I've been working in Baghdad for a week, and I've learned quite a bit about my project and the personalities. But I've been trying to digest and take a step back, looking at the project management styles. One thing I've noticed is that there is a lot of give and take with our expatriate leadership and the local management. In a program management meeting this morning, I watched as our Chief of Party, who has extensive program implementation/management experience in Sudan, Haiti, and Pakistan, push her staff to be proactive, in particular. Seeing the staff react to her and learn to work with her has reminded me of the importance of cross-cultural patience, on both sides.

Staying here in Baghdad on the compounds all week has been an interesting experience. We have almost no interaction with daily Baghdad city life. The entire two blocks surrounding the 7-10 villas we rent here are blocked off, and heavily armed Iraqi guards are everywhere. The Security company expat guards are on vigil all the time. The reality though is that it's really not as dangerous as it used to be. The violence here, compared to other places expatriates work in the world is much less than in places like Sudan or Brazil. Yes there are IED's, but they're all score settling between ethnic groups or insurgents specifically trying to undermine the Iraqi Security forces. They're not attacking NGO people.

That said, there's still the element of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, which can be combatted with good intelligence and basic street smarts. I'm counting on my Personal Security Detail (PSD) to use both tomorrow to get me to the airport. I'll fly out of Baghdad tomorrow early afternoon, and when I get to Amman a Jordan driver is going to take me and my colleague Bill to the Citadel and the markets for some shopping! Looking forward to that. Jordan has tons of tourists so I'm not worried. It will probably have a lot of Christians there because of Christmas, it is the holy land...

I'll be home by Monday afternoon - pray to the snow-clearing equipment gods that their machines do their work and clear all the snow from the runways of Western Europe and the US East Coast. I can't wait to be home.

I'm in transit. On my first business trip of my international development career. Where might I be going on my first business trip on behalf of my NGO?

Baghdad.

The 2-3 of you who actually read this blog will be familiar with the decision process I went through before I even took the job that lead to this trip, I always knew this would be a possibility. I had not been avoiding going to Iraq, but I hadn't been jumping at any opportunities or thinking of reasons to go, which I probably could have done earlier. But now, the way things are on my team and the circumstances lead to a window of opportunity, where there are a few things I can contribute while in the field for a short, focused trip.

The holiday deadline was a useful end-date for my trip. Many of my colleagues have been stuck on TDY projects in Iraq for months. My condition has always been that I can't go for more than 2-3 weeks.

As I write this, I'm sitting in the London Heathrow Terminal 1. I left DC yesterday evening on a red-eye flight. My dad graciously helped me upgrade to business class using his bazillion frequent flier miles, I'm always appreciative...

I spent the flight reading a new book, I blogged a few months ago about a Generation X article I read and commented on. As it happens, the author and publisher liked my comment and used a snippet of it on the back of the hardcover edition!

Normally I don't really read self help books, I tend to take my information in snippets from articles I come across along the way, I subscribe to all kinds of lists... but being on the back of a book is compelling reason to read it. So read it I did. I may end up writing an independent blog post about it when I finish.

But, reading it on this plane ride was an interesting experience. I'm at a strange point in my career, I'm trying to hard to launch, and it's been genuinely difficult of late to find a real niche. Reading Tammy Erickson's book helps me get a handle on some of the things I've been going through at work lately. There really is a generational component at work, the more I read the more deeply connected to Generation X I feel.

Introspection can so tiresome - I'll post more when I get to Amman jordan this evening.

I did a short little video blurb for the Development Project Management Institute course at the Monterey Institute of International Studies.

Just got a reminder of the state of mind we were in when we decided to leave San Francisco in late 2005. Part of the reason was Chris Daly. The Chronicle just published an article about him buying a house in Fairfield and moving his family there. Precious.

I loved living in San Francisco. Passionately. It had everything we wanted - nice parks, good public transportation, historic architecture, a thriving restaurant and live music scene. I loved exploring all the neighborhoods; I had coffee shops pegged all over the place. We were lucky enough to own a unit in an Edwardian Duplex in the Mission - in a tenancy in common situation.

I look back at that period - 2002-2005 - very fondly. Our first daughter was born in San Francisco. I guess her being born in late 2003 was the beginning of the end of our time in SF. At first, SF was a great place to have a baby. When they're tiny it's easy. All people generally give you a nod of the head and a smile at your baby and look happy to have you around. Schools don't matter yet, you can keep them on your lap on BART or MUNI, and you don't have to constantly explain why that crazy man is pooping on the corner outside or what that funny smell is coming from the breezeway.

It's when your kids get older and you look into preschool that you have second thoughts. When we started looking for Ellie it became clear that we were already too late and out of luck. Even mediocre preschools screen your tax returns to see how much you can afford, and even then you'll be on a waiting list. We should have gotten her on the waiting lists when she was born.

And that's not even the half of it. If you want your kids to get a good education in San Francisco, it's going to cost you $15-35,000 year in private school fees, because the public schools are a total gamble. It's a 7 square mile city, and they were bussing kids all over town to balance all the schools. Public school scores were low, and anyone with means sent their kids to private school.

We were stuck in the middle class level that the Chronicle article writers mentioned Chris Daly being so hostile to. We were too wealthy to get any breaks on anything in SF - housing, schooling, health care, etc, and too poor to afford what we wanted for out daughter, which was a safe and competent learning environment. This was even before we knew that our daughter was going to have special needs, which would have drove us out of SF even more quickly.

What finally did it was a confluence of factors. The Mission where we lived was a transitional neighborhood, and will always be. It was getting nicer while we were there, but then it was also getting worse. For every remodeled multiplex building with wealthy tenants, it seemed like new homeless or drug addicts would turn up relieving themselves all over our stoop, stealing our bikes, and generally making the place totally unfit for raising my kids. In one of the untransitioned houses around the corner from us, an old gang member got out of prison and had returned home, and there were a couple of shootings nearby, and the guy and his gang started tagging the corner houses around us. That wasn't cool at all.

Then we started feeling really out of place. When our daughter grew into a toddler, when we would show up at Tartine, out absolute favorite weekly bakery and coffee shop, it was like we were cramping everyone's style by sullying their coolness with our so-domestic vibe. Even going to other neighborhoods like Noe valley didn't really change anything, because the other young parents there were totally out of our price range, so to speak. They were the dot-com millionaires who were paying what it took to give your kids the life you'd want to give them. But we just couldn't really see ourselves running in those circles.

It was like there was no place for us left in SF - we were too poor to afford what we felt our kids would need: a safe and clean environment and schools in particular, and too well-off to take advantage of any of the politically progressive programs that SF is so famous for providing to it's working poor. So when our tenancy in common partner offered to buy us out, we decided it was time to go. We took our money and bought a place up in Sonoma county where the schools were good and there were way more opportunities for our daughter.

I still miss the coffee shops, but it's worked out for us. I like the idea of urban living and would love to give it another shot one day, but I can't imagine moving back to SF for a really, really long time.

