developing countries, most of them in Africa, have had high levels of aid dependence – in excess of 10 per cent of gross domestic product, or half of government spending – for decades. It is questionable whether this has been helpful.

There are various reasons to be concerned about high aid dependence, but the most worrying is the undermining of good governance by distortion of political accountability. Governments that are highly dependent on aid pay too much attention to donors and too little to their citizens. This might not matter if the interests of citizens and donors were identical. But all donors have some non-developmental motives and, even when they seek to promote development, they have their own priorities. The result is confused and shifting policies, volatile aid and spending and, as a result, slower growth.

I therefore propose that donors collectively set an upper limit on the amount of aid they give to any developing country. This limit should be 50 per cent of the amount of tax revenue that the aid-receiving government raises from its own citizens, by non-coercive means and excluding revenue from oil and minerals.

This would keep the governments of non-mineral countries dependent for revenue mainly on their citizens, and thus give them incentives to pay attention mainly to what citizens want, not donors. It would also encourage governments to raise more taxes from their citizens, since every extra dollar of tax raised would attract a matching increase of 50 cents of aid.

Thankfully, the folks at the Center for Global Development blog are keeping an eye on things and they have been following an apparently on-going email conversation concerning Wood's idea amongst a group of leading development minds and are posting excerpts along the way as well as offering their own good commentary - worth keeping an eye on.  I especially appreciated this sentence and wish I heard it more often and from more directions:

"What's needed is an approach to aid that helps, indeed forces donors, to shift accountability of recipient governments away from donors and back to citizens -- allowing for the feedback governments need from their own taxpayers."  

PS - Title inspiration.

Africa.Alltop

Nice to see Africa getting some lovin' from news aggregation site Alltop.  Pointer and backstory from Erik Hersman.

Graphics: Presidency for Dummies (African Edition)

Via Emeka Okafor:

I'll leave it to your imagination to create similar charts for your own country of residence.

Zimbabwe, the Olympics and Unintended Consequences

Somehow I missed this aspect of the run up to the ongoing talks between Zimbabwe's Morgan Tsvangirai and Mugabe:   

One government insider said: "The signing of the memorandum of understanding between Mugabe and Tsvangirai may appear to be a triumph for South African diplomacy under Mr Mbeki, but the power behind the curtain is China.

"China exerted diplomatic pressure on Harare for the protection of their own interests in this country, given the threat and risks of their economic investments under a new government. This explains the sudden change of heart by Mugabe. This is all choreographed."

The Chinese ambassador to Zimbabwe is understood to have told Zimbabwean foreign affairs officials in Harare that his government expects Mr Mugabe's administration to "behave" and help dampen international outrage over the recent elections.

One diplomatic source said: "Mugabe was told in clear terms by his Chinese friends that he has to behave and act in a way that will silence the international community.

China does not want a situation in which the Olympics will be snubbed.

There has been plenty written on China's involvement in Africa of late so I won't belabor that point but I will point again to this list of Top 10 Misconceptions About Chinese Investment in Africa.  Here is #4:

China will always help African leaders, including those with poor human rights records. China immediately distanced itself when the International Criminal Court indicted Slobodan Milosevic of crimes against humanity despite its previous promises of supporting the Serbian leader at all costs. In Africa, the Chinese government has already broken its promise of non-interference in the cases of Angola and Sudan when it “encouraged” leaders to change their policies with an eye towards fulfilling international trade agreements and ceasing the targeting of civilians. Moreover, China did not use its veto power to stop the ICC from investigating the crimes in Darfur.

Aside: As usual Chris Blattman is asking very smart questions that no one else is asking, this time in regards to the sustainability of hit and run power sharing agreements.

A Purpose Driven Africa?

I never know what to say about articles like this one from USA Today entitled, "America's finding purpose in hopes for Africa's future," and for that reason I usually say nothing. But this one dovetails closely enough with some other things that I've been thinking through and dealing with - including looking for a new job - that I thought I would throw a few thoughts into the wind.

