Category: Africa

International Trade Helps Poor African Cotton Farmer

   Left photo shows Dennis Okelo in the grocery store that he opened with savings from growing cotton, and selling it to Dunavant.  Right photo shows a Dunavant cotton gin in Zambia.  Source of photos:  online version of the NYT article cited below.

 

(p. 1)  WHERE is he?” the old woman asks. “Where is he?”

Finding Dennis Okelo used to be easy. The old woman — and most other people in a village outside of Lira, the provincial capital of northern Uganda — went directly to Mr. Okelo’s fields. He was always in one of his “gardens,” with his slacks rolled up above his calves and a short hoe close by. Or he was seated outside of his mud-brick house under a banana tree.

Then cotton growing revived in Uganda, and Dunavant Enterprises came to town about five years ago, paying cash on delivery. After three seasons of growing cotton for Dunavant, the world’s largest privately owned cotton broker and one of the biggest family-owned agribusinesses in the United States, Mr. Okelo, who owns less than three acres and has two wives and a passel of children, had saved $300, about double his annual earnings before Dunavant started buying his cotton.

Last summer, Mr. Okelo opened a grocery store, which is where the old woman finally found him: smiling, standing behind the wooden plank that serves as his service counter in a shop the size of a utility shed. The grocery, one of two in the village, carries dried foods, cooking oil, matches, cosmetics, batteries and candy.

“Before Dunavant, no one came to help us,” says Mr. Okelo, 40, who has farmed a variety of crops in these parts for about 20 years.

. . .

(p. 7)  IN his small shop, Mr. Okelo knows nothing of global developments in the cotton trade even though he is a direct beneficiary of them. He started farming during the lean years in Uganda, after the ouster of the country’s notorious dictator, Idi Amin, when the cultivation of cotton lagged so badly that production nearly ceased and farmers treated the crop like a weed.

A few years ago, as Uganda’s production began to revive, Dunavant’s trainers taught Mr. Okelo to grow cotton in straight rows and to use a string to measure precisely the distance between rows, to maximize plantings. Mr. Okelo’s new methods are basic, but in a part of Africa where farmers work the land chiefly with a hoe — and tractors, fertilizer and pesticides are rarities — even basic improvements can lead to large gains in production.

“Cotton is the crop that gives farmers the best money,” Mr. Okelo said. “I want Dunavant to be even closer to me.”

 

For the full story, see: 

G. PASCAL ZACHARY. Out of Africa: Cotton and Cash." The New York Times, Section 3 (Sun., January 14, 2007): 1 & 7.

(Note:  ellipses added.)

 

 DunvanantWilliamCottonEntrepreur.jpg   William B. Dunavant, Jr.  Source of photo:  online version of the NYT article cited above.

 

Goverment Planning Destroys Poor People’s Chance to Develop Themselves: More on Why Africa is Poor

  The refuse from homes demolished by the Abuja city government as part of their master plan.  Source of photo:    online version of the NYT article cited below. 

 

The story below, alas, is not an isolated example.  The lessons from Hernando de Soto’s The Other Path, have still not been learned. 

 

“They don’t want to see the common man, the poor man,” said Comrade Daniel, a motorcycle taxi driver, standing in the rubble of his neighborhood.  He lost first his home and then his livelihood to a recent campaign to rid this stately capital of the blemishes of poverty.  “They only care for themselves,” he said.

Mr. Daniel and others who live on the unruly edge of this tidy city in the mossy hills of central Nigeria say that Abuja has declared war on its poorest citizens.

. . .  

. . .  the city’s master plan was ignored for years by corrupt officials who allowed illegal neighborhoods to blossom, unauthorized street markets to spread and torpedo-like motorcycle taxis, called okada, often driven by illiterate young men, to choke the streets.

Much of that expansion was sanctioned — or at least overlooked — by the rulers of the day, and deeds were obtained by many of those who have lost their homes in the recent cleanup.  Mr. Daniel, the motorcycle taxi driver, had a deed to his land, having paid about $160 for a small plot.

In 2003, a new minister was appointed to run the capital, and he declared his intention to hew strictly to the old master plan.  Many political leaders cheered the decision, fretting that Abuja, built at enormous expense as an antidote to Lagos, was headed to the same chaotic fate.

