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Michael considered fate at 18:37   |   Permalink   |   Post a Comment
A post I made about eight months ago mentioned the Earth Institute and its director Jeffrey Sachs, and a speech he made (text and audio links here). He has specifically been speaking about the first world's inabilities to generate positive and sustainable projects to habilitate the African continent. Yes, I know, there is that curmudgeonly word sustainable, but what can you do. I think we're stuck with it for a few decades.

Along similar but not equal lines is a piece by Laurie Garrett titled the Challenge of Global Health. It talks about the increase in monies that are flowing into places that need it, but yet the right steps are not being taken. The extreme focus on AIDS is a bit like putting all your eggs in one basket, just as Jeffrey Sachs pointed out that attempting to build large systems is kind of like trying to build a steel bridge between two mud banks - you need foundation. Our money may be much more well spent on the likes of cheap mosquito nets than it would be on $100 laptops for starving children.

The Garrett article is a lot broader in scope, and a lengthy read, but worthwhile nonetheless.
Few of the newly funded global health projects, meanwhile, have built-in methods of assessing their efficacy or sustainability. Fewer still have ever scaled up beyond initial pilot stages. And nearly all have been designed, managed, and executed by residents of the wealthy world (albeit in cooperation with local personnel and agencies). Many of the most successful programs are executed by foreign NGOs and academic groups, operating with almost no government interference inside weak or failed states. Virtually no provisions exist to allow the world's poor to say what they want, decide which projects serve their needs, or adopt local innovations. And nearly all programs lack exit strategies or safeguards against the dependency of local governments.


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