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Apr
29
Investing in Nigeria
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“fastest growing generator” of sovereign wealth over the last five years, recording a growth of 291 percent.
Nigeria outperformed other countries that had also made significant progress including Oman, which grew its sovereign wealth by 256 percent; Kazakhstan (162 percent); Angola (84 percent); Russia (74 percent), and Brazil (65 percent).
This comes two weeks after I read that J.P Morgan is returning to Nigeria, planning to establish a 40-man strong office.
Is the Nigerian economy really that attractive?
Apr
13
Rethinking Global Health Priorities: HIV/AIDS, Poverty and Basic Health Services
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Lately, I have inundated myself with a series of incredibly enlightening dispatches from TED Talks. Listening to them, especially those related to international health and development has been a wonderful respite from my undesirably excessive clinical workload. The one by University of Chicago economist, Emily Oster, who shared her work and ideas on HIV/AIDS in Africa at last year’s TED, however struck me as particularly, if unwittingly, poorly conceived. Her theoretical abstractions reveal in shameful detail how easily tainted the lens through which the developing world is seen from the outside, and the kind of thinking that underlie the misconceptions that inform the largely skewed global health priorities.
Emily Oster based her first argument on a shaky, if not completely false premise, justifying a claim that there was no behavioural change in response to the HIV pandemic in Africa by juxtaposing data from two radically different cohorts — homosexuals in the US and heterosexuals in Africa. High HIV prevalence within a population where there is widespread awareness of heterosexual sex as the predominant mode of transmission will result in increased rate of abstinence from sex or at least a modification of sexual behaviour as an evolutionary compulsion to preserve the species. Without elaborate public health campaign to promote abstinence, HIV prevalence would have reduced on its own. That is what you would expect, but Oster says it was not so in Africa. She compares data from gay men in the US in the eighties, (where the men that had more than 1 unprotected sexual partner within a month reduced from 85% to 55% in 4 years) with data from single men having premarital sex and married men having extramarital sex in Africa dropped by only 2%.
There are obvious flaws in Oster’s argument apart from cohort mismatch. Her homosexual cohort had a reduction in the number of unprotected sexual partners, whereas there was no specification as to the nature of sex amongst the African cohort: protected or not, homosexual or heterosexual. She did not give any idea of the HIV prevalence amongst the said African population(s), so we cannot possibly estimate the cost of sex among the population, and arrive at any predictable behavioural change based on that. We know though, that HIV prevalence among gay men was about the highest in America in the early and mid eighties.
However, even if Emily Oster’s two cohorts were by any chance or twist of logic comparable, and if there was indeed no behavioural change in response to HIV in Africa, her explanation for this — the cost of abstinence is so high that in the presence of low life expectancy, people would rather not bother to live healthy lifestyles, they’d rather prefer to expose themselves to the risk of contracting HIV/AIDS since they’re gonna die early anyway — is as unconvincing and implausible. Oster demonstrated that in places and within populations in Africa with high prevalence of malaria and high maternal mortality, there was no positive change in sexual behaviour in response to HIV. She did this, totally ignoring two huge, glaringly obvious confounding variables, poverty and lack of basic health services, leading causes of low life expectancy in Africa, together with lack of adequate sanitation and good water supply, which promote the presence and spread of diseases, and in themselves, inextricably linked to poverty.
This is actually where Oster’s greatest mistake lies, and unfortunately, it is what forms the main thrust of her thesis. M. Khan and colleagues in Burkina Faso, found that even within a developing country, the sex network within rural areas is denser, more closely interlinked than in urban areas, and the percentage of those who receive goods for sex is far greater in the semi-rural border area (45%) and urban area (31%) than in the rural areas (12%). This is easily explained. There is far greater homogeneity in relation to poverty in rural areas compared to urban or semi-rural areas, and so there are fewer people who are prepared to offer money or goods for sex. Poverty too breeds idleness, and it is easy to imagine that an idle man will easily have multiple sexual partners in a community where money is not given in return for sex. This explains why poverty may be associated with high levels of sexual activity. In these settings, there is high maternal mortality both from unsafe abortion, and because maternity care is not available. Where poverty abounds and basic health services are not there, mortality from malaria will be high. Where there is no access to basic health services like STI prevention and treatment and modern contraception, there will be poor awareness of the presence, reality and prevalence of HIV. Illness and death from HIV is attributed to other diseases, witchcraft, the will of God et cetera, hence diagnostic, prevention and treatment services, even if available will suffer low uptake in the absence of these basic health services.
