Senegal Ecovillage Microfinance Fund

This micro finance group i interviewed in march...maybe we can partner down the road?

update on Mrs. Bush visit to Senegal

Mrs. Laura Bush meets Ambassador Girls' scholarship winners during a visit to Grand Medine Primary School Tuesday, June 26, 2007, in Dakar, Senegal. President Bush's Africa Education Initiative is working to provide 550,000 scholarships to girls throughout Africa by 2010. Pictured are, from left: Khady Diome, 15, of Diohine, Senegal; Fatou Djiby, 15, of Diakhao, Senegal; Christine Ndiaye, 14, of Diakhao, Senegal; Yamama Diop, 15, of Maroneme, Senegal; and Nango Dang, 16, of Thicky Serere, Senegal. White House photo by Shealah Craighead






White House Press Release

Dakar, Senegal
June 26, 2007


Mrs. Bush's Remarks on the Africa Education Initiative

Grand Medine Primary School
11:40 A.M. (Local)

MRS. BUSH: Thank you, Mr. Minister. Thank you for your very kind words. I appreciate it. I'd like to acknowledge Mrs. Wade. Thank you very much, Madame Wade, for joining me today. I appreciate it very much. Mr. Diop, the principal, thank you for letting us be here at your school today. Mrs. Barka from UNESCO, thank you very much for joining us. Governor Diaw, we're so glad to be here. And Deputy Governor Dia, thank you for everything. And I'm especially happy that Youssou N'Dour has joined us. Thank you very, very much for being with us.

Mrs. Laura Bush delivers remarks at Grand Medine Primary School Tuesday, June 26, 2007, in Dakar, Senegal. During her visit, Mrs. Bush announced that 805,000 books to Senegal this summer through President Bush's Africa Education Initiative. White House photo by Shealah Craighead President Bush and I met Youssou N'Dour at the G8 when we were in Germany, and he was there representing Senegal. And we enjoyed seeing you very much.

And I'd like to introduce to all of you my daughter, Jenna, who has joined me here today. Jenna is a teacher in a school in Washington, D.C.

Students, faculty and distinguished guests, thanks to each and every one of you for welcoming me to the Grand Medine School, and to your beautiful country of Senegal. I'm delighted to be in Dakar to talk about what each of us can do to improve education in Senegal and in countries around the world.

In 2000, representatives of 164 nations gathered in Dakar for the World Education Forum. At this conference, more than a thousand leaders renewed their commitment to UNESCO's goal of Education for All by 2015. These leaders committed to investing in education -- for men, women, children, rich and poor.

An investment in education, no matter how significant, is always worth it. By investing in education, governments meet their other fundamental obligations: to improve opportunities for children and families, to strengthen their economies, and to keep their citizens in good health.

I know that the people of Senegal are committed to improving education in your country. Last September, Madame Wade joined me in New York for the White House Conference on Global Literacy. Thank you, Madame Wade, for your contributions to the conference, and to your country. (Applause.)

As the people of Senegal improve education for children, the American people are proud to partner with you. In 2002, our government launched the Africa Education Initiative, which provides scholarships to African girls, and which will train more than 900,000 teachers across the continent of Africa by the end of the decade.

In its first four years, the initiative has trained nearly 4,000 teachers in Senegal. AEI has provided Ambassador's Scholarships for nearly 1,300 Senegalese girls. Five of these accomplished young women are with us today. They've come from different villages to be recognized, the five new scholarship winners: Christine Ndiaye, Nango Dang, Khady Diome, Yamama Diop, and Fatou Djiby Faye. Congratulations to each of you girls. (Applause.) Here they are.

Nango says her scholarship gives her an opportunity few girls in her rural village have ever had: the chance to be educated past primary school. Now Nango plans to become the first girl in her village to attend a university.

One of the greatest obstacles to education in Nango's village and in many communities throughout Africa is a shortage of textbooks. So through the African Education Initiative, six American universities have partnered with six African countries to produce and print primary-school textbooks. AEI has supplied nearly half a million books for children here in Senegal.

Senegal's partner in the Textbooks Learning and Materials program is Elizabeth City State University in North Carolina. The chancellor of the university, Willie Gilchrist, is here today. The books produced are African centered, and tailored to the culture and curriculum of Senegal. Dr. Willie Gilchrist. (Applause.)