Coming in and sullying the coolness with my kids at our favorite old coffee shops is definitely on the agenda though, next time we're out that way.

Why Generation X Has the Leaders We Need Now - Tammy Erickson - HarvardBusiness.org

This is an excellent article, I'm looking forward to the book. I would have dated Generation X a little later to encompass those born between, say, 1964 (after JFK) - 1979 (people born in the 80's don't seem Generation X-ish to me).

It's nice to see a positive representation of our generation - that we're pragmatic, hardworking, and innovative. We are not slackers! The Baby Boomers just thought we were, but we were just fed up with the more narcissistic and hyperbolic aspects of their culture.

I would never, for example, expect any entitlements from a company or the government. That doesn't mean I wouldn't welcome them, though. Long Term employment and pensions, social security, etc - I know when I'm old I'll only have the work I'm doing and the assets I build up over the next 20 years or so to sustain my wife and me. That and hopefully whatever my parents leave me.

I try to channel my cynicism into something positive - taking care of myself and my family, trying to do a good job, always trying to learn and be a good husband and father. If I can make a positive contribution to society I'll be happy.

A group of students and staff at the Monterey Institute of International Studies (MIIS) interviewed me last month for a series on reconnecting and networking with Alumni.

My friend at Niger1.com posted an article about President Tandja of Niger. His constitutionally mandated second and final presidential term is up at the end of this year, and it's not clear whether or not he'll step down:

President accused of breaking his word in third term bid

He publicly stated that he would step down after the November elections and a new president is sworn in, but he's suddenly wanting to re-do the constitution, like so many other modern-day dictators, to remain in power.

I haven't followed Niger close enough to truly comment on his time there. I was disappointed with the way he handled the recent Tuareg rebellion; he could have taken a page from Malian president Toure's book and started talking to them right away instead of lumping them with terrorists and drug dealers. Niger is still in the bottom five on the UN Human Development Index, and 8 years is a long time - there could have been much more meaningful change during that time.

I don't know entirely what to think of this. I would bet the villagers of Niger would like Tandja to stay, they like his stability and he'll probably go down in Nigerien history as a great president like they perceived Kountche to be. But this definitely looks bad from a diplomatic/foreign policy perspective.

Wrote this in tribute to my old Associate Peace Corps Director for Health in Niger - Gaston Kaba:

My wife Andrea and I were PCV's in Niger form 97-01. We were Ag volunteers so we didn't report directly to Gaston. However, we found him to be a very useful and helpful Nigerien to talk to, especially in the beginning before we really knew what we were doing. We were volunteer leaders during the second half of our service and I had the opportunity to install new Health PCV's in their villages with Gaston. He would always keep his cool - while PCV's would be getting themselves very worked up and upset over perceived misjustices or misunderstandings, Gaston would always be able to work things out. I think in time the PCVs would come to understand how much Gaston helped shape the enabling environment in their villages. Having Gaston on your team as a PCV helped give you that gravitas - of having an educated, respected, literate and fluent dotijo - vouching for you, so your villagers knew you weren't totally crazy.

I went to Gaston's office one day to ask for some Child Survival money - about $500 - for a garden well in my village. At the time in the late 90's he had a huge amount of money to spend on anything related to Child Survival. He asked me for a proposal, which I provided, and then I returned to my village for a couple of weeks. When I got back - he said - "I've got $3000 from the Rotary Club of Truckee for you - let me know how you can use it!" That money ended up continuing and expanding the Torodi team garden well project and the installation of at least 10 wells that year. And that's really just a drop in the bucket of the 13 years Gaston was Health APCD.

So - from the bottom of my heart - I thank Gaston for his service - Na Gode, Ay Sabu, Mi Yetti, Merci Beaucoup! Sannuka da Aiki sosai.

I just read an interesting article on DevEx about a Peace Corps Volunteer in Zambia. The author is a volunteer with VSO in Zambia who is professionally blogging in DevEx about volunteering, and he has some good counter-arguments for those who disparage the Peace Corps for sending young and inexperienced PCV's to developing countries.

For anyone who has worked in development - you know that behavioral change takes a long, long time. Crockett - the author of the article - highlights that many development experts who disparage inexperienced PCV's wouldn't be able to hack it in the village for 2 days, let alone 2 years. And it takes a lot more than an afternoon presentation with free food to convince subsistence farmers to change their farming styles for the better.

In Niger - it was common to have a demonstration field. You get the village chief to cede some land to you for a couple of years so you can experiment with the new methods you are sent to teach. The novelty of a foreigner working in the fields already attracts attention; if you carefully practice what you were taught in training, you can really help people see, over time, that you can increase your millet yields and use compost effectively, for example.

The other thing is that it is more than just the work - it's the intangibles that count. Each PCV is an American Ambassador. They leave two years of stories behind and the villagers never forget "their American" or their Americans...

So as long as there is the money and the political will - we should remember that sending intelligent, articulate, and motivated young people (possibly without too much professional experience) to serve as PCV's in remote countries is not a waste of time.

This is very cool, here's how a visual word-count of my CV looks after running it through IBM's "Many Eyes" website:

I started a new position today at my NGO, as an Associate Program Officer for Iraq. I will basically be backstopping a few of our programs in Iraq, from our HQ offices here by DC. We have hundreds of millions of dollars in programs in Iraq - this was a career opportunity that I could not pass up.

But I had to really think about it.

I've been a recruiter here for one year, in fact last week was my year anniversary. About 6 months ago I was pretty despondent and my work quality was dipping; I wasn't happy. So, I decided to work harder at making my environment better. I started trying to learn more about recruiting online, joining recruiter communities of practice - there are lots of websites and LinkedIn groups (especially). I also took on some non-traditional recruiting duties on my team, such as looking for new ways to use Social Networking to recruit. I was looking for ways to be better at what I was doing, and to like the way I was doing it.

Still, staring at CV's and reading cover letters all day is still tedious, and I still couldn't help but feel jealous when I would come across people I would see as contemporaries - people who looked to be about the same age and were doing what I wished I could be doing. It's hard to concentrate when you've got something on your mind that won't go away.

As my year mark approached, my boss's boss - our Chief Administrative Officer - had asked me to become an HR rep. I told her that my long term goal in this industry is to be involved with implementing programs, with an eye towards moving back to the field one day - perhaps in 10 years. She parked that in the back of her brain and then went off to Iraq for a few weeks to work with the staff there.

While she was there, she was talking with our Director of Iraq Programs (who was also on a business trip there to support her staff) and they discussed having more HQ support staff in place. Fortunately, my CAO brought me up, and it quickly filtered back to me at HQ. I was asked if I would be interested in working with the Iraq team. This would be my way out of the HR/Recruiting world - a way to finally get into programs.

There was one issue that initially hit me - I would have to occasionally go to Iraq.

That's what hit me first: Would I go to Iraq? My heart said YES! My head is about 75 percent yes, 15 percent no, the rest wavers. When I'm here at work, I'm fine. Staff are coming and going from Iraq all the time without incident. We've never lost any expatriate staff as far as I know. We spend more than 10 percent of our budget there on security. But still - you get that sinking feeling about getting cought in that one, rare instance.