Emily Oster however asserts that HIV prevalence rises with increase in economic activity and urbanization. She evokes the oft-quoted high HIV prevalence amongst truck drivers and migrants to support this claim. She also showed that the fall in HIV prevalence in Uganda was closely associated with a fall in the export price of tobacco, Uganda’s main export commodity. All of these are true, if only in part, but yet again, she misses the point. It is not wealth as an absolute quantity that encourages increase in sexual activity, hence HIV prevalence; rather it is the widening of the gap between the rich and the poor, increased contact between the rich and the poor, and the attendant dynamics, the differential power gradient, that characterises the relationships between the two classes. Much of extramarital and premarital sex is facilitated by an economic advantage of one party, often the male, over the other. With a fall in export price of tobacco in Uganda for example, the gap between the rich and the poor is less, there is less money available to maintain multiple sexual partners and visit commercial sex workers, thereby reducing the sexual network, and also, predictably, HIV prevalence, at least in part.
Marjolein Gysels and colleagues at the Medical Research Council Programme on AIDS observed and interviewed truck drivers and commercial sex workers at a roadside town in southwest Uganda. Truck drivers are a high-risk group for HIV due to their sexual networking and long periods away from home. They stop at towns along major routes to eat, sleep, sell goods and 94% of those interviewed would regularly have sex when they spend the night at the truck stop. Commercial sex work was found to be common but quite hidden and implicit in this setting and is centered around roadside bars; hence intermediaries are often involved in negotiations between drivers and commercial sex workers. However, in the wake of HIV/AIDS, the middlemen on whom truck drivers rely to find women have had an additional role, which is to identify HIV-negative women, and in spite of this, condom use was reportedly high, at 95%, in marked contrast to local men. HIV prevalence used to be very high among drivers and at truck stops. In the study town it was 40% in 1991; in the surrounding district it was 8% in 2001. The demand for casual sex however appears not to have decreased among truck drivers in the era of HIV, but there is a general awareness that this lifestyle carries the risk of infection. This shows indeed, that there has been behaviour change in response to the HIV pandemic in Africa; contrary to what Emily Oster will have us believe.
In 2004, 12% of children with malaria died as inpatients at the national hospital in Guinea-Bissau. Special drug kits for children with severe and complicated malaria were introduced, but this did not reduce mortality. In an award winning BMJ study in 2007, Sidu Biai and colleagues tested in a randomised trial of under-5 children admitted with malaria, whether removal of prescription charges, strict monitoring of patients, and financial incentives for doctors and nurses could reduce mortality. Mortality indeed came down to 5% in the intervention group and 10% in controls, reflecting the crucial role of poverty in mortality from malaria. The only difference between the two groups was that doctors and nurses were given financial incentives in one group and they were not in the other, which alone reduced the mortality by as much as 5%. Given, the drugs were free in both groups; maybe that explains a fall in mortality from 12% pre trial to 10% in the control group. Weigh this against the 5% reduction, when health workers were given added incentives. From this, it is clear that with just three simple interventions — i.e. if we could make basic health services available, if patients could afford the drugs and other services and if health workers were well remunerated — we could cut under-5 mortality from malaria by more than half.