Many of these books were first tested here at the Grand Medine School. Your vice principal, Mrs. Ba, says they've already brought new life into the classrooms. The old texts dated back to 1979 -- before computers, before cell phones, before the Internet. The new books are up to date, and students are eager to learn about the technologies that are transforming everyday life in Senegal.

Today, I'm delighted to announce that even more communities will benefit from these new books. Over the summer, AEI will deliver another 800,000 textbooks to Senegalese children. I'm delighted to present Mrs. Ba with some of these books for the Grand Medine School. The rest will go to children across Senegal. (Applause.)

By investing in education, Senegal is making sure that your country's citizens will be active and engaged for generations to come. Educated citizens will keep themselves in better health, and strengthen Senegal's role in the global economy. Educated women will pass their knowledge along to their communities and to their children. And, as Senegal stands to benefit from these investments in education, the American people are very proud to stand with you.

Thank you very much for welcoming me to your school and to your country. I wish all the young people here the very best for your studies and for your future careers. And I look forward to strengthening the friendship between our countries through our shared commitment to education.

Thank you all very much. (Applause.)

END 11:54 A.M. (Local)














http://www.state.gov/p/af/rls/87664.htm

The Millenenum Challenge

Have you heard of this?
Since my visit to the nation's capitol last month, I've been reading and absorbing as much info as I can about foreign aid.
I'm still dumbfounded about the beltway bandits...see post...
What is wrong with foreign aid I ask myself? If you are a development worker,missionary, or someone that has seen waste...we'd like to hear about it briefly.
write me @ uwmwestafrica@yahoo.com or post a comment on the blog.
Please check out this site and study this challenge. is it realistic? My gut feeling, is no. Not with so much bureaucracy and the black market in place.
Plus plans are great...but how are they going to do this is my question?


What do you think?

Easterly vs Sachs

I've been reading both of these books...White Man's Burden and End of Poverty.
I recommend them both.
Here's some debate between the two. When I'm done, I will give my two cents worth and would love your feedback as well.


Does Foreign Aid Work?
by Lars Christian Smith

As Paul Theroux said about listening to Paul Hewson - who calls himself “Bono” -
There are probably more annoying things than being hectored about African development by a wealthy Irish rock star in a cowboy hat, but I can’t think of one at the moment.

The foreign aid debate brings out strong opinions. In one corner we have Jeffrey Sachs (The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time), an academic with a Bono-like knack for self-promotion who thinks that aid works, and in the other, William Easterley (The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good), a former World Bank aid professional who thinks it doesn’t.

Here is Easterly’s review of Sachs, “Sachs’ proposed Big Push should set off alarm bells about the dangers of hubris in economics.”

Here is Sachs’ review of Easterly (in The Lancet, of all places), “…the path to success will not be found in Easterly’s unhelpful volume.”

Here is Easterly’s response to Sachs, “Unlike Sachs, however, I believe that fixing the economics of aid is necessary for the goods to reach the poor.”


One interesting author is not mentioned. It is Ha-Joon Chang, who teaches economics at University of Cambridge (Kicking Away the Ladder: Policies and Institutions for Economic Development in Historical Perspective). Chang argues against free market fundamentalism, practically all currently industrialized nations used pervasive state intervention in their periods of industrialization. The “Washington Consensus” policies are designed not to help poor countries develop into modern economies but to lock in the advantages of the present industrial leaders.

Update: this article by William Easterly with advice to Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, 4 Ways To Spend $60 Billion Wisely.

On the lighter side...

