I have to say this is a cautiously hopeful turn in a conversation I have been part of for more than a quarter of a century.

When I first went to Africa on behalf of World Vision in the 1980s, every statement about Africa included a warning that the continent was on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe. We certainly were not wrong about that — for reasons that were obvious to most any observer at the time and for ominous reasons yet to be revealed in the beginnings of the spread of HIV.

Through the 80s and 90s, African nations were overwhelmed by health crises and drought-caused famine, embroiled in ethnic and religious wars and genocide, hobbled by the lack of focused and meaningful education, the absence of global markets for African products and services, impoverished by national debt and the emptying of national treasuries by thieves and fools.

In many instances, help from the outside has taken the form of regrettable handouts (as Geoff Finch’s post, Does Africa Matter?, makes plain). But that is not the only story playing in Africa today. There is development work, cooperation and investment that hints at the possibility of sustainable growth.

There is development work, cooperation and investment that hints at the possibility of sustainable growth.

South Africa accomplished a peaceful change of government against all odds. Following the horrific genocide in Rwanda, that nation’s citizens are pulling their country together into the future. In this calendar year, Kenya averted a nightmare scenario by forging a power-sharing agreement. Right now, though the odds seem long following a stolen election, Zimbabweans are struggling to rid themselves of the gang of oligarchs holding onto power through intimidation and murder against their own citizens. In Sudan, where the odds seem equally long, the president may be brought down by charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the International Criminal Court, paving the way for an end to the violence in the Darfur region.

We hope people who identify themselves with Jesus will be emboldened to ask God — specifically — to remove the remaining despots and the corrupt bands of thugs and criminals that surround them. We hope Christian citizens in Africa will become pacifist/activists who say, “Enough is enough,” and refuse to be complicit in the oppression of their neighbors. We hope generous individuals and donor nations around the world will put a stop to funding that merely props up decrepit leaders.

I am convinced we need to push for investment and development partnerships that create value in the form of sustainable business activities that produce jobs and economic opportunity for every citizen. We hope friends from outside Africa will join those inside to assist African nations in developing educational systems that mimic the successful practices of education in India and China — placing a high value on engineering and other specialties on which sustainable enterprise can build — developing students who will be prepared to change the entrepreneurial climate in their countries and the whole continent.

We hope outside entrepreneurs and companies will move into Africa to build robust indigenous companies that produce decent jobs and fair wages to stimulate emerging economies. We hope African entrepreneurs will create and produce products and services that are valued around the world and we hope economic blockades against Africa will be torn down in Europe, Asia and the Americas. We hope people who call themselves Christians will pray and work together toward all these ends.

Africa is home to some of the most sensitive, sweet and godly people I know in the world. They have suffered immeasurably . . . and all of our past “Band-Aids” have had too little impact at too great a price. We need new thinking — and sustained action — and we need it now.

When the idea of a trip to Rwanda first came up a few weeks ago, I was a bit ambivalent. Business duty may call, but Rwanda is, after all, the heart of Africa, the site of a recent genocide, ground zero for HIV/AIDS, 10 time zones, and 30 hours of transit time away — assuming the flight connections all work. And then there’s the matter of $1,000 in immunization shots…

I wasn’t entirely sure what I brought to the table. In the era of globalized free-flow of capital, I felt everything that was relevant about Rwanda was well known to the financial markets; that capital would flow at a price — or not at all — based on information that was already “baked into the market.” So there didn’t seem much point in my going. Leave it to the marketing guys to develop the deal, I thought; then bring me in to work the numbers. But the project team was convinced my presence would add something, so off I went, full of shots, plus malaria pills & mosquito repellent at the ready.

I will skip the intermediate stops (which, incidentally, confirmed my thinking on efficient capital markets). It was the last leg of the transit that formed my first memorable impression. Our itinerary took us from Dubai — the most extravagant airport in the world — to Addis Ababa (a major step down in efficiency, luxury & amenities, playing 7-11 to Dubai’s Neiman Marcus), and finally, via a packed coach class seat on Ethiopian Airways, to Kigali International Airport. Along the way the contrast between senseless wealth and chronic poverty grew stark.