It is much the same story with maternal mortality. Obstructed labour and ruptured uterus, eclampsia and other forms of hypertensive disease in pregnancy, obstetric haemorrhage mostly postpartum, puerperal sepsis, and unsafe abortion are still the main causes of maternal mortality. However, in the presence of accessible basic health services, they disappear as in Sri Lanka where maternal mortality ratio dropped from 550 per 100,000 live births in 1950-55 to 80 per 100,000 live births in 1975-80, and 58 per 100,000 live births in 2005. This was achieved by introducing a system of health centres all over Sri Lanka, and making quality maternal care services available and accessible to all including in rural areas. In Sri Lanka, 94% (1993) of deliveries are assisted by a skilled attendant, compared to 42% (1999) in Nigeria, with one of the worst maternal mortality ratios in the world (1,100 per 100,000 live births). This has been replicated in Cuba, where in 1970, the maternal mortality ratio was 73 per 100,000 live births, and in 2000, it had more than halved to 33 per 100,000 live births. In 1999, skilled attendants assisted every (100%) delivery in Cuba, after maternity care services were made available and free including accessible referral centres for complications.
Hospital wards in many developing countries are a heartbreaking, pathetic sight. The most basic and common place of materials, things you would otherwise take for granted, the most routine of investigations are often procured at great cost, from private pharmacies and laboratories that have clustered around government run hospitals over the years owing to the ineptitude of the hospitals to run efficient services. Worse still, these hospitals stock the drugs and have those equipments, but the regular story is that the equipment stopped working after a few months, the model is outdated, there are no staff to man them because they are off moonlighting or do not work during call hours or take weekend shifts, or even the bureaucracy of getting to buy the drugs or get the investigations done in the hospital is enough to push them outside. No matter how bad a patient is, no matter the emergency, the family usually has to pay for services and procure materials for treatment at the point of service. Usually, there are no provisions for emergency. These patients are also seen by poorly motivated health workers, who themselves are poorly paid. The distance from access, the prohibitive costs of hospital treatment and admission keep patients away, all contribute heavily to low life expectancy.
In sharp contrast to this, some new structures are also sprouting in hospitals or around them. They are highly efficient units, dedicated to single disease programmes, often HIV/AIDS, provided and funded by external donors. An AIDS orphan who lives with siblings in squalor without access to insecticide treated nets and artemisinin based combination therapy for malaria, whose sister does not have access to specialised obstetric care in pregnancy, gets antiretrovirals for free at these units. Those with more rou¬tine diseases receive poor care and still have to pay. Hospital staff who are supposed to be at their duty posts seeing patients that they were trained and being paid salaries and allowances to see are often busy running those units, with extra remuneration often in hard currency, often surpassing their salaries, at great expense of the system. This is the newest brand of internal brain drain in sub-Saharan Africa.
Single disease priorities generally weaken health systems. Of all, spending on HIV research, treatment and prevention activities is the most notorious example of this prodigality. In 2006, although Zambia’s entire Ministry of Health budget was only $136m, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief provided the country with an HIV targeted budget of $150m. This unbalanced distribution of health funding occurs across sub-Saharan Africa. Making HIV into a pivot, raising it to the status of the zeitgeist of the times has indeed skewed health priorities at both national – in many developing countries – and, most importantly at global levels. There is only so much we can achieve, with HIV at the centre of our planning and initiatives. We cannot move ahead while we ignore so much. What more evidence do we need, than that with all the spending on HIV, much too little is being achieved.
Healthcare and development are so interlinked that it would be grossly wrong to interpret data without due consideration for the whole picture and connections that are not immediately apparent. It is not enough to have epidemiological data, without the insight to interpret them and discern underlying trends. Poverty and the lack of basic social and health services is at the centre of what defines developing countries, and that is really where our attention should be focussed in trying to find solutions to problems in these countries; any thinking that as much as puts these as second to any other priority is ultimately bound to fail. Until these form the crux of both local and global public health interest and policy, much of our effort will only continue to result in the proverbial one step forward, two steps backward.
*This is the first in a series of posts from guest bloggers.
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Seye Abimbola is a medical doctor in Nigeria. This article is an abridged version of an article that will be published in the Spring edition of Perspectives on Global Issues.