But the declaration effectively rendered much of the daily life of millions of people illegal.  As with most Africans, Nigerians deal mostly in the informal economy, the vast, unregulated, untaxed network that emerges, through the inexorable logic of the marketplace, to fill vital needs left unmet by government and the formal economy.

. . .

The master plan’s housing estates unfurl with the orderliness of a planned subdivision:  town houses and apartments for the well heeled, tract homes and villas for the even better heeled.  But there is little provision for the army of civil servants, whose low wages place the graceful homes of Abuja out of reach.

As for the maids, drivers, security guards and laborers without whom this city would cease to function — people like Mr. Daniel and his sister — there is no place for them at all.  Many have moved farther still, commuting for hours from neighboring states to escape the bulldozers.

The government has said it plans to help resettle those displaced by the demolition, estimated to be in the tens of thousands, but those who have lost their homes say no one has offered them any compensation or a new place to live.  And so they are left with the bitter knowledge that their capital has no place for them.

With their home reduced to rubble, Vashti and Comrade Daniel have moved into the back room of a cousin’s house.  The house they lost was not some tin shack, but a proper house of bricks and mortar.  Mr. Daniel’s income has been slashed by two-thirds by the ban on okada, and he does not know how he will rebuild.

“They say they want to make Abuja like London, but London wasn’t built in a day,” he said.  “Once upon a time they had poor people in London, but they developed themselves.  We just want that chance.”

 

For the full story, see:

LYDIA POLGREEN.  "ABUJA JOURNAL; In a Dream City, a Nightmare for the Common Man."  The New York Times  (Weds., December 13, 2006):  A4.

(Note:  ellipses added.)

 

The reference to de Soto’s book is:

Soto, Hernando de. The Other Path. New York: Harper and Row, 1989.

 

  "Okada" are the motorcycle taxis that the city government of Abuja is trying to ban.  Source of photo:  online version of the NYT article cited above.

 NigeriaMap.gif   Source of map:  online version of the NYT article cited above.

 

African Entrepreneur Funds Prize for African Leaders Who Resist Kleptocracy

IbrahimMo.jpg  Billionaire entrepreneur Mo Ibrahim.  Source of photo:  online version of the NYT article cited below. 

 

At a news conference in London on Thursday, Mo Ibrahim, a 60-year-old Sudanese-born billionaire who made his money in the cellphone business, announced that he was offering a $5 million prize for the sub-Saharan African president who on leaving office has demonstrated the greatest commitment to democracy and good governance.  The money will be spread out over 10 years.

“We must face the reality,” Mr. Ibrahim said, referring to Africa’s leadership record.  “Everything starts by admitting the truth:  we failed.  I’m not proud at all.  I’m ashamed.  We really need to resolve the problem and the problem, in our view, is bad leadership and bad governance.”

. . .

Unlike many projects that aim to help famine-stricken villages or far-flung AIDS clinics, this one is supposed to focus on political leadership — and the post-independence culture of autocrats and kleptocrats that spawned such figures as Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire or Idi Amin of Uganda.

. . .

Africa’s culture of the Big Man clinging to office was built in part, Mr. Ibrahim said, on a sense among many of its leaders that, if they relinquished power voluntarily, they would face penury and powerlessness and would no longer be the font of patronage or the tenant of what he called “the hilltop palace.”

“We want them to have a life after office,” Mr. Ibrahim said.

“Your leaders here become rich after they leave office,” he said, referring to the directorships, book deals and lecture circuit tours that accrue to Western leaders.  “What life is there for our people after office?  Some of our leaders cannot even afford to rent an apartment” in their own capitals, he said.

 

For the full story, see: 

ALAN COWELL  "Prize to Honor Heroes in African Democracy."  The New York Times  (Fri., October 27, 2006):  A11.

(Note:  ellipses added.)

 

Equatorial Guinea’s Kleptocracy: More on Why Africa is Poor

KristofNick.jpg  Nicholas D. Kristof.  Source of image:  online verison of the NYT commentary cited below.

 

The founding president of this country was a witch doctor who murdered tens of thousands, put enemies’ heads on pikes, denounced education and spread land mines on the road out of his country to prevent people from fleeing.  This was then so vile a place that an American diplomat stabbed another to death here in 1971 and claimed in his trial that he had been driven insane partly by the screams of all the people being tortured.

When the president was finally ousted in 1979, he ran off into the bush with $60 million packed in suitcases.  But he was pursued, and in a shootout, the nation’s entire foreign exchange reserves burned up.