The first surprise about Kigali was the cool climate. There, in the heart of Africa and at 3 degrees south latitude, sits a lush green country of rolling hills and pleasant, cool breezes. Hardly material for an Edgar Rice Burroughs novel!

At the airport, we were met by a driver who whisked us away to the Bourbon Street Café, a cyber-bar just a block from our hotel. Driving from the airport we passed through a mix of neighborhoods – some poor, some more affluent, all of them spotlessly clean. The Rwandan’s set aside every Saturday for “public works,” meaning the public all get out and work together cleaning streets, painting roads & billboards, trimming trees & mowing public lawns. I never saw a piece of blown trash or graffiti anywhere (we resident Los Angelinos could take a lesson here).

The café sits on the second floor of a modern concrete and steel building. It is beautifully appointed with native wood paneling, artwork, comfortable lounge chairs and tables, served by a well equipped bar dispensing non-alcoholic drinks, and offering gift packages of locally grown coffee beans and T-shirts made of fine cotton. The place was reasonably well occupied with mostly native Africans — businesspeople, students, and others — plus a few foreigners. Most worked on laptops, enjoying café-latte while connecting to the Internet via Wi-Fi. The view to the surrounding hills was unobstructed. A gentle breeze completed the perception: This place is really civilized. It could have been downtown Seattle.

My second African impression was of people walking. Everywhere I looked from before sunrise till dusk, I found people walking, walking, walking.

Of course, most do not have cars or even motorcycles. (The local taxi is a motorcyclist with two green helmets – one for the driver and one for the passenger who perches on the back seat as the bike careens through Kigali’s hills and streets.) So people walk. One of the initiatives our team set up was a bicycle import business (appropriate technology, noted my economist brain). Not just any bicycle, though. The team included a French national bicycle racing champion and a bike designer. Together they studied the local conditions and designed a sturdy, 10-geared bicycle, featuring a long platform on the back to enable farmers and businessmen to stack products on the back and get them to market. The bikes are being manufactured in India for something under $100 C.I.F. to Kigali. They sell at a positive markup in-country, with the proceeds going back into the business. A native Rwandan by the name of Alain is in charge of the business (how Alain came to be the local rep is astonishing, but that, as Kipling would say, is another story).

We were in Kigali to meet government officials gathered for the first East African Conference on Investment. The event was hosted at the Hotel Des Milles Colines (the now famous “Hotel Rwanda”). It is no accident that the conference was held in Kigali. For one thing, the climate is very attractive compared with other choices in East Africa. More importantly, President Kagame has made foreign capital investment a top national priority and the Rwandan’s were major promoters and speakers at the event.

In all the government meetings we held, the overwhelming impression was optimism and a sense of urgency. Rwandan’s are trying to raise their country from the desperate poverty that helped give rise to genocide. It seems as if they know they have only a short time to pull it off — to prove that things can get better. Our particular project is well known to the Rwandan government, agreed in advance as a priority project for the nation, so our discussions were about means to an already established end. Our host from the Ministry of Finance proved insightful and capable beyond my expectations (even though English is his third language). Perhaps it was this sense of urgency and competence that our project team wanted me to experience first hand.

Another of our team went jogging one morning. He was quickly surrounded by an enthusiastic gang of 15-20 kids who were excited and laughing as they followed this tall stranger through their neighborhood. Close to 45% of the population is under 15 years of age. In 3-10 years these kids will be ready to enter the work force. That gives the Kagame government only a short time to jump-start the economy and make a place for these up-and-comers to work. Looking at Kigali’s children I readily saw the reason for the leaders’ sense of urgency.

Another strong impression is modesty and integrity. Over the last 25 years, I have conducted business negotiations in every continent on the planet. It is not unheard of to find competent, modest and honest government officials in developing countries. But too often it’s the other kind you have to deal with. It was a pleasure doing business in Kigali.

Then there is new construction. Everywhere you look new buildings are going up – residential, commercial office, hospitality (foreign investment capital at work, I noted). While the houses look nice on the outside, the interiors would benefit from a visit to the building code section of any US city planning office: doors that open into each other, temperamental electrical circuits, plumbing that doesn’t work, sudden steps down where none is expected, etc. (Note to self: contact a good developer group and invite them in-country to improve the national building codes). I had to catch myself, though. As we stood on the veranda one evening watching the city lights twinkling across the neighboring hills, Susan (a graduate student from NY) commented that when she arrived only six months ago, there was no electricity in most of those houses.

