The Shackled Continent

This straight forward and honest survey of Africa was a favourite recent read of mine. The Shackled Continent, by Robert Guest, provides an overview of the economic, social and political future of Africa in a very frank and straightforward presentation. Robert Guest, who I had the privilege of meeting when he visited the IFC in late 2006, is currently the Washington correspondent for the Economist (of course, my favourite magazine) and was previously its Africa editor. His analysis of the current state of affairs on that continent is timely given the development community's new and critical focus on Africa as a cornerstone of the push for meeting the millennium development goals. It is also refreshingly blunt in its exposition of what Guest believes to be the principal obstacles to development and sources of ill across the continent.

Most critically, and perhaps controversially, Guest blames poor government for the lagging growth plaguing many sub-Saharan African nations. Although Guest acknowledges that Africa faces many other daunting challenges, including things like geography, climate, and a colonial legacy, he believes that these could be overcome if Africa's leaders could only get their act together, eliminate corruption, focus on aiding the poor rather than on serving personal or tribal interests, open their countries to trade and stop waging war against each other. Unfortunately, there are countless examples across Africa in which the blame for economic underdevelopment can be easily tagged to an unarguably incompetent leader, be it Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe (who has managed to implement pretty much every economic policy mistake imaginable) or Levy Mwanawasa of Zambia (for something as callous as refusing food aid during a famine for fear of GM crop "poison".)

Guest's analysis is made most poignant through his story telling; be it his own adventure of following a Guinness truck on its delivery circuit through Cameroon (and 47 separate road blocks), or relayed second-hand experiences of Africans trying to make a day-to-day living. Ultimately, these stories paint a touching, if sometimes depressing, picture of Africa's people and the very real challenges they face.

Burning hearts

I don't buy into hallmark holidays, and so unless I am dating someone on Valentines, I'm the last to do anything out of the ordinary on it. Corporate society has successfully managed to turn any dating man's inactivity on this holiday into an irredeemable relationship faux pas. So, I am indeed guilty of doing the bare minimum (Jin, hope you enjoyed the flowers) but don't believe you should require, or ever need, an occassion to let somebody else know how you feel about them.

On the other hand, I think there are extreme responses. The BBC "in pictures" feature for today had the expected spattering of images from across the globe of human beings displaying romantic affections for each other in a variety of weird and entertaining ways. The final image had me thinking a great deal more than the rest of them (displayed here). What does it say about the tolerance of people for other ideas if they fell they have to torch hearts and love paraphernalia on a harmless (though I will admit, annoying) holiday? There are moral standards worth standing up for, and then there's ridiculousness. I believe this is the latter.

More than just a couple of my friends in DC happen to be Pakistani, and discussing this image with them, they confirmed that while a certain element in Pakistani society could be expected to initiate such demonstrations, it's definitely not the norm; given the other images already on display for this feature on the BBC, I believe it would have been an editorially sound decision to include another, and undoubtedly more representative, Valentines day image in juxtaposition with this one.