Bubble Charts, hooray

I read an interesting article from Brookings on the change in where the poorest people in the world are living, and how this affects what the development world should focus on. This got me thinking, but I wanted more detail beyond the 2x2 box of low/middle income and stable/fragile states. But aha, here it is: Poverty in numbers, the changing state of poverty from 2005 to 2015.

This second paper is a long, detailed document, but from an initial scan, they do a great job of presenting easy to understand and visually compelling graphics. I'm especially a fan of these bubble graphs, using which the reader can immediately visually understand the relative magnitude of poverty in different regions and countries, instead of having to think about how numbers relate to each other.

This screen grab is rather hard to discern, so if you view the original document the image is on page 8. What's interesting is that China gets considerably smaller (although it would have made better sense to keep it in the same position in the 2015 graph), and in fact almost all of East Asia drops off. 2015 is dominated by South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, and some SSA countries even grow in size (DRC). It's also interesting to see how Latin America, while rife with its own set of problems, represents a small slice of the pie population-wise.

TZ in the house (almost)

I guess since GL already put Tanzania into the header, I better go ahead and post.

I'm a first year medical student with some experience in consulting. I'll be heading to Iringa, Tanzania in 15 days to help out with the national government's male circumcision (MC) campaign (the most effective service for HIV prevention, more on this later) and help start a research project looking at how best to scale up MC services. Where GL brought you the latest from the field on potatoes, and BM brings you the latest on maize, I will hopefully be bringing you the latest on...penises.

But let's get to know each other a little better before discussing male genitalia. Like GL and BM, I'm interested in development and how my career, especially as a future MD, can fit into this world. This summer in Iringa will be my first experience working overseas, and I'm hoping it will answer my question of how much field work I want to include in my future.

I'm also excited just to be out in the world. I'm currently in the process of booking a safari trip through the Serengeti, Ngorongoro crater, and Tanrangire. (If you're going to be in East Africa the first week of August and want to join a safari with two intrepid Seattle natives/want to help me lower my costs, please let me know).

I'm spending most of my last days in the US scrolling through flickr pages of Tanzania. I'm also starting Peter Matthiessen's The Tree Where Man Was Born, which is so far a beautiful book about overlanding in East Africa. The book was originally published in 1972, and the map of Ethiopia includes a full northern coastline, with no Eritrea (which won independence from Ethiopia through a bitter war ending in 1993). It's strange to remember how quickly the world changes.

Since I'm still in St. Louis, here's a photo from my most recent trip, albeit to Prague.

Transition Post

News flash: I’m back from Honduras and have been for about a month now.  I haven’t posted anything in a while and was considering letting the blog rest in peace... but I’m deciding not too.  

 

However, I do want to make some changes.  Since I’m now in the boring ol’ US (AKA the greatest country in the world), I’ll be posting less travel related topics and focusing more on issues in international development and current events.  But don’t despair.  I’m actively seeking interesting travel commentary from two others that will be in Mozambique and Tanzania (respectively, of course and respectfully, we hope) to keep things fresh.  From time to time, I might be able to pull in other peeps that are currently based in the developed world.

So, hope this news finds you well and is received well.  Carry on and hopefully I’ll be back soon.

 

Dictators & Dalliances in the Arab World

Good or bad news, depending on your perspective, the CD Times is not dead!  Although, for the time being, it will shift its focus from travel related posts and deal more with internation news and development topics.  In that vein, my good friend Ben has agreed to share a guest post.  Ben is a Brit who has chosen to live in the US after extensive work in both the UK and the Middle East (specifically the UAE).  Hope you find his thoughts provocative (yep, that is the word I wanted to use).  Take it away Ben:

It was with one eyebrow raised that I digested media coverage of recent events in the Middle East: Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Syria, etc.

When it was the turn of Egypt, at first there was jubilation at the imminent collapse of a brutal, unfair dictatorship and a move to a more democratic society.  That’s good, right?  One of the secondary benefits of the ludicrously-named “war on terror” was always supposed to be facilitating regime change.  But, hold on!  That brutal, unfair dictatorship had been helpful to us in maintaining our agenda of protecting Israel.  Then the hand-wringing began – is it better to have a brutal, unfair dictatorship that does what we want, or a lovely democracy that might decide that it won’t do what we want?  Heavens, what a choice!  Time to roll out the (mostly ill-informed) pundits to tell us that there would be a good chance that something called the Muslim Brotherhood might be in charge.  That doesn’t sound good, does it, children!?  Never mind any material facts about the M.B.; the facts have no place on prime-time current affairs shows.

And now we’ve whacked bin Laden.  While he was a ghastly man, I can’t be happy about his killing.

Let’s make no bones: this killing is the death penalty without a trial.  And, more broadly, there should be a level of discomfort with any nation deciding to enter another nation’s territory’s and knock off people it doesn’t like (even for compelling reasons).  What next – an Iraqi is entitled to whack Donald Rumsfeld for the 100,000 civilian deaths in Iraq?   The Colombians going to London and taking out an anti-drug campaigner who threatens the profitability of the cocaine trade?  Anyone can go to Nigeria and kill an internet service provider for facilitating the spam that annoys us all?  (GL: Actually...)