Mar
26
“The Economic And Political Effects Of The CFA Zone” from Ocnus.net
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The Economic And Political Effects Of The CFA Zone
By Dr Gary K Busch
One of the most important influences in the economic and political life of African states which were formerly French colonies is the impact of a common currency; the Communuate Financiere de l’Afrique (‘CFA’) franc. There are actually two separate CFA francs in circulation. The first is that of the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) which comprises eight West African countries (Benin, Burkina Faso, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Togo. The second is that of the Central African Economic and Monetary Community (CEMAC) which comprises six Central African countries (Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo-Brazzaville, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon), This division corresponds to the pre-colonial AOF (Afrique Occidentale Française) and the AEF (Afrique Équatoriale Française), with the exception that Guinea-Bissau was formerly Portuguese and Equatorial Guinea Spanish).
Each of these two groups issues its own CFA franc. The WAEMU CFA franc is issued by the BCEAO (Banque Centrale des Etats de l’Afrique de l’Ouest) and the CEMAC CFA franc is issued by the BEAC (Banque des Etats de l’Afrique Centrale). These currencies were originally both pegged at 100 CFA for each French franc but, after France joined the European Community’s Euro zone at a fixed rate of 6.65957 French francs to one Euro, the CFA rate to the Euro was fixed at CFA 665,957 to each Euro, maintaining the 100 to 1 ratio. It is important to note that it is the responsibility of the French Treasury to guarantee the convertibility of the CFA to the Euro.
The monetary policy governing such a diverse aggregation of countries is uncomplicated because it is, in fact, operated by the French Treasury, without reference to the central fiscal authorities of any of the WAEMU or the CEMAC. Under the terms of the agreement which set up these banks and the CFA the Central Bank of each African country is obliged to keep at least 65% of its foreign exchange reserves in an “operations account” held at the French Treasury, as well as another 20% to cover financial liabilities.
The CFA central banks also impose a cap on credit extended to each member country equivalent to 20% of that country’s public revenue in the preceding year. Even though the BEAC and the BCEAO have an overdraft facility with the French Treasury, the drawdowns on those overdraft facilities are subject to the consent of the French Treasury. The final say is that of the French Treasury which has invested the foreign reserves of the African countries in its own name on the Paris Bourse.
In short, more than 80% of the foreign reserves of these African countries are deposited in the “operations accounts” controlled by the French Treasury. The two CFA banks are African in name, but have no monetary policies of their own. The countries themselves do not know, nor are they told, how much of the pool of foreign reserves held by the French Treasury belongs to them as a group or individually. The earnings of the investment of these funds in the French Treasury pool are supposed to be added to the pool but no accounting is given to either the banks or the countries of the details of any such changes. The limited group of high officials in the French Treasury who have knowledge of the amounts in the “operations accounts”, where these funds are invested; whether there is a profit on these investments; are prohibited from disclosing any of this information to the CFA banks or the central banks of the African states.
This makes it impossible for African members to regulate their own monetary policies. The most inefficient and wasteful countries are able to use the foreign reserves of the more prudent countries without any meaningful intervention by the wealthier and more successful countries. The fact that as the French GDP grows and the parity of the Euro to the dollar (the main currency of international trade) appreciates there is the constant danger that the CFA franc may be fixed at too high an exchange rate. This dampens the growth in trade between Africa and the rest of the world and allows other countries, especially in Asia, to use their more flexible exchange rates to gain market share, supplanting the Africans.
The creation and maintenance of the French domination of the francophone African economies is the product of a long period of French colonialism and the learned dependence of the African states. For most of francophone Africa there is only limited power allowed to their central banks. These are economies whose vulnerability to an increasingly globalised economy is increasing daily. There can be no trade policy without reference to currency; there can be no investment without reference to reserves. The politicians and parties elected to promote growth, reform, changes in trade and fiscal policies are made irrelevant except with the consent of the French Treasury which rations their funds. There are many who object to the continuation of this system. President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal has stated this very clearly “The African people’s money stacked in France must be returned to Africa in order to benefit the economies of the BCEAO member states. One cannot have billions and billions placed on foreign stock markets and at the same time say that one is poor, and then go beg for money.”
How Did This Happen?