. . .

Equatorial Guinea traditionally has been Africa’s poster boy for bad governance.  Even after the old witch doctor was ousted, the kleptocracy continued under Teodoro Obiang, the current president.  A new book about the country, “The Wonga Coup,” notes that in 2004 President Obiang bought a Boeing 737, one of six personal planes, for $55 million, and outfitted it with a king-sized bed and gold-plated fittings in the extra-large bathroom.

Schools and clinics are needy, but Forbes lists President Obiang as the world’s eighth richest ruler, with a net worth of $600 million.  Just last year, “The Wonga Coup” says, the president’s son spent the equivalent of a third of his country’s entire education budget on a vacation home in South Africa and three cars — two Bentleys and a Lamborghini.

 

For the full commentary, see:

NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF.  "Optimism and Africa."  The New York Times  (Tues., October 3, 2006):  A27.

(Note:  ellipsis added.)

 

The book mentioned in the commentary is: 

Roberts, Adam.  The Wonga Coup: Guns, Thugs and a Ruthless Determination to Create Mayhem in an Oil-Rich Corner of Africa.  PublicAffairs, 2006.

 

    Source of book image:  http://images.amazon.com/images/P/1586483714.01._SS500_SCLZZZZZZZ_V65100719_.jpg

Entrepreneurship Survives, Even in Mogadishu

  In Mogadishu the nose of one of the two Black Hawk helicopters that were were shot down in 1993.  Source of the photo:  online version of the NYT article cited below. 

 

MOGADISHU, Somalia, Sept. 23 — They call her the “Black Hawk Down” lady.

And in the corner of her dirt yard, beneath rags drying in the sun and next to a bowl of filthy wash water, she keeps a chunk of history that most Americans would probably like to forget.

It is the battered nose of a Black Hawk helicopter, from one of the two that got shot down in Mogadishu on Oct. 3, 1993, in an infamous battle that killed 18 Americans, led to a major foreign policy shift and spawned a big movie.

The Black Hawk Down lady stands fiercely at her gate and charges admission to see it.

“You, you, you,” she said on a recent day, jabbing her finger at three visitors.  “Pay, pay, pay.”

. . .

Ecstatic Somalis ransacked the wreckage, stripping the helicopters and melting down the metal. Some people even ripped insignia patches off the bodies of the soldiers to keep as grim souvenirs.

. . .

But Ms. Elmi had a different plan.  Her husband had died a long time ago, and she had six children to feed.  Two of her older sons were killed, she said, when the helicopter crashed.  She dragged the cracked nose piece, about five feet across but actually pretty light because it was made of fiberglass, back to her house.

. . .  

Ms. Elmi began humbly, charging neighborhood boys the equivalent of a few cents to get a peek at her one exhibit, the last known chunk of wreckage from what Somalis refer to as Ma-alinti Rangers, the Day of the Rangers.

But after the movie “Black Hawk Down” came out in 2001 — and pirated copies found their way to Mogadishu — business boomed.

“So many people came, I cannot count,” she said.  “White people, brown people, black people.”

When asked why they come, she snapped:  “How should I know?  Do you think I am mind reader?”

The entrance fee is now around $3 for foreigners; locals get a discount and pay 75 cents.

. . .

Some people say they fear the Islamists will impose a draconian version of Islam in Somalia, which up until recently had been relatively secular.

But Ms. Elmi said she loved the Islamists.  And she has her own reasons.

“They bring peace,” she said.  “And peace brings tourists.”

 

For the full story, see: 

JEFFREY GETTLEMAN.  "MOGADISHU JOURNAL; From the Ashes, a Chunk of America Beckons in Somalia."  The New York Times  (Thurs., September 28, 2006):  A4.

(Note:  in the print version, but not the online version, there is a subheader placed in the center of the article that reads:  "An entrepreneur feeds a family, thanks to the remnants of a battle.") 

(Note:  ellipses added.)

Reforms Make it Easier to Start and Run a Business in Africa

(p. A12) Authors of the report, ”Doing Business,” by the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation, the bank’s private sector arm, say they hope simplifying and easing the rules of the capitalist game will entice more businesses above ground.

A team of 30 researchers found that African countries had made many incremental changes.