Ok...poverty...war...aids epedemic...corruption...lost souls
All these things can add up to being a bummer when you try and make efforts in working in Africa...so I want to lighten up a bit.
Most generally, I am a guy who is on the lighter side. I like to think of myself as a follower of Jesus who knows this is all temporary. Sometimes this does get me in trouble...but in the long run, I sleep pretty good at night.
Ok...for some fun stuff. The other night, my wife and i and my two kids were at Lifest...an outdoor festival for Christian music. Two of my favorite bands were there. David Crowder and Toby Mac. Hey, I'm in my mid forties and with a birthday coming up next Saturday, I'll be closer to fifty than I am to forty, my wife and I endured the mosh pit for these two bands. Let me tell you something, you need to be full of grace when you are in the front row with a couple of thousand teenagers. (my wife and i are convinced we were the only people in our forties in the middle of this!)
But, let me tell you this as well. THIS WAS A BLAST!
WE PARTIED FOR JESUS BABY!
We had so much fun, just singing worship songs with Crowder and then ...I'm not sure what you call it...bopping with Toby Mac. ( another side note...we just got a new puppy in March...and i wanted to name him 'Toby'...but was voted down :(
Now for the real kicker....after an hour and one half of being shoved around and losing my hearing...Toby Mac's drummer comes out to the end of the stage and whips out his remaining drum stick. Guess what? That baby was coming right for me. And as any good Christian would do...he grabs it away from some little zit riddened teenager for a life long souvenir! i did sell it to my teenage daughter for a sweet price...however.
It was like ...(you notice my grammar is like...a teenager?) it was coming in slow motion right for me. I can still see it coming down...saying "Don't miss it!"

Isn't that a bit like God at times? Sometimes things are coming right down at us...and well we miss it...to busy with life and all the things that distract us.
Take some time today...and don't miss what God has to say to you.

African countries banning Plastic Bags...

Why Uganda hates the plastic bag
By Mark Whitaker
BBC News, Uganda

This weekend Uganda joins the growing number of East African countries which have banned the plastic bag in an attempt to clean up cities and prevent environmental damage including blocked drains.

Trader wrapping cakes in plastic bags
The ban covers the manufacture, import and use of plastic bags
Before your eyes become accustomed to the sight and the stench, the Chitezi municipal dump - which serves the Ugandan capital, Kampala - is like a scene from a painting by Bosch, a premonition of the Apocalypse, or a vision of Hell.

High in the sky, great birds wheel around on the thermals. At first glance, they look like giant vultures, casting ominous shadows on the ragged human scavengers strewn around below.

But as they touch down on the grey, stinking moonscape, they seem to take on a ghastly sub-human form themselves. Like cowled priests bent over the rotting piles.

With their moth-eaten plumage, grotesque "alopecia-ed" heads, and sinister reptilian eyes, these are Africa's nightmare birds - marabou storks - fencing with their murderous bills over the carcass of a plastic sack they have ripped apart.

Flocking here in their hundreds, the ravenous birds are making a feast of Kampala's refuse, squabbling with their human competitors over the richest pickings.

Waste management

Grey women in flip-flops - some with babes in arms - clamber over piles of jagged metal and broken glass. Men - dust-bathed and ragged - push and shove to be first in line when the next truck comes, bringing the very latest delivery of detritus from the city.

Map of Uganda

One of the ragged men, Ezekiel, told me he had worked at Chitezi every day from sun up to sun down, collecting plastic for the past 10 years - for 50 pence a day.

Ezekiel told me he had thought long and hard about how the city could better organise its ramshackle waste management. Nobody ever listened, he said.

But Ezekiel - a man at the very bottom of Uganda's social heap - still had lots to say about his country's most talked-about attempt to tidy itself up: Uganda's proposed ban on plastic bags.

Here they are called buveera, and they are everywhere.

Only a tiny fraction of them end up at Chitezi. Instead, once discarded, they are blown in the wind, washed into drains and water courses and eventually ground into the earth.

Uganda is blessed with some of the richest soil in Africa, but around the towns and villages it is laced with plastic.

New strata are forming - a layer cake of polythene and poisoned soil, through which Uganda's rains can never percolate.

Instead, dotted around Chitezi are stagnant pools where even the storks will not drink. Their fetid waters bubble with the methane brewing beneath them.

Bags are 'poison'

In the slums and shanties buveera are breeding grounds for disease.

With no mains water and no sewerage system, the bags are used as toilets. Flying latrines they are called, because when you have filled them, you throw them as far away as you can.

And when the rains come and wash them out there is a good chance that some little boy or girl sent on an errand will see a bag in the street and use it again, to carry firewood or maybe food.

In one of Kampala's slums I spoke to Bobby Wine - currently Uganda's biggest home-grown pop star, a man who styles himself Ghetto President and Hygiene Ambassador.

He still lives and works in the slums, and he has written pop songs about plastic carrier bags. He calls them poison.