This system of dependence is a direct result of the colonial policies of the French Government. In the immediate post-war period after the signing of the Bretton Woods Agreement in July 1944 the French economy urgently needed to recover. To assist in this process it set up the first CFA amongst its African colonies to guarantee a captive market for its goods. The principal decision which resulted from the Bretton Woods Agreement was the abandonment of the Gold Standard. In short, the new system gave a dominant place to the dollar. The other currencies saw their exchange rate indexed to the dollar. The reserves of the European central banks at that time consisted of currencies of dubious post-war value and gold which had been de-pegged from the fluctuations of the currency. For this reason France needed the currencies of its colonies to support its competitiveness with its American and British competitors. De Gaulle and his main economic advisor, Pierre Mendès France met with some African leaders and developed a Colonial Pact which would enshrine this is in a treaty (with both public and secret clauses). The genius behind this was Jacques Foccart, France’s “Mister Africa”.
Decolonization south of the Sahara did not happen as de Gaulle had intended. He had wanted a Franco-African Community that stopped short of total independence. But when Sekou Toure’s Guinea voted “no” in the 1958 referendum on that Community, the idea was effectively dead. Guinea was cast into outer darkness because of its decision and a Community of sorts came into existence, but the call of full independence proved too strong to resist.
Not really having planned for it, in 1960 de Gaulle had to improvise structures for a collection of small newly independent states, each with a flag, an anthem, and a seat at the UN, but often with precious little else. It was here that Foccart came to play an essential role, that of architect of the series of Cooperation accords with each new state in the sectors of finance and economy, culture and education, and the military. There were initially eleven countries involved: Mauritania, Senegal, Cote d’Ivoire, Dahomey (now Benin), Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso), Niger, Chad, Gabon, Central African Republic, Congo-Brazzaville, and Madagascar. Togo and Cameroon, former UN Trust Territories, were also co-opted into the club. So, too, later on, were Mall and the former Belgian territories (Ruanda-Urundi, now Rwanda and Burundi, and Congo-Kinshasa), some of the ex-Portuguese territories, and Comoros and Djibouti, which had also been under French rule for many years but became independent in the 1970s. The whole ensemble was put under a new Ministry of Cooperation, created in 1961, separate from the Ministry of Overseas Departments and Territories (known as the DOM-TOM) that had previously run them all.
The key to all this was the agreement signed between France and its newly-liberated African colonies which locked these colonies into the economic and military embrace of France. This Colonial Pact not only created the institution of the CFA franc, it created a legal mechanism under which France obtained a special place in the political and economic life of its colonies.
The Pacte Coloniale Agreement enshrined a special preference for France in the political, commercial and defence processes in the African countries. On defence it agreed two types of continuing contact. The first was the open agreement on military co-operation or Technical Military Aid (AMT) agreements, which weren’t legally binding, and could be suspended according to the circumstances. They covered education, training of servicemen and African security forces. The second type, secret and binding, were defense agreements supervised and implemented by the French Ministry of Defense, which served as a legal basis for French interventions. These agreements allowed France to have predeployed troops in Africa; in other words, French army units present permanently and by rotation in bases and military facilities in Africa; run entirely by the French.
According to Annex II of the Defence Agreement signed between the governments of the French Republic, the Republic of Ivory Coast, the Republic of Dahomey and the Republic of Niger on 24 April 1961, France has priority in the acquisition of those “raw materials classified as strategic.” In fact, according to article 2 of the agreement, “the French Republic regularly informs the Republic of Ivory Coast (and the other two) of the policy that it intends to follow concerning strategic raw materials and products, taking into account the general needs of defence, the evolution of resources and the situation of the world market.”
According to article 3, “the Republic of Ivory Coast (and the other two) inform the French Republic of the policy they intend to follow concerning strategic raw materials and products and the measures that they propose to take to implement this policy.” And to conclude, article 5: “Concerning these same products, the Republic of Ivory Coast (and the two others) for defence needs, reserve them in priority for sale to the French Republic, after having satisfied the needs of internal consumption, and they will import what they need in priority from it.” The reciprocity between the signatories was not a bargain between equals, but reflected the actual dominance of the colonial power that had, in the case of these countries, organised “independence” a few months previously (in August 1960).