It's worse that my parents have been visiting and they don't get it at all. They've never fully understaood the international development field. It's just not really like joining some corporation where you work and progress for 30 years and then retire.

My story is this - I couldn't spend my early 30's in the field managing projects, it wasn't in the cards. Now, I cannot go overseas because my older daughter really needs to be in the US where the local school district offers the developmental care that she has to have now or never. Since I want to stay in the international development field, and I've spent all this money and earned all these graduate degrees - I have to follow through with it. So the next calculated risk for me, in the absence of an ability to get field experience, it to take the first HQ-based programming job I can get, however it comes to me.

So now, I am an Associate Program Officer for Iraq. We'll see where it leads me, but that's how I decided to make the change.

Got this article emailed to me through my UC San Diego Alumni email subscriptions...

University of California - UC Newsroom | State budget contains $115 million in new cuts for UC, stretches UC's total budget challenge to $450 million

Basically the UC system is going to have a huge operating deficit if they maintain current levels, they're going to have a $450 million shortfall of funding from the state. That's a mind boggling, huge amount of money, although I know the recent near-trillion-dollar stimulus has made us numb to the sheer size of these sums of money.

Basically, if the UC System wants to maintain current enrollment levels they'll have to raise tuition fees. My initial reaction to this is that students will be taking out larger student loans, which will be a direct transfer of money from the federal government to the UC system. Then, this debt will be bought by the various banks that are allowed to handle student loans (I'm thinking of the Stafford and Perkins Loans, since these are all I have experience with.)

Why not start issuing student loans at the state level? Is this done? In a way, this could help future revenue streams, as students will slowly pay them back with interest. Not that states need to become banks, but it's not like they aren't issuing bonds already, holding debt.

I'm not a credit expert so I don't claim to fully understand how it all works. But this might be worth considering.

I feel bad for my dad.  I've only known him as bald or balding.  When I was little, I used to be able to recognize him from behind by his bald spot.  Apparently his started in his late 20's, and by the time he was 50 he stopped grooming the top hair and started shaving his head.  

That's not the worst part.  I feel bad for him because the style in the 1970's was to have that bushy head of hair, like all us Generation X kids seem to like pushing on our boys now.  The Ricky Shroeder, Eight-is-Enough, Bobby Brady 1975 hair, where the sides grow into where the sideburns are and your bangs hang into your face, and the back is an inch shy of mullet.  Having that hair with the bald spot must have been a big bummer.  When my dad wore hats I used to imagine that he wasn't bald, I used to think about how much younger he'd have looked without the bald spot.  

Apparently, male pattern baldness comes to us on the X chromosome, or from our mother's side.   I used to take solace in this fact because my maternal grandfather died in his 70's with a nearly full head of hair, he had a pronounced widow's peak but the hair was still there.  So I used to smugly tease my dad about balding - knowing it was his kryptonite, not mine.  

But lately I don't joke about it.  

I used to have a bushy head of early 1990's, Pantene Pro-V hair.  Then when I was 21, my college tennis team all decided to shave our heads.  It wasn't for any altruistic reason, it wasn't like we were in solidarity with someone in Chemo, we just thought it would be silly and a bonding experience.  Of course, we decided to do it before a trip to a tennis tournament in Phoenix.  So we all duly shaved our heads and showed up in Arizona with cue-tip white heads and not enough sunscreen.  Great story.

My girlfriend at the time (now my wife) liked it, so I kept the style.  That was 15 years ago.  I would shave my head with a number 1 setting, then let it grow until I needed to start combing it, then re-shave it.  It was in style, too - I felt rather stylish with my grad-school chic, San Francisco dot-commer clothing, a 2-day shadow on my face with the shaved head.  

But sometimes, I would look at my hair and miss being able to feel the wind blow it around.  So finally, about 3 months ago, I decided to grow my hair back, just to see where it is.  It's been a fun but infuriating experience.  I can't believe how much mental energy I've put into it.  I've barely paid for a haircut since the Clinton Administration, but that's not half the problem.  

My forehead is huge now.  I've got the widow's peak that I had expected, but it's not the same hair I had in my early 20's.  Combing it makes me look like an extra from "Milk."  That's just not really my style.  I'm a dad, married, working full time, trying to build my career - I don't like taking this much time out of my day for vanity.  

I can't wear winter hats without thinking about how it messes up my hair.  I spend time in the bathroom that I hadn't before trying to make that fluffy part stay in place.  I've been using my wife's various hair-products - holding spray, leave-in conditioner.  I had even considered h air-drying it.  For what?  

So this brings me to the reason I'm really sorry for my dad.  Up until the late 1990's, it wasn't in style to shave your head.  Everyone had hair, even nearly bald men would grow their halo hair into a half-mullet.  Shaved heads meant you were in the military or a skin-head neo-nazi.  I don't know how or when exactly it became acceptable, but it did.  I'm sorry it wasn't in style in the 70's and 80's when my dad could have used the ego-boost and not have to worry about going bald as much.  

My dad's been shaving his head for about as long as I have now, and he looks great - it suits him.  I think it's about time I gave up the hair dream and rejoin him.  

Just read this article in the LA Times, came across it through a NPCA Twitter post -

Indonesia still touchy about Peace Corps - Los Angeles Times

Apparently Secretary of State Clinton is pushing Indonesia to accept Peace Corps Volunteers, as a way to improve relations. This is the exact opposite way a Peace Corps program should be started. We work at the invitation of host country governments.

Starting a Peace Corps program in Indonesia under these circumstances would undermine the years and years of goodwill towards Peace Corps that has been built up since the 1970's, when PC was more notoriously used and discredited by the Nixon and ford administrations. If you read Confessions of an Economic Hitman, and if you believe what John Perkins is saying, you understand what I'm talking about. I was approached by a couple of other embittered old-timer RPCV's when I was a PC recruiter idealistically pushing PC as apolitical. It was a particular concern when I was recruiting at San Francisco State and UC Santa Cruz, and I know my Berkeley and Humboldt State colleagues were battered by those concerns as well.

We've got to set Clinton and the Obama administration straight - Peace Corps is apolitical.

I think Peace Corps just needs a big, fat change - they need to be modernized, basically. PC was created for the Cold War, and Clinton is still thinking in that mindset, that hearts and minds are there for us to 'win'. PC should really stress the collaboration angle, making ourselves available for helping people build their own capacities that they decide they want help improving.

Someone posted a question on the LinkedIn Peace Corps Community Network, "Will the rush to expand Peace Corps result in a decline in quality? We all experienced the issues that arose with volunteers who lacked skills or enthusiasm. How quickly should we really expand?" My participation in the discussion is below.