”The most surprising thing for me was to see the pickup of reform in Africa,” said Simeon Djankov, a World Bank economist who four years ago developed the rankings on the ease of doing business.  ”Something has happened this year.  At least two-thirds of Africa’s countries have at least one positive reform.”

Tanzania computerized its business and tax registries and reduced delays in customs inspections and the courts.

Ghana has cut the corporate tax rate to 25 percent, from 32.5 percent, and made it easier to export goods.

Rwanda scrapped a law adopted during Belgian colonial rule that had given one official a monopoly on notarizing documents for the entire country.

Ivory Coast slashed the time to register property to a month from more than a year by eliminating a requirement that the urban minister give his consent.

Wealthy donors like the World Bank, the United States and Britain, which focus on spurring economic growth and job creation, are putting heavier emphasis on such changes in deciding where to provide aid.

The Millennium Challenge Account, President Bush’s aid program, explicitly uses the bank report’s measure of days to start a business as one criterion for deciding who qualifies for large grants.

 

For the full story, see:

CELIA W. DUGGER.  "Africa Moves Up the Ladder of Business-Friendly Regions."   The New York Times (Weds., September 6, 2006):  A12.

(Note:  the online version of the article had this, slightly different, title:  "In Africa, a More Business-Friendly Approach.")   

World Health Organization (WHO?) Endorses DDT

MalariaGraphic.gif  Source of graphic:  online version of the WSJ article cited below.

 

The World Health Organization, in a sign that widely used methods of fighting malaria have failed to bring the catastrophic disease under control, plans to announce today that it will encourage the use of DDT, even though the pesticide is banned or tightly restricted in much of the world.

The new guidelines from the United Nations public-health agency support the spraying of small amounts of DDT, or dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane, on walls and other surfaces inside homes in areas at highest risk of malaria.  The mosquito-borne disease infects as many as 500 million people a year and kills about a million.  Most victims are in sub-Saharan Africa and under the age of 5.

 

For the full story, see:

BETSY MCKAY.  "WHO Calls for Spraying Controversial DDT To Fight Malaria." Wall Street Journal  (Fri., September 15, 2006):  B1.

Obama Says Africa Needs Less, and Better, Government: More on Why Africa is Poor

  Senator Obama in Kenya.  For the source of the photo, see: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/26/world/africa/26obama.html

 

NAIROBI, Kenya, Aug. 28 — Barack Obama strode into a packed auditorium in Nairobi on Monday and attacked an issue that notoriously bedevils Kenyan society:  corruption.

He urged people to reject “the insulting idea that corruption is somehow part of Kenyan culture” and “to stand up and speak out against injustices.”

. . .

During his speech on Monday, he laid out a tough prescription for Africa’s ills, calling for government cutbacks, more openness and less ethnic politics.

Kenya is one of the more developed countries in sub-Saharan Africa and one of the closest to the West, but it is consistently ranked by international organizations as one of the most corrupt.  Mr. Obama said this corroded its ability to attract investment, fight terrorism and provide security for its own people.

Most of all, he told Kenyans to stop complaining about the injustices of the colonial past and to accept responsibility.  “It’s more than just history and outside influence that explain why Kenya is lagging behind,” he said.

He ended by telling the crowd, “I want you all to know that as your ally, your friend and your brother, I will be there in every way I can.”

Many in the audience left in high spirits.

“He’s inspiring,” said Miriam Musonye, a literature professor.  “He really seems to believe what he says.”

 

For the full story, see:

JEFFREY GETTLEMAN.  "Obama Urges Kenyans to Get Tough on Corruption."  The New York Times  (Tues., August 29, 2006):  A10.

 

Against Malaria “DDT Works in Weeks or Months”

Recently I highlighted hedge fund philanthropist Lance Laifer’s efforts to fight malaria in Africa.  Here is a letter-to-the-editor of the Wall Street Journal, in which a distinguished physician strongly endorses Laifer’s advocacy of the use of DDT against malaria:

Impoverished Africans should be grateful to philanthropist Lance Laifer for his effective outreach to reduce the tragic, needless toll of malaria in sub-Saharan Africa ("Malaria’s Toll" by Jason Riley, editorial page, Aug. 21).  For his attempt to focus complacent Americans, Mr. Riley also deserves thanks — such clarity is obviously desperately needed, as even with all the publicity accorded to the ravages of malaria, someone as educated and intelligent as Mr. Laifer remained blithely unaware of this scourge until last year.