For starters I'm tired of being cynical. I'm really making an effort, although it's hard to tell at times, to shed the ironic cynicism that marks so much of how myself and my peers view, comment on and relate to the world. It's not profitable, it's not clever and after a while you actually start to feel as shallow and stretched thin as you sound. Not that I'm embracing naivety, and there are certainly worse things to be than naive, it's just that I want to be more sincere, more present, more charitable and I don't want to assume that there is anything special about me in doing so. Instead I want to assume that the best of me is encountering the best of you, the best of whatever, and naive or not it usually becomes quickly apparent whether or not that is true. At some point the benefit of the doubt fell out of vogue but I'm trying to bring it back - if JT can bring sexy back why can't I do the same for sincerity.

So, all that introspection to say that there is plenty of fodder for cynicism in this article, and a number of cringe worthy statements which I will try to treat charitably. Here are a few thoughhts:

1. It's a run of the mill story looking at the movement among American's to invest themselves in the "obvious solutions" to Africa's problems. Broadly, from a sociological standpoint, I'm really interested in this movement. How new is it? Who's involved in it - from my experience it tends to be limited to middle to upper-middle class WASP's (no coincidence that this demographic makes up the bulk of Warren's congregation) and the usual disenchanted twenty-somethings - is it broader than that? Are there really more people involved in this type of charitable work than before or has globalization simply moved more of it abroad like everything else and therefore it's a bigger story?

2. Religion matters. I've said this before, although not very coherently - here and here. It is not coincidental that the lens through which this movement is viewed is the work of Rick Warren's Saddleback Church. Religion as an on the ground reality that must be factored into development strategies and as a motivation for those involving themselves in relief and development work does not get the attention that it needs from the development biz. Conversely, those like Warren, involving themselves in relief and development work often do not draw heavily enough upon the experience and expertise of those who have devoted themselves to the study and practice of that work. If you can get McCain and Obama on the same stage in your church, you have no excuse for not getting the best advise you can find in terms of planning and methodology. And maybe they are, I don't know who is running the P.E.A.C.E. program now so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt but there are a few statements in the article that make me worry.

3. As an aside, the criticism that Warren and company should be focused on doing more "at home" is a red herring. For starters, their local ministries out number their global programs. Second, I'm not sure people understand the scale that this church is operating on. This isn't your local parish church, this is a small city of 30,000 people. What if the Red Cross only operated charitably in America, wouldn't we wonder why they were being so stingy with their resources. Saddleback is the Red Cross of the American religious landscape, there would be something wrong if they were not working globally. As an aside within an aside, this is one of the few arguments in favor of the megachurch model that I find relevant, i.e. that they are resource rich enough to involve themselves in worthwhile projects that would otherwise be neglected.

4. The relationship between motivation and methodology. I know these people. Not personally, I've been to Warren's church and met him in an academic setting - we share an alma mater, but I know people like these people. And I like them. The way they express their faith, the life choices they have made, their politics - all of this and more I certainly have quibbles with but they tend to be genuinely good people in the sense that even the most cynical of us understand that to mean. So, when Tom Wheeler says he feels called to pour sidewalks in Kigali and in that way that he will be serving the nation of Rwanda and somehow contributing a small piece to moving it in the direction of stability, peace and prosperity I tend to believe him. Cities need sidewalks and I've never been to Kigali so I don't know how high up on the priority list they really are but at least he's a civil engineer with a specialized skill from Orange County willing to use it in the service of someone other than Walt Disney. I have trouble finding fault in him for that. I have trouble finding fault in someone who feels like they can make the world a better place. I have trouble chastising someone who feels like a smooth piece of concrete with one less pothole for an overburdened mother to watch out for on her way home is a good thing. Combining religious zeal with sound, sustainable development is hard for lots of reasons and there aren't a lot of good models out there to draw on but I think it can be done. Achieving a sustainable good for a developing country does not require a detached bureaucratic elitism.