In summary, the colonial pact maintained the French control over the economies of the African states; it took possession of their foreign currency reserves; it controlled the strategic raw materials of the country; it stationed troops in the country with the right of free passage; it demanded that all military equipment be acquired from France; it took over the training of the police and army; it required that French businesses be allowed to maintain monopoly enterprises in key areas (water, electricity, ports, transport, energy, etc.). France not only set limits on the imports of a range of items from outside the franc zone but also set minimum quantities of imports from France. These treaties are still in force and operational.
The creation of such a system was not the preserve of the French National Assembly or the result of any democratic process. It was the result of policies conducted by a small group of people in the President’s office, the ‘African Cell’, initially led by Foccart. For the past half-century, the secretive and powerful “African Cell” has overseen France’s strategic interests in Africa, holding sway over a wide swath of former French colonies. Acting as a general command, the Cell uses France’s military as a hammer to install leaders it deems friendly to French interests. In return, these countries give French industries first crack at their oil and other natural resources. Sidestepping traditional diplomatic channels, the Cell reports only to one person: the president. The Cell’s close ties to oil giant Elf Aquitaine, where top executives were jailed on corruption charges, was a source of embarrassment. And a former Cell chief has now been convicted of charges related to arms trafficking to Angola. These highly contentious policy issues never came before any of France’s democratically-elected bodies. African policy is the personal fiefdom of the President’s office.
This was true for De Gaulle, Mitterand, Giscard D’Estaing and Chirac. Sarkozy apparently has no contacts or ambitions in this field and has left Chirac’s Cell in place.
The Impact of the Colonial Pact
Some of the consequences for the Africa countries of the continuation of a policy of dependence are obvious – lack of competitive options; dependence on the French economy; dependence on the French military; and the open-door policy for French private enterprise. However, there are more subtle differences which arise.
The French companies in francophone Africa, by virtue of their protected monopolistic or oligarchic status, contribute a substantial share of the GDP of these countries. More importantly, however, they are often the single largest group of taxpayers. In many of these countries the French corporations pay over 50% of the national tax revenues collected. This gives them a unique status. Quite frequently the French say that without the French companies the economy of the African state will collapse. When coupled with the inability of the country to access its reserves it undoubtedly true. However, it doesn’t follow that private corporations from other countries, like the U.S. or China, would not contribute equally. This is one reason that the French are so concerned with allowing competition into the market place.
Another aspect of this is the inability of these francophone countries to collect taxes from its ordinary citizens. In a country like the Ivory Coast which has been divided for a number of years between the rebel North and the loyalist South, tax collections in the rebel regions have been impossible. The rebels have waxed fat on taxes and fees imposed on their captive populations and the sale of stolen goods from their regions. They do not want to disarm because it will have a deleterious economic effect on them, not just a political one.
The lack of a citizenry paying taxes breeds a gulf between the government and the citizens; mutual responsibility is missing in the equation. It is the job of the National Assembly to legislate for programs based on the supply of revenue to the state, but if there are insufficient revenues the National Assembly is frustrated in its role. If 80% of the funds go to France as part of the CFA franc project there is little left for the ministers and the National Assembly to allocate for social programs.
In many of the francophone countries, suffering under conditions of drought, lack of food; lack of health care; it is only French ‘aid’ to the national treasuries that sustains them. This ‘aid’ is often their own money which the French have shepherded for them.
There are many in Africa who have seen and understood the problem of the CFA franc and the Colonial Pact. Mamadou Koulibaly, the President of the National Assembly in the Ivory Coast has been an outspoken critic of the Colonial Pact and the dominance of the CFA franc. He has written an excellent book on the subject and gives speeches and interviews on the subject regularly. The problem is that very few people understand the fundamental iniquity of this French system; including many Africans.