Most of the hand-wringing I've seen with Peace Corps is over the debate over whether it's a cultural exchange organization or a real poverty-relief and development organization. The answer is both, but we have to keep in mind, as long as the PC mission stays the same, that a volunteer can be successful if they're integrating well into their communities and representing themselves and the US professionally. This is more of the ripple in a pond theory. On the other hand, you've got people who think Peace Corps is a training ground for future USAID and USAID contractor NGO's, which in many ways it can be, but it's just not set up for that.

Peace Corps Volunteers will always be integrating into their communities and sharing US culture, so the more the better on that front. But, to increase the real impact of our work, I think Peace Corps needs to do a better job of partnering with NGOs and USAID on a much broader and formal scale. At this time, there are a lot of PCV's doing intern/program management with NGO's in the field, but it's ad hoc and dealt with in-country.

If we really want to make this increase effective, bring in a working group with the Peace Corps, USAID, the NGO Community (like InterAction) and maybe the UN, take a hard look at the Millenium Development Goals and where they meet USAID strategic objectives and the Host-countries' development priorities (which are most paramount), and go from there.

There are more than enough people who want to serve as PCV's - lets give them as many chances for success and learning as we can.

Just check out this article on being a new dad and fitting it into your professional life:

Working from home: Not for every 'Mr. Mom' - CNN.com

It's so funny how parenting evolves. I found that we could quickly master taking care of one infant; within a few weeks of living at home with dependable adult schedules, the baby gets into a rhythm and becomes relatively predictable. It's funny how Lubin talks about the "emotional roller coaster" of going back to work after being out a whopping 2 weeks! My guess is he'd be on an emotional roller coaster with a 2 week old baby in any case.

I was lucky when our first daughter was born. I was a federal employee, and entitled to 3 months; I took two and a half. My daughter was born at the beginning of November, which worked out perfectly for taking all of November and December off, and then I went back to work part-time in January, going all the way back after Martin Luther King Day, if I remember correctly.

It was one of the best times of my life. My wife had intended to go back to work at about the same time. She was able to ease back in part time for two months, after taking 2 full months off.

It's such a critical time in a baby's life, you don't get it back, it would be great if we could support more official, paid time off.

I'm being bad blogger, because I don't have the time or patience to really backlink anything and get anything up here supporting how I feel. But I wanted to get this blog post up here, in any case.

I've been trying to figure out a way to utilize my blog... I still have opinions and read a lot, just not all 100% of the time about international development. So, from here on out, I want to change the focus of this Blog to reflect where I am professionally. With that in mind, I want to explain where I'm coming from...

When I was a Peace Corps recruiter, I had a story that I told people over and over again. In a nutshell, I defined myself as a future relief worker in Africa; that I was only doing this PC recruiter thing while I was getting my graduate degrees under my belt, so I could move on to bigger and better things later. My difficulty is that I told the same story so many times that I find myself professionally confused.

Life is a journey and I generally take things as they come... and things have changed. My interests have evolved - I'm still committed to poverty relief and want to stay in the international development field, but how I do that with my current family situation and professional abilities is still developing.

As for my current situation, I've been at the same job since last Spring. It was a way to get into the industry, so to speak. I tried to position myself to my boss and colleagues so that I could hold onto my previous "future", so to speak.

But after almost a year of working in this position, I find myself trying to, well, find myself.

With that in mind, I intend to use this blog to work through my professional development, which now includes not just my interests in international development, but also whatever else I'm learning about. This blog will now include broader topics like the work-life balance, being a dad of young girls, advancing myself in my career... in general - a Generation X dad in his mid 30's, trying to make it in his industry of choice.

This is a great article - the video at the beginning is excellent as well.

BBC NEWS | Africa | The pitfalls of Africa's aid addiction

Any of us that have lived and worked in Africa have seen this firsthand - how anything from the developed country aid-organizations can end up being packaged and resold in the parallel markets. I admit, when I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Niger I once bought cans of tuna from my local grocer stamped "Gift of Denmark."

The larger issue is the strategy behind the development aid. I've harped on this in several previous posts, from the One Laptop Per Child project to the Food-for-Peace initiatives - that the aid interventions need to be much, much more participatory, and allow for the indigenous innovation and motivation of Africans to shine through.

It's a bad cycle. Our agriculture policies enrich our farmers at the expense of those in less developed countries, which we then sponsor aid projects to help, which further enriches our farmers and agribusiness.

The other problem I struggle with philosophically is - is it truly better to let countries specialize in their comparative advantages, or is it destructive to the environment and leaves countries vulnerable to violent commodity-price swings? I don't know. And I'm not in school any more so I can't spend a lot of time really looking into it.

One of my co-workers was worried, she saw something that spooked her about Obama cutting USAID funding. So, in order to preserve her vote and lower her stress level, I put this together, below. It's a series of quotes from the Obama Website:

If you are worried about Obama cutting foreign aid, here are his promises on the subject. Of course, as with any administration changing - US foreign assistance priorities will shift. But with an Obama presidency we are unlikely to roll up the drawbridges and focus all funds inward. On the contrary, Obama promises to double foreign aid by the end of his presidency. See below:

from: http://origin.barackobama.com/issues/foreign_policy/#onafrica "Fight Poverty: Obama and Joe Biden will double our annual investment in foreign assistance from $25 billion in 2008 to $50 billion by the end of his first term and make the Millennium Development Goals, which aim to cut extreme poverty in half by 2015, America's goals. They will fully fund debt cancellation for Heavily Indebted Poor Countries in order to provide sustainable debt relief and invest at least $50 billion by 2013 for the global fight against HIV/AIDS, including our fair share of the Global Fund."

from: http://www.barackobama.com/2007/04/23/the_american_moment_remarks_to.php "For the last twenty years, U.S. foreign aid funding has done little more than keep pace with inflation. Doubling our foreign assistance spending by 2012 will help meet the challenge laid out by Tony Blair at the 2005 G-8 conference at Gleneagles, and it will help push the rest of the developed world to invest in security and opportunity. As we have seen recently with large increases in funding for our AIDS programs, we have the capacity to make sure this funding makes a real difference.

Part of this new funding will also establish a two billion dollar Global Education Fund that calls on the world to join together in eliminating the global education deficit, similar to what the 9/11 commission proposed. Because we cannot hope to shape a world where opportunity outweighs danger unless we ensure that every child, everywhere, is taught to build and not to destroy.

I know that many Americans are skeptical about the value of foreign aid today. But as the U.S. military made clear in Camp Lemonier, a relatively small investment in these fragile states up front can be one of the most effective ways to prevent the terror and strife that is far more costly - both in lives and treasure - down the road. In this way, $50 billion a year in foreign aid - which is less than one-half of one percent of our GDP - doesn't sound as costly when you consider that last year, the Pentagon spent nearly double that amount in Iraq alone."

From: http://www.barackobama.com/2008/07/15/remarks_of_senator_barack_obam_96.php "Moreover, lasting security will only come if we heed Marshall's lesson, and help Afghans grow their economy from the bottom up. That's why I've proposed an additional $1 billion in non-military assistance each year, with meaningful safeguards to prevent corruption and to make sure investments are made - not just in Kabul - but out in Afghanistan's provinces. As a part of this program, we'll invest in alternative livelihoods to poppy-growing for Afghan farmers, just as we crack down on heroin trafficking. We cannot lose Afghanistan to a future of narco-terrorism. The Afghan people must know that our commitment to their future is enduring, because the security of Afghanistan and the United States is shared."