He points to neighbouring Rwanda.

"Man", he says, "that's a poorer country than Uganda - but at the border if you have buveera, they tell you that you can't come in. Why can't we be like Rwanda?"

Well, the answer is that Uganda will be like Rwanda.

Pioneering legislation

After a fair amount of stalling, the government has just announced that from 1 July the manufacture, import and use of plastic bags thinner than 30 microns will be banned. All other polythene will be subject to a whopping 120% tax.

Uganda's capital city
Kampala, Uganda's capital, is spread over a series of hills

The decision is perhaps timely. Kampala is gearing itself up for a visit by the Queen in November for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting - or Chogm.

Everyone is talking about Chogm. The symptoms of Chogm fever - a rash of new buildings, a sudden outbreak of civic pride, general hyperactivity and the smell of new paint - are everywhere. And Chogm may have spelt the beginning of the end for buveera.

With disarming frankness, the country's environment minister, Jesca Eriyo, confessed to me that she was embarrassed by her capital city's lamentable standards of waste management; by Chitezi; by its sea of polythene, and its flying latrines.

Now, at last, they could all be headed for the exit door. And not just in Uganda. Neighbouring Kenya is introducing similar legislation. Tanzania wants to go even further and ban plastic drinks containers as well.

Despite its problems and its poverty, East Africa is blazing a trail which many in prosperous Middle England can only dream of following.

And the people I spoke to - the minister, the pop star, the shopkeepers of Kampala, or Ezekiel at the dump - all seemed happy to be pioneers in a post polythene age.

As one man in a corner shop put it: "Good riddance, who asked for all this plastic in the first place?"

U2 or ME2

The following article I found on All Africa.com.
I find it interesting that with all publicity these celebrities get in Africa, that we still have deeper issues in Africa than what you see on Tv or read in print.
Africa is hurting ...no doubt. While some of the comments of Mr. Easterly I do agree with, there are some that I believe he is disillusioned with .
For instance, I believe he downplays war deaths. Umm....I believe in developed countries...these are non-existent. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, in the last 10 years, there are a reported four million people killed. And then not to mention the millions who were raped, maimed and forever mentally scared from civil unrest.
I'm sorry, but this isn't a pretty picture. More than 680,000,000 people live in Africa, and if you take .5% of that...well that's too much.
Now for what I agree with. Yes, the west loves to show starving children and the flies that surround them. it makes great TV. But, from the little experience I have had in Africa, this is not a correct image to 'stereotype' Africa. African's love to dance, sing, and joke with each other. They love relationships...genuine ones...Most are kind, give their shirt off their back friendly.
I ordered his book and look forward to reading it. I think he does have some great points and I'm a positive thinker and I like to think postive...but I'm also a realist and know that Africa as a whole has many issues...just like all of us.
Hey ...don't shy away to comment on this article or my thoughts...




Africa: What Bono Doesn't Say About the Continent

OPINION
10 July 2007
Posted to the web 11 July 2007

William Easterly

JUST WHEN IT SEEMED that Western images of Africa could not get any weirder, the July 2007 special Africa issue of Vanity Fair was published, complete with a feature article on "Madonna's Malawi."

At the same time, the memoirs of an African child soldier are on sale at your local Starbucks, and celebrity activist Bob Geldof is touring Africa yet again, followed by TV cameras, to document that "War, Famine, Plague & Death are the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and these days they're riding hard through the back roads of Africa."

It's a dark and scary picture of a helpless, backward continent that's being offered up to TV watchers and coffee drinkers. But in fact, the real Africa is quite a bit different. And the problem with all this Western stereotyping is that it manages to snatch defeat from the jaws of some current victories, fueling support for patronizing Western policies designed to rescue the allegedly helpless African people while often discouraging those policies that might actually help.

Let's begin with those rampaging Four Horsemen. Do they really explain Africa today? What percentage of the African population would you say dies in war every year? What share of male children, age 10 to 17, are child soldiers? How many Africans are afflicted by famine or died of AIDS last year or are living as refugees?