Both Mr. Laifer and Mr. Riley note the lack of attention given by official organizations to the more widespread use of DDT as a malaria control method, despite its long and honorable history for this use.  Even with his money and other resources, Mr. Laifer has been unable to persuade Africans to utilize DDT.  African exporters legitimately fear economic repercussions from wealthy Western trading partners, who continue to demonize this lifesaving insecticide despite the lack of evidence of DDT’s adverse health effects in humans.

And where is the Gates Foundation’s massive resources in this ongoing struggle to save a half-billion from sickness and millions from death?  This organization asserts its devotion to reducing the toll of TB, AIDS and malaria — yet none of its funding is aimed toward the cheapest and most effective way to deal with malaria:  increased indoor spraying with DDT.  Maybe Warren Buffett can persuade his friends Bill and Melinda to target their contributions where they will do the most good, in the shortest time, for the most people.  Malaria vaccines are many years away — DDT works in weeks or months.

Gilbert Ross M.D.
Executive and Medical Director
American Council on Science and Health
New York

 

For the source of the letter, and for other letters, see: 

"Malaria Kills Millions — We Have the Cure."  Wall Street Journal  (Mon., August 28, 2006):  A13.

Unintended Consequences of Sending Food: More on Why Africa is Poor

  Millet in bowl.  Source of photo:  online version of the NYT article cited below.

 

NIAMEY, Niger, Sept. 21 – The images coming out of this impoverished, West African nation have been unrelentingly grim:  hungry children with stick-thin arms and swollen bellies, mothers carrying babies hundreds of miles to look for food after a poor harvest and high prices put local staples out of reach.  A few months ago, those images prompted a torrent of food aid from Western donors.

But now, after a season of good rains, Niger’s farmers are producing a bumper crop of millet, the national staple.  This should be a cause for rejoicing, yet in one of the twists that mark life in the world’s poorest countries, the aid that was intended to save lives could ruin the harvest for many of Niger’s farmers by driving down prices.

The newly harvested millet and the donated food will reach market stalls at the same time, and with prices depressed, poor farming families may be forced to sell crops normally set aside for their own use and use the money to pay off debts.  The effect would be a new cycle of hunger and poverty.

 

For the full story, see:

Burley, Natasha C.  "In Place Where the Hungry Are Fed, Farmers May Starve."  The New York Times  (Thurs., September 22, 2005):  A3.

 

NigerMap.jpg  Source of map:  online version of the NYT article cited above.

“DDT Saves Lives, Environmentalists Take Lives”

LaiferLanceMalariaFighter.gif  Connecticut hedge-fund trader, and malaria-fighting activist and philanthropist.  Source of image:  online version of the WSJ article cited below.

 

Inside of a year, and working with George Ayittey of the Free Africa Foundation, Mr. Laifer’s efforts have spawned five "malaria-free zones" in Ghana, Nigeria and Kenya.  Expansion to Ivory Coast and Benin is in the works.  He adds that he has the financing to roll out additional zones this year but — ever the searcher — first wants to assess what’s working and what isn’t.  If all is going well, "next year I see us doing something like 100 villages."

Mr. Laifer says a future focus will also be DDT, the pesticide used by Americans and Europeans in the 1940s to win domestic fights against malarial mosquitoes.  Indoor spraying of DDT is by far the cheapest and most effective way to control the disease.  One South Africa province employing DDT saw malaria infections and deaths drop 96% over a three-year span.

Yet Rachel Carson-inspired environmentalists have convinced many public health agencies that the chemical is dangerous.  African nations, fearful that lucrative European and U.S. markets might ban their agricultural exports, make do with less-effective DDT substitutes.  Though DDT, like any chemical, can be harmful in high doses, there’s no evidence that using it in the amounts needed to combat malaria has any ill-effect whatsoever on humans.

Mr. Laifer’s been unable to spray DDT in any of his malaria-free zones.  "It’s the best thing in our arsenal," he says.  "We have a prodigious supply, it’s cheap and we know it works.  Our world leaders need to legalize DDT, and people in America need to get mad about this. . . . We need to have people walking around with signs that say, ‘DDT saves lives, environmentalists take lives.’"

 

For the full commentary, see:

JASON L. RILEY.  "Malaria’s Toll."  Wall Street Journal   (Mon., August 21, 2006):  A11.

 

(Note:  the ellipsis is in the original.)