Later in the Same Speech: "We will have to provide meaningful resources to meet critical priorities. I know development assistance is not the most popular program, but as President, I will make the case to the American people that it can be our best investment in increasing the common security of the entire world. That was true with the Marshall Plan, and that must be true today. That's why I'll double our foreign assistance to $50 billion by 2012, and use it to support a stable future in failing states, and sustainable growth in Africa; to halve global poverty and to roll back disease. To send once more a message to those yearning faces beyond our shores that says, "You matter to us. Your future is our future. And our moment is now."

I've been following this for the last couple of weeks - Doctors Without Borders (known also by their French acronym, MSF) have been asked by the government of Niger to suspend their activities.

This is an interesting case study. MSF has provided tons and tons of medical coverage in Niger and has saved probably thousands of Nigerien childrens' lives. Their work there has been an excellent opportunity to perfect the "Plumpy Nut" nutritional supplement as well.

But to a certain extent, I can see where the Niger government is coming from. It seems to me that President Tandja and his subordinates are a proud bunch - imagine if your country became the posterboard for famine and malnourished children. You too would be sensitive to NGO's taking advantage of the situation to exaggerate their effectiveness or the need for their services in order to enrich themselves.

So, is this a case of MSF using Niger as a platform, overstaying their welcome?

The hard part is that it's not like their services are not sorely needed in Niger; infant mortality is chronically high in Niger. A good year for Niger still includes 25% of children dying before their 5th birthday and life expectancy in the upper 40's.

Perhaps if MSF reconfigured their interventions to include extensive training of local medical services, rather than flying in international staff - they could contract the locals more. I don't personally know MSF's practices - perhaps they are using locals more.

Help Niger help itself, basically. I think that's all the Government of Niger wants, instead of a handout.

Just came across this website and had to share this - it's McCain and Obama's views on international development, among other things.

I'm an Obama supporter, I'll lay that out there online and take that side. Of course there are bits from either side that are worthy of ditching or keeping. I don't agree with Obama's anti-globalization rhetoric when he's brought that up, for example. I agree with McCain on supporting the eradication of Malaria as well.

I would go on with more here but I'm at work and shouldn't be blogging on company time...

Crazy how life throws new twists and curves at you.

After the last blog post, in a total whirlwind, I was phone interviewed by IRD for an International Recruitment Officer position, two weeks later I was flown out to DC to meet them all in person. By March 3 I was in my new office in Rosslyn, jobsearch over.

Now I'm on the other side. My job is proposal recruitment, and also HQ positions as well. When we compete for a USAID or other multilateral organization's contract or write a proposal, I have to find the key staff. It's been fun so far, I enjoy my colleagues.

Honestly it's just great to be settled.

So, hopefully I will have time for this blog more often, it's not for a lack of ideas, I just haven't had the time.

I really wanted to post to this blog at least once per month. I returned to school in September and was insanely busy until I graduated on December 17. But I did it! I now have a Masters of Public Administration Degree! MA number two!

So I've been jobsearching on and off now for about 6 months, with varying degrees of intensity and with different approaches. I've targeted the international relief and development field and the San Francisco/North Bay (because of my Petaluma house) nonprofit sector. I have to say, it is very competitive. My problem is that I'm in between positions, both literally and experientially. I can't be a "program associate" in the nonprofit sector because they're all low-paid and for 20-somethings with a BA and a couple of years experience. I can't quite qualify for program manager positions because I don't exactly have enough experience, even with my two MA's...

So now, almost out of the blue, I will probably be skipping right to the top! I will, with a little hustle and organizational help, become the Executive Director of a totally new nonprofit, tentatively called Friends of CCLLC, where my two daughters are going to school. More perhaps later. I was embittered and angry about my jobsearch and had planned to commiserate more about that whole experience, but the venom has kind of run it's course.

So I just wanted to get something out there on my blog.

I will hopefully get back to writing about international affairs and Niger stuff again soon. Not that I have a lot of faithful readers, but if you're out there, I'll get back to you soon!

I know I'm a little behind the pack in blogging, but I had to give some due respect to CARE's decision, as highlighted in this article in the NY Times recently:

CARE Turns Down Federal Funds for Food Aid - New York Times

I've been thinking about this since I was in Peace Corps and saw this first hand. The short of it is, the US Government buys surplus grain or other mostly raw commodities from American farmers and then distributes it to various NGO's and aid organizations working abroad, mostly in Africa. These NGO's then sell the grain locally and fund their projects with the proceeds. I've never agreed with this practice, for two reasons, economical and environmental:

Economically speaking: It provides no new foreign exchange reserves for the host country. Let's say you are running an NGO in a country and you've got several projects going on, to a budget of $1 Million. If your funds come from America or Europe where the headquarters are located, then all of that $1 million enters the country as valuable foreign exchange, which then has the potential, in a country with a functioning banking system, to create more value by being loaned out again and again. In essence, you're adding totally new money to the country that didn't exist before. With the Food for Peace program that CARE is rejecting, the money that the NGO is using to operate comes entirely from within the country, and you have not expanded the country's money supply at all. Even $1 million is a significant amount to countries with smaller GDP's than a mid-cap American corporation.

This also distorts the market of the country, essentially allowing the US Government to dump our excess agricultural capacity onto the poorest countries in the world, which, I believe, is against WTO regulations. It also depresses the price of locally grown commodities, as local farmers are forced to compete with the American grain.

I personally struggle with this - since I believe that it's more important to save people from starving, if that is the situation. So, giving grain where there was none is a good idea, and allowing people to pay for it in some way, whether through trading their services or with a food for work program, gives them a sense of pride. However, these programs have reached the status quo and should not be as regular a part of NGO funding as they are.

Environmentally speaking: It perpetuates a consumptive and predatory system which enriches the Agribusiness industrial complex. Corporations like Dow, Monsanto, and ADM, make millions selling genetically modified seeds and fertilizer to farmers who then grow way more food than Americans can consume. This totally inefficient system distorts the market. The Food for Peace system is a way for the US Government to subsidize big agribusiness. This perpetuates non-natural, non-organic, highly genetically modified and fertilized crops throughout the Midwest, especially in the Missouri and Mississippi river basins. All the runoff from these fields eventually finds it's way into the Gulf Coast, where we are seeing huge "dead zones" where all the fertilizer and chemicals kill off the ecologically sensitive organisms that support the food chain.

There are better ways for NGO's to be funded. I completely understand the idea that there are always trade-offs; these aid organizations are in a competitive industry where funds are scarce - they will take anything they can get. But there are new, more efficient and effective ways to bring about a positive change in the human condition, and not just solely advance the interests of corporate America.