If African nations are to achieve growth and participate fully in the opportunities of globalisation they must be freed from the fetters of this colonial albatross. In order to attract additional direct investment in the economies, as opposed to just portfolio investment this situation must be changed. In the words of President Koulibaly, “In Africa we do not need alms, our problem is not due to a lack of money. My conviction is that we must first of all clearly state our ownership rights over our own land and the resources in our soil which were taken away by the colonialists when they conquered our countries, and still be taken away through the Colonial Pact”.
Feb
16
Blogging Busy
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The best blogs — the most read blogs — are done by people who typically have multiple roles as academics, journalists, policy practitioners, think tank intellectuals, closeted soldiers, and the like. The busiest people with no time on their hands generally write the best blogs.
But I feel tempted to add that these busy people need to have really regular access to the internet. You can read the rest of the interview here.
Nov
11
Today at Home, Exploring Blogs
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Although I had already visited
Nov
7
The article also talks of the injection of Hitler with amphetamine every morning before breakfast, a ritual that started in 1941. It was found, after the war, that Dr Morell was administering eye-drops from a mixture that contained 10 percent cocaine up to 10 times a day to Adolf. Now, take all these together, add to it a dash of absolute dictatorship and you get the man currently known as Hitler.
Showing Hitler
As I was reading the article I remembered Der Untergang, a movie that showed the last few days of Hitler and the Third Reich. The movie was condemned by many as showing a human side to the monster Hitler, and making it possible for people to probably sympathise with him rather than despise him as the true beast that he was. People of that opinion would find a conclusion that one could draw from this article really alarming. For, according to evidence provided in the article, one could say that much of Hitler’s later life was lived as a man under serious medication, as a man who should have at best been sent to undergo detox, and at worst condemned to some recovery home for drug addicts. That sure will not go down well with many people. It would have made for a more informative read had Tony Perrottet, the author of the article, been clearer on some of these issues.
Oct
31
Eric Clapton: Tears in Heaven
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I woke up this morning with the song in my head, looked for it on Youtube, and decided to share it. He was recently interviewed by Larry King on CNN. I couldn’t find a link to the edition on the CNN website, but you can subscribe to the podcast through iTunes at the CNN podcasts page. Eric Clapton has an interesting story to tell. The text of the song is below.
Tears in Heaven
Would you know my name
If I saw you in heaven
Will it be the same
If I saw you in heaven
I must be strong, and carry on
Cause I know I don’t belong
Here in heaven
Would you hold my hand
If I saw you in heaven
Would you help me stand
If I saw you in heaven
I’ll find my way, through night and day
Cause I know I just can’t stay
Here in heaven
Time can bring you down
Time can bend your knee
Time can break your heart
Have you begging please
Begging please
(instrumental)
Beyond the door
There’s peace I’m sure.
And I know there’ll be no more…
Tears in heaven
Would you know my name
If I saw you in heaven
Will it be the same
If I saw you in heaven
I must be strong, and carry on
Cause I know I don’t belong
Here in heaven
Cause I know I don’t belong
Here in heaven
Oct
29
BBC’s programme, From Our Own Correspondents, a programme that is a compendium of ‘personal reflections by BBC correspondents arround the world, features a special edition of the programme, presented by Alan Johnston, the former BBC Gaza correspondent who was help by the Army of Islam for 114 days. Click here to listen to the programme, and here to download the podcast.
How would you describe the weather in FedSpeak? Owen Bennett-Jones asks Alan Greenspan and this is what he says:
I would generally expect that today in Washington DC. the probability of changes in the weather is highly uncertain, but we are monitoring the data in such a way that we will be able to update people on changes that are important.
This is part of the press rounds that Mr Greenspan has been making since he published his memoirs “The Age of Turbulence“. Actually, I don’t know if I should say he has been making a press rounds or if the press themselves have been seeking him. When one is a former Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve of the United States, one hardly has to court the press when one publishes a book. You can listen to the interview here, or download the podcast here.
Have a nice week!
