Sachs and Easterly on African aid (what else?)

In a recent VoxEU column, Jeffrey Sachs writes:

Africa's differences with other regions lie not in aid, but in circumstances and history. Unlike South Asia, for example, Africa has not yet had a Green Revolution of higher food yields, the formative event of India's economic takeoff from the late 1960s. India is a civilisation of great river systems and large-scale irrigation, thanks to the Himalayan snowmelt and glacier melt and the annual monsoon rains. Africa is a continent of rain-fed (non-irrigation) agriculture. The original Green Revolution, in which India's food output per land area rose markedly, came in the irrigated systems of Asia, not the rain-fed systems of Africa.

US aid heavily subsidised India's Green Revolution while World Bank opposition to aid for African agriculture from the 1980s until recently played an opposite and adverse role, holding back a similar breakthrough for Africa. It was the absence of aid for African agriculture rather than its presence that cost Africa mightily. And one can go on. Africa's tropical disease burden, heavy concentration of landlocked countries, decline of aid for infrastructure during the 1980s and 1990s, and misguided attempts by Africa's creditors to collect debt servicing under "structural adjustment programs" during the 1980s and 1990s all played their part.

To which Bill Easterly, in a column published the following day, responds:

Isn’t rapidly growing India also in the tropics? Yes, but they have snowmelt-fed irrigation instead of rain-fed agriculture. Isn’t rich Singapore also in the tropics? Yes, but they are coastal instead of landlocked. Don’t Latin America and Asia also have tropical diseases like malaria, just like Africa? Yes, but they have a better kind of mosquito. So a region will be poor if they are tropical, if rainfed, iflandlocked, and if they have the wrong mosquitoes – which, yes, fits many African countries. The reason for Occam’s Razor is that with enough Ifs, Buts, and Excepts you can fit any theory to any set of facts. [...]

The other problem with Sachs’ geography story is that it has already been refuted by other economists. The consensus among several prominent academic papers is that destructive governments rather than destructive geography explain the poverty of nations. Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson (2006), Easterly and Levine (2003), and Rodrik, Subramanian, and Trebbi (2004) all tested the geography story against the institutions story and came down on the side of institutions.

Geography may have had some influence on history, but through institutions – good government spread along lines of migration and communication through most temperate regions more easily than it did to tropical regions. The latter were also victims of colonialism (and in Africa’s case, the slave trade as well, which goes some way to explain bad government in Africa today).

So Robert Mugabe was a lot worse for Zimbabwe than the Anopheles mosquito. Corruption is more fatal for oil-rich Nigeria and Angola than latitude. Health is determined more by public actions against disease than by species of parasite. Other factors that Sachs mentions, such as illiteracy and poor infrastructure, are also symptoms of bad government services.

Further great insights into the ongoing Sachs-Easterly debate can be found here (PSD blog),  here (HuffPo), and here (Texas in Africa). You can link to Easterly's blog here and follow Sachs here.

On the creative benefits of an expat existence

Living abroad gives individuals greater creativity in problem solving, according to a study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 
[...] William Maddux of INSEAD, a business school in Fontainebleau, France, and Adam Galinsky, of the Kellogg School of Management in Chicago, presented 155 American business students and 55 foreign ones studying in America with a test used by psychologists as a measure of creativity. Given a candle, some matches and a box of drawing pins, the students were asked to attach the candle to a cardboard wall so that no wax would drip on the floor when the candle was lit. (The solution is to use the box as a candleholder and fix it to the wall with the pins.) They found 60% of students who were either living abroad or had spent some time doing so, solved the problem, whereas only 42% of those who had not lived abroad did so.
As it turns out, it's not just that more creative people are more likely to live abroad; the study's authors controlled for personality traits that are known to predict creativity, leading them to conclude that "it is something from the experience of living in foreign parts that helps foster creativity." Finally - statistical justification of my chosen path of existence!

You can find the complete study findings here.