Notably, the article talks about aid programs making themselves profitable - there is a ton more evidence and literature on this, and hopefully I'll have more to write about this as I get back into school for my final semester at MIIS.

This speaks for itself - a NYT article on innovative design for the poor.

The one thing that I saw as totally brilliant is the rolling water jug. Of course - that will just free up more room on the person's heads. Now village women in Africa (the intended beneficiaries) will be pulling water behind them, probably in trains of 3-5 jugs per woman, with 60 lbs of stuff on their heads, and a baby on their backs. It's the productivity/technology curse, right? The more we invent to make our lives easier, the more time we have to get more work done...

This is an interview I did in French with a Mauritanian Friend of mine. This was for a French class presentation I did a month or so ago.

I am very proud to introduce you all to what I have been involved with over the past three months:

Innova Project

If you're involved in any way with innovation, strategic management, technology, organizational capacity development - we've compiled an extensive toolkit for anyone who needs it!

This was a collaborative project which evolved out of the Advanced Nonprofit Management class at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. We're all MPA students, and our professor is the inimitable Beryl Levinger.

This was a unique and special experience where we got to learn, experience, and apply everything you see on the website above. I'll probably update this post later but I wanted to get the link up ASAP. Enjoy!

I really don't want this to be an anti One-Laptop-Per-Child project blog... but I read this article in todays NYT and couldn't help but think about it:

Seeing No Progress, Some Schools Drop Laptops - New York Times

Apparently, having laptops issued one to a student in American schools, who have access to some of the best technology, with students who actually have previous experience with this technology, hasn't worked as well as had been expected.

The article brings up one good point - the educational rubric hasn't caught up to the digital age; having students really use wirelessly connected and networked laptops for their intended purpose - collaborating and exploring their creativity - was taking them away from concentrating on passing outmoded, standardized tests.

What we should take away from this, in relation to the OLPC endeavor... is what I have mentioned in previous blog posts - if you introduce a new technology or development intervention, you have to be aware of it's wider systemic effects. I've come to realize that ecosystems are not just something related to the physical environment, but the social and political environment as well.

I'm in agreement with the sentiments of the OLPC project, and I love the idea of getting students the best technology possible. But with regards to what the NYT article highlights - the systemic effects of the intervention were not considered. Of course some the kids were going to IM each other and look at porn... they're teenagers for gods sake...

A better plan would have been for the school to create a much more controlled educational environment that is more hardwired to the classroom - and give all the students their own, private flash-drives or iPods. The iPods could be specially adapted to hold the students entire scholastic identity, basically being their boot drive for whatever dumb computer terminal they log into. That way they could take their work home to their home computers – which should be provided to low-income people at subsidized rates and free municipal WiFi access. The school could then maintain their secure network and the students wouldn't just be distractedly surfing the internet.

Even as a relatively responsible 33 year old grad student, I find that my always on laptop can be an enormous distraction. I find myself looking things up constantly, then getting sucked into reading the news or instant messaging with my friends. My workflow is a stream of short bursts; responses interrupting my creative efforts. My last blog post was done from a class, I'm sorry to admit. The professor structured class in the traditional, passive listening manner that these new technologies were designed to eliminate.

But then again, I have other professors who depend on us bringing our wirelessly connected laptops to class to take advantage of the collaborative and enabling environment they were intended for. I've had class meetings using Skype where we were spread out all over the world. It's completely amazing and fun.

So there is hope for the OLPC project, but like I said the systemic effects of this intervention really need to be considered. The OLPC coordinators should read this NYT article carefully so they don't end up with a completely busted project.

Just read this article about the current presidential candidates pushing education aid to poor countries...

3 Democrats Suggest Plans for Education in Poor Nations - New York Times

I'm really, really pleased that this is getting some airplay, so to speak. There are a couple of things to keep in mind, though. I'll preface this by saying that educating the kids at almost all costs should be the goal, but there is a right way to do it; a framework that should be followed, in my opinion.

First - the governments of these countries should be responsible for educating their kids. If we give the money directly to private NGO's or USAID to build and maintain their own schools with their own curriculum, it does nothing to build the capacity of the host government to handle their own long-term educational needs.

Second - one of the big reasons that kids are so poorly educated is because the governments of these countries are inefficient or corrupt. So - while it's better to give the educational aid money to the countries, you have to make sure they are spending it correctly, which leads to the need for a concurrent concentration on aiding democracy and governance programs.

So my recommendation would be to concentrate on building the whole capacity of a country to educate its people - a functioning government with the money to pay their teachers, well-built schools, well-trained teachers, supplies, etc. And planning should be for the very long term, like for a whole generation of kids, instead of a quick, politically based surge of aid that goes away after a while.

C|Net just ran an article on the OLPC saga: Engineering change: Plugging Africa's kids in to $100 laptop.

I recommend clicking on the photos and reading the captions to get the whole story.

I've been following this story for a while, I've posted on it here a few times, just have a look through my archives. To sum up how I feel about it - I love the ideas and idealism, I have major issues with the execution of it as a development project.

As I said, there are tons of sustainability issues to consider - take a look at the photos in the article I linked to above and you'll get an idea. They've decided to field test the laptop in a poor but not destitute village with a pretty poorly-outfitted school, even by Nigerian standards. They had to install electricity & generator and a satellite dish, which had not obviously been at this school before.

What I'm seeing as the first mistake is that Khaled Hassounah himself is training the kids to use the laptops. HUGE mistake. Sustainability error number one; now it's just another project being pushed on them by a foreigner, a gift given to them that they did not ask for. They'll ooh and ahh at the laptops and go along with what he says, and then as soon as things start to break down, the project will fall apart, because it's not community based and generated.

They should have the schools compete to show who earns the right to use the new technology - that would provide motivation for schools to perform better. It would also increase the communities stake in the project. Also, it should be a Nigerian face that the kids are seeing training them to use the laptops. Hassounah should be intensively training Nigerian teachers, who then train the kids. Hassounah must be consumed with his own idealism - I totally understand him wanting to be the one with the kids, but the true home-run for him would be to watch a Nigerian (or otherwise local) teacher flawlessly train the kids.

I really, really hope the kids get some benefit out of the machines while the generator and satellite dish are working at least.

I'm marginally a fan of Tom Friedman's - he's got good ideas, even if he skimps on the hard data - but you can't expect a journalist to be an academic. If you have a NYT subscription - I recommend reading this article:

The African Connection - New York Times

The call centers that have been most associated with India of late are now working in Kenya. It was only a matter of time before this kind of business was set up in English-speaking Africa. What I like about this development is not just the reasons that Friedman highlites - internet infrastructure, reverse brain-drain, etc. - but also the fact that now there will be direct connections between Kenyans and Americans. This will, over time, allow all the Kenyan employees of the call center to see the things that Americans take for granted, especially rule following, organization, orderliness.

What I mean is that no matter how many modern things you see in Africa, there is often still something missing. When I lived in Niger - there was often the mistaken assumption that if you build something that looks nice and modern, that it is as such. But it's the way things function, not how they look, that matter. I hope I'm making sense.