Occasionally, I passed something that struck me as odd, like the public billboards displayed here and there around town urging each Rwandan to pay taxes. “Work hard, pay your taxes, help Rwanda,” was the message. (I can’t tell you how quaint that seems to an American who lives under constant threat of audit and harassment by our Federal and State tax authorities.)

Another oddity was the Ministry of Reconciliation and Public Healing. “Public Healing”? It’s not a mistranslation. Rwandans are still suffering the psychological effects of the genocide. The government formed a cabinet ministry dedicated to helping people heal psychologically and spiritually.

And then there were the stories. I didn’t talk to many folks in depth, but the few I spoke with all had amazing stories. There was Hercule, whose parents fled with the family to Uganda, lived in refugee camps, then parlayed a few hundred dollars into a trucking business hauling freight under the most harrowing conditions between Uganda, Burundi, Tanzania and Congo. His father eventually disappeared, and Hercule took over the business at the ripe old age of 19. I asked where he found the moxie to brave the dangers he faced for so long. His answer: “I did what I had to just to survive.”

Mike’s parents were killed in the genocide. He participated as a witness in the open hearings that were held to bring the killers to justice. I was moved to hear him explain so matter-of-factly the murder of his parents, the justice hearings, and his efforts to move on with his life.

Interestingly, every person’s story I heard included a sentence about how they are Rwandan – not Hutu or Tutsi. It’s a national commitment to ignoring the differences of race, language, & ethnicity that were so much a part of their recent national nightmare.

I suppose that sooner or later each visitor to Rwanda must make a pilgrimage to the Genocide Museum. It’s a small affair — too small to do justice to a civil war that resulted in a million deaths. But in its own way, it is a poignant metaphor for the whole country. The exterior is clean, modern, even elegant architecture, set on a hill so it stands out in the neighborhood. There is a sort of peacefulness about the place, of the kind that I experienced once when visiting Gettysburg. This is hallowed ground. There is no admission fee, but there is a donation box near the entrance. The tour is self-guided, with video and still pictures chronicling the national descent into hell, now just a dozen years in the past. Many westerners have read about it to the point that we are perhaps inured to its horrors. I found a small plaque in the children’s section most memorable. Amidst thousands of pictures of now dead children, this:

Farewell, our children. You were our future.

It is that future President Kagame is trying to reclaim. I must confess the trip did something to get me off my high horse about efficient markets, rational financial analysis, and developmental economics. Maybe those marketing guys were on to something when they insisted I visit Rwanda.

On our last night in town we dined in Heaven (actually, a restaurant called Heaven). The proprietor is a young New Yorker who moved to Rwanda a few years ago with her husband who heads up the Millennium Village in Rwanda. Millennium Village brings in MBA’s, engineers, farmers and other business types and sets them loose to find startup business opportunities (the entrepreneur component of economic development). Of course, the country needs everything. The young woman decided to start a restaurant using only locally produced resources and supplies (import substitution). The dining area is a stylish, open air setting with a high gabled roof, designed by a prominent local architect. It is obviously one of the key gathering places for the leading citizens of Kigali. Furniture, decorations, food and merchandise are locally produced. She hires and trains local help, including the chefs. Her goal is to reproduce her restaurant in other parts of the country, creating jobs and employment for local architects, craftsmen, construction workers, artists, and of course, chefs. She confided that it took every dime the couple had, plus loans from family and friends to open the first Heaven. She purposed to do all of her business “by the book,” which, it turns out, all but guarantees she will never make any money from the restaurant. She says this is okay; she is doing this for the good of the country. The food was wonderful. What made our dinner even better was the knowledge that everyone in the restaurant was there for the same cause: answering the call to lift a country out of poverty in one generation.