Oct
1
A little about charity records
The first charity album was by Band Aid, a British and Irish group put together by Bob Geldof to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia in 1984. The record went straight to top the UK charts, and outsold all of the other records on the chart put together. The single, Do They Know It’s Christmas, sold a million in the first week of release, and became the fastest-selling single ever in the UK, later to be replaced by Elton John’s Candle in the Wind, another single whose proceeds went to charity. Band Aid’s album stayed at number 1 for five weeks, and sold over 3 million copies in the UK.
Sir Elton John’s recording of Candle in the Wind became the second best selling single of all times, after selling over 33 million copies worldwide. According to Wikipedia, it was estimated that ‘at the peak of sales, almost six copies of the single were sold across the world per second’. The profit from the sales was donated to the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund.
Reasons for the low sales
CNN’s story on the issue has a commentator talking about the fact that the Dafur issue was not a one-time event, like Princess Diana’s death, but that it has been a slowly unfolding disaster. In the opinion of the commentator, that was a reason why the albums has not sold so much. My response to that is simply to point to it that the Band Aid album was not about a one-time event, but about a famine. Therefore, the argument that the record did badly because it addresses a slow drama does not hold. And then, Candle in the Wind went and sold that much not because the proceeds was donated to charity, but because people felt strongly about Princess Diana, and the song evoked such strong emotions from the Princess’ fans that they all wanted to have it.
Another commentator says that the public might be suffering from a charity song fatigue. I buy into this argument, but I think it can only go as far as a certain level. One can talk about charity song fatigue, but I think one also has to talk about a more informed audience. The 1984 public that bought Do They Know It’s Christmas definitely is not the same public to whom the Lennon cover album is marketed. People have become inundated with so much image of the starving Africa child suckling on the breast of its dying mother that their sensibility has grown resistant to such imageries. Also, there are so many charity organisations that compete for the money of the well-meaning citizens of the developed world such that an album by one of the organisations has a lot more competition than Band Aid’s 1984 album.
A constellation of reasons
One cannot easily attribute a cause to the low sales of the Lennon cover album but to a constellation of issues, chief of which is the big boom in the donor/development industry. Others include donor fatigue, charity song fatigue and a host of other fatigues. If this constellation of reasons means that people are less willing to buy charity albums now than they used to, one should not be surprised when more ingenous ways of raising money appear. I am waiting to see the new methods….
Sep
8
Oil and Democracy
A political scientist, Michael Ross, wrote an article about resource curse. In the article, he builds a case for his argument that resources – chief of which, by the way, is oil – retard the development of democracy, partly because it frees the government of any dependence on the citizens. To bring this point home, let’s think about the percentage of Nigerians who are not employed in the organised private sector or in government, and then let’s think about how many of them pay any tax. Now, a government that does not have any resources has to depend on taxation from its citizens, and so has to look inwards. This is where aid comes in. If a country does not have resources but has a large chunk of its expenses taken care of by aid then that inward look does not seem to be needed
Another thing Mwenda pointed out was that government is the most attractive business in Africa. Again, let’s look at this in relation to Nigeria. There are people who get a job with a government ministry, go to work at about 11 in the morning and leave at about 1 in the afternoon. (I should throw in a quick word about many of the workers here. Most of the people who work in the ministries have to earn some money by the side to be able to take care of their families. Ingenious people that they are, while not working at the ministries most of them are busy at work on their own, most often trading.) The point is linked to a point made by Ross in his article: a government with resources is a rich government, something really attractive to a young person. The same point is also made by Mwenda in his presentation: since government makes money from aid, it is a rich and attractive option for young people who want to money. This point also ties in with the rent-seeking argument. With resource money, people in government can afford to keep a loyal team around themselves. If aid money provides more money for government it stands to reason to think that it might provide more money for politicians to attract more hangers-on.
Fears and Overreactions
If there are this many similarities between resources and aid, are there going to be more fatal similarities? Are we going to have people struggling to control government so that they can have access to aid (like in the case of civil wars that break out because of the desire of factions to control resources in a country)? Are we going to have governments buying arms and ammunitions with donor funding for the suppression of oppositions? Do we already have these situations? Am I simply overreacting. Actually, I hope I am overreacting.
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