However, there are certainly questions of methodology that need to raised. Who is profiting from this work? Are jobs being created for local laborers or are they being undercut? How will it be sustained? Is there a priority need for new sidewalks in Kigali? Again, maybe these questions and more are being asked but it is worth noting that noble motives do not lead to sound methodology any more than sound methodology engenders right motivation. All the more reason for there to be conversations and cooperation between secular and faith-based NGO's, who often fall within one camp of the other.

5. I'm sorry we didn't hear from more Rwandan voices in this piece, and I'm sorry that this is often the case in such instances - I hope it is not the case with the work that Warren is doing. In light of the long term investment that Saddleback is making in Rwanda I would hope that much of the leadership of those endeavors is in the hands of Rwandans. Again, I'm extending the benefit of the doubt here and hoping this is the case, but the truth of the matter is that it needs to be the case.

6. I would like to see more modesty from religious groups involved in relief and development work. This may be another way of saying I would like to see more realism, more admission of the harsh realities of fundamentally changing the structures that entrench poverty, hunger and war into the fabric of a society. On the one hand those who do not come from a religious background find this understandably naive. Even I, who come from a similar evangelical protestant background cringe when I read statements from Warren like, "within a few decades, Rwanda could be an oasis of prosperity — "the next Singapore." I know that the idea is not original to Warren, but there are so many problems with that statement - simple geography for one - that I've been trying to ignore it, and hopefully someone will pull Warren aside and ask him to take it out of his talking points. The more "faith-based" language is also understandably troubling:

About 100,000 copies of The Purpose Driven Life in the Rwandan dialect have been handed out. Bradberry says that if Rwandans really hear the Gospel, they'll have no choice but to forgive each other.

That is tough for even me to swallow, and I have a profound faith in the transforming power of the gospel. Unfortunately, as unintentional as I'm sure it is, this is an example of a statement which reads more like a downplaying of genocide than a confidence in the redemptive power of faith. Faith-based groups involved in relief and development work need to be more modest in their claims and they need to be quicker to ask for help, advise and collaboration from experts in the field - all of which I think they can do without losing the integrity of their faith, enthusiasm, zeal and presence which positions them to be bridges for development.

Ok, There is more that could be said, but I've spent (wasted?) enough time on this, there is actual work to be done.

PS - One last thing as long as I'm dispensing unsolicited advise, on the very small chance that anyone associated with Saddleback reads this post, please read between the lines of this "throw away" sentence in the article: "The move has been a shock for his kids, Hannah, 12, and Zack, 10." Make sure your training and recruitment is taking into account just how big a "shock" it can be for those who get dragged along.

Chris Abani @ TED

UPDATE:  Yeah.  You're gonna want to watch this one.

Chris Abani's talk at TED 2008 is up, and I'm looking forward to listening to it.  I finally finished reading Graceland about a month ago and heartily recommend it to those who haven't read any of Abani's fiction or those who are looking to dip their toe into contemporary African fiction.

Top 10 Misconceptions about Chinese Investment in Africa

There's been a good bit written on the Africa/China relationship of late so the African Politics Portal put up their Top 10 Misconceptions about Chinese Investment in Africa.  Here's #7:

7. China is not a promoting a new form of colonialism on the continent. They are building roads designed to help them take minerals out of Africa; Chinese are getting privileged, under-market prices for the commodities they are shipping out from Africa (oil, timber, coal, copper, coltan, etc.); they are creating segregated neighborhoods for Chinese people only: Chinatowns have sprung up throughout the continent just like the Apartheid era white farms; they are paying Africans very low salaries and fire them when they try to object (see the cases registered in Zambia, South Africa and Angola). All these considered, we still haven’t gotten to the “new” colonialism. All the above are replicas of the policies used by the white racists 50 years ago.