I met only a handful of people on my first short trip to Rwanda. The coffee farms, gorillas in the mist, volcanoes, the lakes, the game parks, the surrounding countryside and neighboring countries were left for another day. I hope that day comes soon. Each person I met seemed to have that same sense of national purpose. A great tragedy occurred in this country while the world stood by and did nothing. (You can read about it in Romeo Dallaire’s book Shake Hands with the Devil.) From the depths of genocide, a rebel army Colonel, Paul Kagame brought first cessation of hostilities, then security, and he is now trying to build a country from scratch. It is gratifying to see the world community respond at last to the country’s call for help on all levels — humanitarian, private philanthropic, developmental aid, and private investment.

And I believe it will succeed because of the people themselves. If ever there was a place where the role of each person can be showcased, Rwanda is clearly such a place. At the ministry of finance I happened to pick up an application for two experts they were trying to recruit – a lawyer and a finance guy – to help the country execute on its major infrastructure contracts. I found myself strangely attracted by the finance job description. Not only did it fit me to a tee, but – who knows? – maybe even a stodgy old project finance guy like me could find a way to be useful in the legacy phase of my career by helping out in this grand venture.

The names of nonpublic figures have been changed in this post to respect their privacy.

Africa Doesn’t Matter: How the West Has Failed the Poorest Continent and What We Can Do About It
Giles Bolton Arcade Publishing, New York, Copyright 2007, 350 pages

Giles Bolton is a British-born relief worker and diplomat who has spent a good part of his professional life as an on-the-ground representative of several international relief agencies working in Africa. He has seen the good, the bad and the ugly up close, and knows whereof he speaks.

His book is not a self righteous tirade against developed countries not doing enough. Rather, it’s a clear expose of what are the real problems facing poor African nations, why billions of dollars in public and private aid over many decades has done so little to raise standards of living in Africa, and, importantly, what you and I as citizens of the developed west can do to make a real difference.

Surprisingly, his answer is not “The West must give more money.”

He develops his case from both personal experience and careful research. Drawing on economic data from World Bank and other sources, Bolton lays out the relief industry in easy to follow charts – where the money comes from, where it goes, how effective is it.

He sketches out the African historical context, from pre-colonial times, to the century-long period of western colonization, the wars of independence, and the current political and economic struggle to ascend from poverty.

To dramatize the predicament African nations face, he uses the metaphor of a hypothetical African country – the Republic of Uzima — to which the reader has just been elected president, and follows him (you) through the first week in office and the initial briefings by various cabinet ministers. Bolton gives us a terrific appreciation for the difficulties facing even the most capable and honest leaders of these emerging nations.

To see life from the point of view of the intended recipient — Bolton introduces us to real families he knows in different countries — Marie in Congo and Lucas in Kenya, and follows them through a day in the life of a poor person in Africa.

The combined effect is to impart a clear view of where western aid has failed to achieve its desired ends in Africa.

Some key insights from the book:

• The aid industry, like others, is subject to economies of scale, as well as to the problem of large organizations — bureaucracy. Small relief agencies spend too much of their receipts on fund-raising and administration, rather than delivering aid to the needy. Large relief agencies have trouble executing on the ground, and are often subverted by corruption at the local level. Many agencies operate in the same areas but do not coordinate their efforts.
• Being dependent on the good will of donors, few relief agencies give objective reports on the effectiveness of the programs they run. Donors are more concerned with giving rather than with the effectiveness of their gifts. To many, it seems uncharitable to ask what good a program is doing. The dual effects invariably lead to lack of accountability.
• Aid must come in a form that works for the recipients rather than a program designed by well intentioned program developers thousands of miles away.
• Much of public aid is tied to developed nations own exports — grain & medical supplies, for example — and to paying the salaries and benefits of the administrators of the program. Bolton estimates that over 80% of public aid is “diverted” to recipients in the western developed countries.
• The majority of sub-Saharan Africa survives on subsistence agriculture. Bolton introduces us to Jean Marie who has a small plot of land, which makes her more fortunate than most her neighbors. But her living conditions are so fragile that the slightest bump to her living situation can knock her family into starvation, to seeking relief and becoming refugees.
• Disasters tend to attract large scale emergency relief, but then there is little follow-on to alleviate the conditions that led to the disaster in the first place. Living on the precipice of starvation continues to be the norm.
• The core problem is unemployment. Africans spend many hours walking to town to find work, not to go to work. When they find work, it is often temporary, and low paying. It is the lack of industry (not unwillingness to work) that is killing much of Sub-Saharan Africa.
• Many African nations’ economies depend on a few commodities – cotton, cocoa, coffee, tea. A bad season can wreak havoc with local economies.
• The great failing of the West is that its trade policies work to limit the full development of Africa’s comparative advantage — agriculture. World Trade Organization is largely concerned with fair trade of manufactured goods. Agricultural commodities are not addressed. Europe and the USA both subsidize their agriculture heavily. The result is they have dumped agricultural products on African markets, pushing out local farmers, and their policies limit African export sale of processed agricultural goods, reserving the higher value-adding processing for US and European companies.