In each case, the answer is one-half of 1% of the population or less. In some cases it's much less; for example, annual war deaths have averaged 1 out of every 10,800 Africans for the last four decades. That doesn't lessen the tragedy, of course, of those who are such victims, and maybe there are things the West can do to help them. But the typical African is a long way from being a starving, AIDS-stricken refugee at the mercy of child soldiers. The reality is that many more Africans need latrines than need Western peacekeepers - but that doesn't play so well on TV.

Further distortions of Africa emanate from former British Prime Minister Tony Blair's star-studded Africa Progress Panel (which includes the ubiquitous Geldof). The panel laments in its 2007 news release that Africa remains "far short" of its goal of making "substantial inroads into poverty reduction." But this doesn't quite square with the sub-Saharan Africa that in 2006 registered its third straight year of good GDP growth - about 6%, well above historic averages for either today's rich countries or all developing countries. Growth of living standards in the last five years is the highest in Africa's history.

The real Africa also has seen cellphone and Internet use double every year for the last seven years. Foreign private capital inflows into Africa hit $38 billion in 2006 - more than foreign aid. Africans are saving a higher percentage of their incomes than Americans are (so much for the "poverty trap" of being "too poor to save" endlessly repeated in aid reports). I agree that it's too soon to conclude that Africa is on a stable growth track, but why not celebrate what Africans have already achieved?

Instead, the international development establishment is rigging the game to make Africa - which is, of course, still very poor - look even worse than it really is. It announces, for instance, that Africa is the only region that is failing to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs in aid-speak) set out by the United Nations.

Well, it takes extraordinary growth to cut extreme poverty rates in half by 2015 (the first goal) when a near-majority of the population is poor, as is the case in Africa. (Latin America, by contrast, requires only modest growth to halve its extreme poverty rate from 10% to 5%.)

This is how Blair's panel managed to call Africa's recent growth successes a failure. But the reality is that virtually all other countries that have escaped extreme poverty did so through the kind of respectable growth that Africa is enjoying - not the kind of extraordinary growth that would have been required to meet the arbitrary Millennium Development Goals.

Africa will also fail to meet the second goal of universal primary education by 2015. But this goal is also rigged against Africa, because Africa started with an unusually low percentage of children enrolled in elementary school. As economist Michael Clemens points out, most African countries have actually expanded enrollments far more rapidly over the last five decades than Western countries did during their development, but Africans still won't reach the arbitrary aid target of universal enrollment by 2015. For example, the World Bank condemned Burkina Faso in 2003 as "seriously off track" to meet the second MDG, yet the country has expanded elementary education at more than twice the rate of Western historical experience, and it is even far above the faster educational expansions of all other developing countries in recent decades.

Why do aid organizations and their celebrity backers want to make African successes look like failures? One can only speculate, but it certainly helps aid agencies get more publicity and more money if problems seem greater than they are. As for the stars - well, could Africa be saving celebrity careers more than celebrities are saving Africa?

In truth, Africans are and will be escaping poverty the same way everybody else did: through the efforts of resourceful entrepreneurs, democratic reformers and ordinary citizens at home, not through PR extravaganzas of ill-informed outsiders.

The real Africa needs increased trade from the West more than it needs more aid handouts. A respected Ugandan journalist, Andrew Mwenda, made this point at a recent African conference despite the fact that the world's most famous celebrity activist - Bono - was attempting to shout him down. Mwenda was suffering from too much reality for Bono's taste: "What man or nation has ever become rich by holding out a begging bowl?" asked Mwenda.
Relevant Links
West Africa
Ghana

Perhaps Bono was grouchy because his celebrity-laden "Red" campaign to promote Western brands to finance begging bowls for Africa has spent $100 million on marketing and generated sales of only $18 million, according to a recent report. But the fact remains that the West shows a lot more interest in begging bowls than in, say, letting African cotton growers compete fairly in Western markets (see the recent collapse of world trade talks).

Today, as I sip my Rwandan gourmet coffee and wear my Nigerian shirt here in New York, and as European men eat fresh Ghanaian pineapple for breakfast and bring Kenyan flowers home to their wives, I wonder what it will take for Western consumers to learn even more about the products of self-sufficient, hardworking, dignified Africans. Perhaps they should spend less time consuming Africa disaster stereotypes from television and Vanity Fair.

The writer is a professor of economics at New York University, Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution and the author of "The White Man's Burden: How the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good".