Well I was annoyed at first when I read this blog entry. But I guess Philip is suffering from the common tendency to take anecdote and rumour to be good evidence (so maybe I should get annoyed with everyone for doing this…) Travelling in Africa you come across a lot of story and innuendo that has spun out of control until everybody (or everybody in some social group) seems to believe it e.g. condoms are a European device for infecting black people with AIDS so that Europe can once again take the continent for it’s own, the average black villager is too stupid to change his traditions and grow extra rows of corn now to carry his family through the coming dry season he has been warned about. Philip’s flippant claims and these rumours, if not outright falsifactions of evidence, all suffer from being just so stories – stories that happen to fit a few sketchy details but with no proper evidence or research to back them up. If you take this sort of approach you’re either ignorant or dishonest.
Frankly I couldn’t give a monkey’s why IT zillionaires choose to help Africans – there are far more Africans in need of far greater help than there locals in need of help, whichever first world country you talk about. The IT geeks might be able to do what’s needed (which isn’t to say the particular projects they have picked are the ones that offer the best chance of success).
The silly remark about geeks being socially isolated is irrelevant too. Suppose they are socially inept and suppose that means they Google for the most desperate cause they could help. The fact, if it were, that social isolation leads them to do this, doesn’t mean that the social types are right to concentrate on local issues. Sure, sometimes we feel more and care more about the good neighbour down the road than the stranger in a far land. The fact that we do so and do so because we are socially adept only tells you what the effects of certain social histories are on an average persons charitable inclinations. You learn nothing about how we ought to behave. Philip needs to do a bit more to tell us why being physically close to or even personally involved with someone means you should spend considerably more time or money on helping those people than people living far worse lives, and dying far worse deaths, far away.
It’s also rather irrelevant what people who have spent time in Africa might feel about Africans. Should I send less money to Africa because Joe Aid Worker doesn’t feel sorry for Africans? Obviously not. The point is surely to look at the problem and decide as best you can if you should and can help based on the needs of the people. Joe Aid Worker is no authority on that.
Secondly, it surely is wrong for people to think that the problems in Africa are in no part the responsibility of Africans. War, famine, the spread of disease, poverty, lack of education are surmountable problems and one factor that prevents them being surmounted is a human one (Africans start African wars, largely; African administrators live it up at the expense of the education budget etc). But these problems of beliefs, attitudes and culture are part of what we look to help with (as best we can). And no doubt, when you work with a group of people in which some, maybe many, are exacerbating the very problems you are seeking to help them overcome, it gets frustrating to the point where ones sense of sympathy wanes a good deal. That isn’t to say we shouldn’t care. It also isn’t to say we shouldn’t sympathise. Maybe you can carry on helping despite the frustration. Maybe you should take a holiday. Maybe you decide, for some particular problem, the very people suffering are causing the problem – perhaps even wilfully at times. But that isn’t a reason not to help. It tells you instead that the help needed is help to change themselves, help to see their problems, relationships, community or whatever differently.
If a hundred miilion Africans have cell phones, maybe something has finally worked to turn Africa around a little, in communications at least. But there are a load of really serious problems there still. If you go to Africa you will also notice cars, satellite dishes, business shirts, paved roads, restaurants, buses and trains, some skyscrapers, oil refineries, etc. But again, there is famine, abject poverty, brutality at all levels, terrible disease, corruption etc. We are told little about African lives by merely mentioning that these things are there. If you tell me 100 million Africans can afford cell phones, then that doesn’t tell me much about the rest of Africa except that up to 800 million may not be able to afford them. And that 800 million might be in such abject poverty that I really should be spending my money helping them rather than a couple of hundred homeless folk in my city.
For those despairing of the state of Harvard Law, click on Philip’s name on this blog and you will find he is not at Harvard Law (not that he said he was – the blog is open to non-Harvard Law people.) Instead, despair at the quality of education the MIT com sci and egineering grads receive (or received when Philip was there.) Perhaps a few philosophy courses in argumentation, evidential support, and ethics might help….

There are so many things wrong with your analysis, it is the typical result of someone talking about something they know very little about, and the main problem, as far as I see it, is that you perpetuate myths that are damaging to peoples lives. I have posted, on my blog, a refutation, and don’t feel like repeating it here.

Bill Gates is concentrating on health issues…I suspect even Africans aren’t real happy when they’ve got malaria or river blindness. And these are problems that can be fixed much more cheaply per person than the big Western diseases. The amount of money Gates has put into it has been tranformative…it’s hard to imagine a more satisfying form a philanthropy, no matter what your background.

I figure a lot of those $100 laptops will end up on ebay…but the fact that all those poor africans are managing to hold onto their cellphones suggests that maybe this project will work out okay.

Speaking of which…cellphones started out as symbols of affluence in the U.S., but in a country without landlines, rolling out a cellphone infrastructure is a lot cheaper than wires.

Markos Kloos worries what’s going to happen to kids in third world countries when they’re given a piece of hardware worth the equivalent of a year’s pay in their country.

“What would happen in the United States, with our developed civil justice system and ample police presence, if a foreign organization gave a piece of hardware worth $30,000 to every needy minor in this country? Do you think their parents, neighbors, and neighborhood crooks would just smile and say, “Good for you”? Or do you think a significant number of those devices would end up getting stolen, traded, or sold in very short order, possibly resulting in injuries or deaths to many of the kids who didn’t want to give up their new gizmo voluntarily?”

I’ve spent a lot of time in Africa, I spend a lot of time with people who have also spent a lot of time. The “Happy African” that you hear about is about as correct as the “Noble Savage” myth of the last century. The myth about “working for two months to make enough to buy food for a year” is, not to put too fine a point on it, bullshit. Most of Sub-Saharan africa has an average YEARLY salary of a few hundred dollars. This is not much. Food is not that much cheaper there than here. Poverty and unemployment are at much higher levels in Africa, as well as the prevalence of disease. If people there are as happy as they are here, it’s because they don’t expect as much, not because they don’t want as much.

Just a general comment: Any generalization about Africa is generally flawed.

The $100 LapTop just got some coverage on CNN.com: http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/internet/11/17/tunisia.technology.ap/index.html

You’re ahead of the curve again, Phil!

I think you use the wrong data to draw your conclusions. You compare the average American to a bunch of extremely wealthy and influential power geeks. The average geek is about the same as the average American. They contribute to something where they feel they can make a difference. A hundred bucks won’t do much for AIDS in Africa, but it would buy dinner at a soup kitchen for at least a hundred people.

Compare wealthy geeks to other wealthy Americans and see if there is a difference. I doubt it. The geeks are probably more charitable in general, because they are mostly “new money” and not as attached to it as the Carnegies and Waltons and Hiltons.

Africa is a land of contrasts like any other continent. You can find humble people, very rich people, big cities, small villages, traditionnal tribes, occidentalised people, peace, war, etc. The fact is, there are places in Africa where problems are so enormous that, as a human, you are shocked by the situation, even if it’s very far from where you live. Just think about what’s happening in Darfur now.

africa’s problems? *sigh*. it’s a PEOPLE problem first, and a PEOPLE problem last.