These Kenyan call center employees can hopefully act as messengers and catalysts for a wider Kenyan transformation - from middlingly poor to truly up-and-coming, with better governance and institutions being the difference.

That title is an homage to a friend of mine... but I think it encapsulates how we should look at famine and hunger. I just read this UNICEF press release about the current situation in Niger. According to their report - global acute malnutrition in under-3yr old kids in Niger is down, but it's only down from around 15% to 10% on average. The article definitely strikes the right tone - there is still a ton of work to be done and we can't allow positive statistics to slow down the aid and intervention.

Celebrating a drop in malnutrition where there are still hundreds of thousands of "wasting" babies and toddlers is like celebrating that you only failed with a 50% rather than a 25%. You're still failing and there is enormous room for improvement.

One thing I wish was highlighted more was the idea of more system-wide interventions to improve the quality of life in Niger. The aid organizations will rush in when people are dying, but that just reinforces aid dependence. Nigeriens always expect someone to drop in when things get bad; I found when I was there that this caused complacency, to say the least. Why should the village contribute their own funds to build their local water-pump when some projet will give it to them for free?

I suppose I'm talking about two things - aid dependency and advocating for a better political economic system. The latter would greatly improve the conditions of Niger to where households are better able to weather droughts and freakish locust invasions. I'm talking about solid institutions, better governance, schools, infrastructure, etc. Put those in place, not just so Doctors Without Borders or UNICEF can get around easily when the going gets tough, but so Niger has more to offer the global community than an outstretched hand.

It's been a very long time since I've posted something, you know how the holidays can get, plus having two young kids and being a full-time student and part-time employed...you can clearly see where I find the time...

Just reading this article in the New York Times about trees in Niger. Apparently, Niger has more trees than 30 years ago, based on a detailed analysis of satellite imagery. If this is indeed true, this is really, really good news.

It's been six years since I left Niger, and I was only there for just over 3 years. So, the Niger I know is more of a snapshot; However in the vegetation category I wouldn't say they were doing so well. But, everything mentioned in this article, especially regarding the Gao tree, was very accurate. We were trained to help encourage this kind of natural resource management - trees are to be cultivated, not cleared.

The other good (or bad, depending on your P.O.V.) thing about this article was that there was no mention of invasive or non-native trees there, especially the Neem and Eucalyptus trees. Eucalyptus trees are cool because they grow really fast and you can use them to sustainably meet your fencepost or roofing needs, but they have a tendency to suck a lot more water than other native trees. In fact, when I visited South Africa in '99 they were telling us that SA was going to cut down all their apartheid-era eucalyptus forests to replace them with native species, for this very reason - there were so many eucalyptus trees planted that they were having a depreciative effect on SA's water table. They are therefore not really sustainable for widespread use across Niger - maybe only near the river or the couple of permanent lakes/tributaries.

The neem tree is an awesome tree too, don't get me wrong, it has tons of uses and grows really, really well in Niger, but it's not native. The Gao and Baobab trees are - and farmers using these well-known native trees is very sustainable. Here's an interesting Niger UNFAO Agroforestry project report that was probably background for the NYT article.

Mature, old Baobab and Gao trees are extremely beautiful trees, too (try doing a Google image search for them). They're the kind of tree that gets etched into your mind; when you picture Niger you see these trees silhouetted against the sandy, orange sunset-lit sky with a Fulani kid herding a million dusty cattle across the fields. Just like the picture above.

This is the most emailed article in the NYT today, about the huge effort to iodize salt in Central Asia in the last 15 years. There are some good lessons here for sustainable development work. Mostly, I was interested to read about using local symbols and famous people to get the masses on board.

The target problem was that there was a high level of mental retardation in Central Asia, among other places, and it was found that using iodized salt would be the most effective way to reduce the problem. So, governments and NGO's got together to publicize the benefits of using iodized salt instead of non-iodized. That was half the battle, the other was getting salt producers to iodize their salt.

What they did, and here's what I liked – they devised a recognizable and familiar symbol to put on iodized salt so people at the market could easily tell which salt to buy. Then famous local celebrities who's opinions were respected were brought on board to remove the stigma that iodized salt somehow had to it.

This kind of thing has parallels all over the world, especially in developing countries. When I was working for the Carter Center in Niger doing Guinea Worm eradication work, we used to treat water sources to kill the Guinea worm vector (click the link to learn more) - it was a very mild chemical that would disperse within 3 weeks, and it was as harmless as using fluoride in the water... But depending on how the villagers felt that day, some would blame us for their decreased virility while others would say their kids were smarter.

Perception is everything – the lesson being that marketing is a very important and integral part of any public health intervention.

I wrote about this last summer - about the Darfur crisis in Sudan spreading instability throughout the region. The International Herald Tribune posted this article, with one of the most disturbing pictures I have seen in a long time - especially since my kids are this poor girls age...

What can be done in this region?

Central African Republic has basically been a failed state without an outrageous crisis, so it has languished in desperate obscurity for the last few decades. The only thing I really know about it is those in the know call it the C-A-R and their main 1970's era "big-man" leader is rumored to have cannibalized his people. Sudan is what it is, in some ways a booming, successful country (see Glittering Towers in a War Zone) but in other ways a total hell for its people. Chad is teetering on the edge of being a true failed state, but seems to be holding itself together better than CAR or Sudan.

How can we find the political will to help get central Africa in order? I don't mean in western or American order - not in an imperialist sense. I mean really helping the people out in a truly sustainable way.

This is so much more challenging than helping a country like Niger, which for all its statistics still has a functioning government and a country that is relatively easy to get around. What do you do for an even more foreign, inaccessible, and extremely complicated place like Central Africa? I wish I had the answer.

There's just no international cavalry any more, if there ever was. I get sad thinking about the fact that - and I would bet anyone this is true - that there are probably millions of people in these regions who think, "If only Americans would notice, they would be able to fix this. Americans have so much, they can surely spare enough for us..." I really sincerely wish there was some kind of win-win scenario where a little extra effort on my country's part would help untangle the region.

My guess is that a lot of people see only the problem and not the system that perpetuates the problems. The problems stem from ingrained corruption (so throw the bums out - hold a diplomatic effort to create elections in CAR & Chad), and especially from poverty and scarce resources (so spend just a few extra million in aid money in CAR and Chad especially to bolster institutions and infrastructure and America's image.)

To paraphrase James Baker, we really do have a dog in this hunt.

Those of you interested in international development should be familiar with the term "appropriate technology" - the concept of having the appropriate tools in the hands of the people who will use them. In practical terms, this means not shipping Caterpillar tractors built for commercial farms in the midwest to subsistence farmers in sandy, dry West Africa.

I've blogged about it before, but the whole one-laptop-per-child thing is really bugging me. The NYT posted another article about it.