The press in the United States have glossed over the fundamental issue of whether the killing was morally right, and legally ...ahem…executed, in order to speculate on Pakistan’s knowledge of bin Laden’s presence.

Let’s examine this in a historical context.  At the end of the second World War, the British were in favor of summary executions for the Nazi leadership.  President Truman – not a man given to weak-will; he ordered the dropping of atomic bombs, after all – responded thus:

“[Summary execution] would not sit easily on the American conscience or be remembered by our children with pride.  The only course is to determine the innocence or guilt of the accused after a hearing as dispassionate as the times will permit and upon a record that will leave our reasons and motives clear”

So it brings us back to the conversation about Egypt and democratic rights.  We have fulfilled the mission in Afghanistan; to bring bin Laden to justice.  Now we can come home, one expects?  We’ve toppled the government that gave Al-Qaida a safe haven, and implemented some crude democracy (let’s gloss over the thousands of innocent dead for a moment).  But what if the Afghan people choose a government which advocates anti-U.S. policies?

And how does that square with the intervention previously exerted by the United States in overthrowing democratic regimes to install dictatorships with a direct line to the CIA?

What a conundrum.

Why I love the Economist

This is a brilliant leader article on the drug and crime problems of Central America.  Brilliant.

Internal Brain Drain?

This is something I've been thinking about recently.  Brain drain as we typically talk about it is "the large-scale emigration of individuals with technical skills or knowledge" from one country to another.  But, I feel that it occurs within a country as well.  Some others agree with me but this isn't a widely accepted idea, that I can tell.

Also, this thought deserves much more writing than I have the patience for at the moment so here is the abbreviated version.

Well paid, stable jobs with NGOs (and to some extent, the government) lure some of the most capable people away from the private sector, depriving a country of a dynamic driver of growth, entrepreneurs.

I've seen this in a number of situations: 

• My co-workers are experts in growing specialty coffee and fine cocoa but don't do it themselves, leaving it to subsistence farmers
• A beekeeping contact, instead of using his PhD in queen bee rearing to start a much needed queen-rearing facility, works for the government
• A very competent potato grower quit producing to work for the government, planning potato growing instead

The NGO and governmental jobs are very attractive to them.  They are well paid.  They are stable and accountability is not linked to profit-making.  They are esteemed.  They have perks (company truck, computer, phone, expenses).  They are serving a greater purpose.  These are  compelling reasons and if I were a skilled Honduran with a wife and kids to feed, I'd probably pursue an NGO as well.

However, Honduras needs entrepreneurs to drive growth.  NGOs and government can't create wealth, they can only enable its creation.  The average Honduran beekeeper (<3rd grade education, <5 years of beekeeping experience, little financial resources) is most likely not going to make an efficient business.  But Honduras needs this.  Beekeeping can be profitable here.  A highly successful operation here would employ many and teach them valuable skills. 

If I were given $100,000 for development in Honduras, I wouldn’t give the money to anyone.  I would use it to start my own beekeeping operation.  I would start with the local market where prices are high and demand unmet.  I would do some aggressive advertising so that my brand and quality are known.  Then, increase my capacity and improve my processing and value add.  From there I'd create a second brand for US export.  Get organic certification.  Use a single source of nectar and vary by season.  Make honey produced purely from mangoes, oranges, or coffee plants.  Obviously, I'm glossing over the difficulties that one would encounter but the potential is there.  However it won’t be captured by someone that isn’t skilled and motivated.  Right now the people that fit this bill are being picked off by NGOs.

How is it that non-profits and government are able to offer better wages than the private sector?  Even a friend I made that works for Cervecería Hondureña (one of the most successful companies in Honduras) was looking for a job with an NGO.  Something is off.

Mozambican (sp?) Ministry of Health salaries vs. NGO salaries. 

Oh, by the way, shout out to my boy BM who is heading to Mozambique (coincidentally) in a few weeks to test a new development concept with maize processors.

Viva la Maquina!

Back in December I went with Omar to the final of the Honduran soccer league.  His (and my adopted) team Real España (aka La Maquina) was playing the Honduran soccer equivalent of the Yankees.  Dirty, cheating Olympia.  The game was on the Maquina's home turf in San Pedro and we were pumped.

 The game got off to a tense start when the Olympia fans threw a firework at our goalie with it exploding just next to his head.  I thought he had been shot but after five minutes he was up again and ready to play.  The game was exciting and went back and forth.  Olympia scored first but then received a red card (dirty cheaters).  With a one man advantage, the Maquina surged forward putting in one goal and then another!  We were up!  At the 90 minute mark the fans went nuts.

Que viva la Maquina!  Later that night I tuned in to the main Honduran channel to catch the highlights but was surprised to find a telethon-like program running.  Apparently the owner of the channel is an Olimpista and his channel decided not to show the unfavorable outcome.