The prescription Bolton calls for (after a plea that western nations live up to their pledges for giving aid) is primarily a call for free and fair trade with Africa. Being a realist, he understands that trade policy is a matter of special interests and lobbying. His call then is to individuals – you and me – to change our buying habits to favor African processed goods, as well as bring political pressure to bear on our elected leaders to reduce harmful farm subsidies.

“Poverty,” Gandhi is quoted as saying, “is the worst form of violence.”

If you are new to this subject, Giles Bolton’s book is a balanced, candid and reasonably dispassionate look at the aid industry as it works today in Africa. If the book has any shortcoming, it’s that the author doesn’t address the difference between relief agencies, most of which tend to not work, and development agencies, some of which appear to work admirably. He also basically gives the OPEC Arab nations a “pass” on their global responsibilities to help developing countries. Perhaps the author simply did not intend to cover this subject. But as each of the western countries is compared on public and private giving programs, the inquiring mind naturally tends to wonder how the extravagantly rich Gulf states compare.

That said, it’s well worth the read, and a great challenge to those who do give, to review their giving in light of what works and what doesn’t.

We missed this in February — embarrassing since we’re fans of TED and (some of us) U2.

But timing is everything and, as we continue stirring up dust on the More Than Money theme, the G8 Summit looms just a few weeks away in Scotland; so maybe this post is not so much late as held for later release.

In any event, One of this year’s TED prizes went to Irish rock star and social entrepreneur, Bono (nee Paul Hewson). Bono’s acceptance speech included a word to business leaders at the TED Conference in Monterey, California.

I’d like to talk for a second about commerce. I know we’ve got some brainy corporate leaders in the room here. Don’t you think, that on a purely commercial level, that anti-retroviral drugs are great advertisements for Western ingenuity and technology? Doesn’t compassion look well on us?

And let’s cut the crap for a second. In certain quarters of the world, brand EU, brand USA is not at its shiniest. The neon sign is fizzing and cracking. Someone’s put a brick through the window. The regional branch managers are getting nervous. Never before have we in the West been so scrutinized. Our values – do we have any? Our credibility. These things are under attack around the world. Brand USA could use some polishing, and I say that as a fan, you know… As a person who buys the products.

But think about it. More anti-retrovirals makes sense. But that’s just the easy part – or ought to be. But equality for Africa – that’s a big, expensive idea. You see, the scale of the suffering numbs us into a kind of indifference. What on earth can we all do about this? Well, much more than we think. We can’t fix every problem, but the ones we can, I want to argue, we must. And because we can, we must.

This is the straight truth, the righteous truth. It is not a theory. The fact is that ours is the first generation that can look disease and extreme poverty in the eye, look across the ocean to Africa, and say this and mean it, "We do not have to stand for this." A whole continent written off, we do not have to stand for this.

If you question the Rock star’s right to speak into commerce, note the success of Bono’s brand as a business as well as artistic venture — further leveraged as a partner in the private equity firm Elevation Partners.

Beyond business acumen, Bono demonstrated his intellect (not to mention persistence and passion) by convincing then U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill to tour Africa with him in 2002. "He understood economic theory and he understood the impact of colonialism," O"Neill said. "He knew what it was like to go into an HIV-AIDS clinic and see three people in a bed all dying together and care about it and know it doesn’t have to be that way."

To which we add the question, "If it doesn’t have to be that way, then why is it?"

This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.
- 1 John 3:16-20