I just can't understand how this is supposed to work in a poor country where they have no technology, while here in the US and in Europe where we've had ample time and resources to use and adapt the same thing, it hasn't happened. I've lived around silicon valley since high school - and I've got both family and friends in the education field. They all use technology, but the kids still have to learn handwriting and how to add and subtract on their own. I kind of see this as my parents not allowing my first wristwatch to be digital, so I could learn how to tell time on an analog clock.

I really don't want to be bursting such an idealistic bubble. I very much admire the motivation and idealism that the MIT and OLPC people have invested in the project - I would just love to hear more from the potential recipients. It was my experience in Niger that the locals would never say no when an aid organization offered them something, regardless of what it was. Anything free is good. I'm almost positive that once this starts getting out into the field, the laptops will start being resold immediately.

This is not to mention a whole host of other things in the NYT article I linked above - things like charging up the machine, replacing the screen lamp - "A child could do it!" I'm just seeing a whole bunch of constant hand-holding and tech support making this totally unsustainable as a development project. You just can't introduce this into a place that has absolutely no experience with it. Better to get it into more computer-savvy hands for a while to see if they're a viable learning tool.

Just rented former VP Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth." I've considered myself to be relatively up to date and informed, but it's a really compelling movie. His argument seems really rock solid and I highly recommend everyone see this. Check out the graphic at the bottom of my site and pledge to see it. If you've already seen it, still fill out the code below so my site has some impact!

A couple of things that I've noticed since my last post below.

First - I came across this article about the Ibrahim Award. Mr. Ibrahim made millions, supposedly honestly - according to the Time article - developing the mobile phone market in Africa. He has created a foundation that would give a huge award, like $2 million, to African leaders who embody honesty and good governance, to be followed by $200,000/year for life, more if they commit to and run a good governance NGO or non-profit.

The authors make a good point - in the US, ex-politicians can make lots of money on the speaker circuit, in addition to the lifetime pension and medical care they receive - African leaders get nothing. This is an incentive to stay in power forever, or to steal their retirement fund from government coffers. I seem to remember Boston University, or some other university in the Boston area, hiring the ex-Zambian president, kind of as a reward for giving up power peacefully.

A hard-core blogger would instantly check this out, but I've got opinions, not too much time.

Second - Niger's getting hooked up to the global Fiber Optics Network. This is great news for Niger and great evidence that high-tech companies of the developed world see value in helping develop African infrastructure. This will most definitely help Niger - they were already on their way to more widespread mobile phone use. The fiber optics can help connect Niger and it's neighbors to each other and the rest of the world.

When I see a couple of articles like these, about investing in Africa - the BBC's about a new Guinean internet cafe and the recent In-Depth Financial Times report about African Infrastructure - it makes ideas swirl around my head.

As I may have eluded in previous posts here, development is holistic and multifaceted. You can't just build infrastructure or invest in schools alone, there has to be a point to the infrastructure or jobs for the educated, among a million other things that will equal a brighter future.

The internet cafe in Guinea is a great example of the kind of entrepreneur that is trying to make it in Africa. There are millions like this guy, just looking for a break. According to the FT article I linked, and also other research shows it, there are so many barriers to starting a business or enforcing a contract in Africa. The institutions and infrastructure are just not there yet.

The internet cafe is a great case in point - here is a small business that has great potential. The technology is capable of helping lots and lots of Guineans make connections and use information to improve their lives. You would think the government would do what it could to help them out...

This makes me think that the private sector can have a big effect. Why not enlist the Google Foundation to help finance internet cafes or broadband infrastructure in Africa. It could work along the same lines as their city-wide WiFi in San Francisco. Imagine Cisco, Google, and perhaps some local Telecoms partnering in a concerted effort, aided by organizations like the IMF or World Bank. The IMF or WB would be there to influence hesitant governments to speed up or streamline business registrations and clear up red tape - they would be the stick, Google and Cisco the Carrot.

Just a thought...

Saw this update of the $100 Laptop, a part of the "OLPC" initiative (One Laptop Per Child).

I wrote about this a few months ago in this blog... I like the idea but I think the foundations of this as a development intervention are flawed. I think the space-race levels of enthusiasm and engineering that have gone into producing this are very inspiring - but the technology should be tested here for a while - why can't inner-city American kids get a crack at this for a while to work out the bugs?

Here's another idea: Why not sell these like crazy at $250 a laptop here and in Japan and Europe, with the profits going to subsidize the developing-country children? You know it would sell - I know tons of regular college students who would snap this up. My own 3-year old daughter could use a tougher, kid friendly computer; I find myself keeping her away from my Powerbook for fear of what her sticky fingers would do...

And I still stand by my previous post about this - the laptop alone is not enough - the creators of this are too caught up in creating a cool toy for low costs, without really looking at the system they're trying to make it for... if I am being clear... Sure they'll have this great, collaborative thing, but how do they make it truly operational and useful in the environment they're envisioning it for? Who will train the teachers? Who will maintain the network? Who will install the network? Who pays for that? They only ever mention giving the laptops away or selling them at $100.

There are just too many potential bugs in the system. I'm not saying that this project should be abandoned, but they need to partner with Cisco or Google and maybe a host-government school system in a target country to really lay the foundations for this thing. It would be a shame to waste all this effort, and to set this excellent product free into the wild without the proper habitat.

I can't say much more than this article does about alleviating poverty - if you're interested in a short course in what is needed here is an excellent place to start. Published in today's New York Times. I saved it as a PDF... hopefully the NYT won't sue me. I'll take it off my site if they ask me.

I've been following venture philanthropy stories like these for a while now. I must admit my selfishness - the billions of dollars of Gates foundation money that will have to be spent every year make me feel comfortable devoting myself to the non-profit project management field. So it's nice to know that many of the people of my generation that struck it rich in Silicon Valley instead of heading off to the Peace Corps like me, are being responsible about their wealth.

This is a very unique time - back in the days of Carnegie, Rockefeller, et al, the über-billionaires were so concentrated. Today there is still gross inequality between the richest .1% and the rest, but there are many, many more run-of-the-mill multi-millionaires who realize the responsibility that comes with immense wealth.

Comb through this blog and you'll come across my development philosophy - but my MO is basically that we are all one community and should be acutely aware of how lucky we are, those of us who are lucky enough to even be born into a society like America's, let alone billionaires.

To put it in perspective - in 2005 USAID only spent about $16 million or so on Niger, the poorest country in the world. Americans have already spent like 5 times that watching the Borat movie in the last 3 weeks. We spend more on iPods in a month.

Jeffrey Sachs put some numbers together for his great book, The End of Poverty, regarding exactly how much is needed to eradicate poverty. It is absolutely affordable. It's not as if we need to transfer cash to the poorest of the poor. What is needed is at least a fair investment in alleviating the suffering of the poorest of the poor - those that have no chance of extricating themselves out of poverty (aids orphans and widow-mothers/fathers in Africa, poor subsistence farming families without land rights, etc). This entails not only effectively channeling the immense wealth we seem to be able to create, but also alleviating some of the systemic issues which affect the poor, like access to our markets.

But that's a whole other issue.