The New York Times does Africa

Earlier this month I posted on the often selective coverage of (African) humanitarian crises in the mainstream media, citing interesting statistics documenting the amount of NYTimes articles covering the DRC and Darfur, respectively. Further to the point, Ryan Briggs has posted what amounts to a most fascinating graphic: 


Free trade as a tool for development

Via VoxEU Kimberly Elliott suggests the United States should lower tariffs on imports from small, poor economies:
... the Doha Round, under the best of circumstances, will take some time to conclude, and the US and other rich countries should move as quickly as possible to further open their markets to the world’s poorest countries. The eighth of the Millennium Development Goals adopted at a UN summit in 2000 calls on the rich countries to provide duty-free-quota-free market access for the least-developed countries (LDCs). This goal was reiterated at the WTO’s 2005 Hong Kong ministerial meeting, but US negotiators would only commit to provide access for 97% of products and only in conjunction with the conclusion of the Doha Round.

Importantly, the pledge to provide duty-free-quota-free access is not part of the round’s “single undertaking,” and the LDCs are not being asked to undertake liberalisation commitments. So President Obama would lose nothing and could gain a great deal of good will, as well as providing an economic boost to struggling developing countries, by asking Congress to act now and provide access on 100%of products, as the European Union already does, rather than just 97% as promised in Hong Kong. Three percent may not sound like much, but such liberalisation would unblock a number of items that that are of the most interest to poor countries.

Providing full market access will not reverse the decline in trade flows, but it would open opportunities for some of the poorest countries in the world. It would also address a fundamental unfairness created by the fact that US trade policy, like that of other rich countries, discriminates against poor countries and poor people. The highest US tariffs fall on agricultural products and labour-intensive light manufactures, where many developing countries have a comparative advantage.
I have generally found such an argument to be quite compelling, and tend to agree with Ms. Elliott's assessment of the matter.

Chinese origins of the Napa wine industry

Long before the vineyards of California's wine country were tended to by Spanish-speaking farmhands, they were filled with Chinese workers. Napa evidently even had its own Chinatown at one point:
Old newspaper articles and other 19th-century accounts show hundreds of Chinese workers in both Napa and Sonoma counties.

Many were farmers who brought their agricultural skills to the industry, helping establish vines and working in cellars. "There's more to this story. There's this whole human side of how the valley was developed," says Fong, who has researched the region's history.

A 1967 paper by a Napa school official on file at the Napa County Historical Society records that when rains turned the 1887 grape harvest into a muddy mess, keeping wagons out, Chinese workers waded in barefoot and hauled out the grapes.

But 19th-century Chinese in California faced fierce discrimination, including laws banning them from owning property and campaigns urging farmers not to hire them. In 1882, Congress passed an immigration ban on Chinese. Populations dwindled and rural Chinatowns disappeared as workers headed to cities.

A curious tidbit to showcase at your next tasting excursion, and an interesting history to ponder the next time you take a sip of a brilliant Napa Valley wine (may I suggest the Joseph Phelps Insignia Napa Valley 2002. Simply amazing).

[HT: Vinography]

More on contemporary land grabs: the case of the DRC

A brief follow-up on my previous post, if I may.

While it is true that the vast majority of farmland investments in Africa are those of foreign entities, this is not always the case as an interesting piece in the WSJ makes clear:
[South African farmers] are scrambling to get on board an ambitious venture to reclaim farmland in Congo's interior and help relieve that country of a reliance on food imports. Already some 70 farmers have booked a Congo tour and more than 3,000 have expressed interest, said Agri-SA, the South African farming group organizing the venture.

... According to a draft memorandum of understanding, Congo is willing to sign long-term leases and provide tax breaks and waivers on duties of imported supplies for approved projects. The South Africans in turn would build infrastructure, employ locals and instruct them in modern farming techniques. People familiar with the matter say the initial focus will be on restarting state-owned farms abandoned in 1992.

... South African commercial farmers, mostly the descendants of Dutch and French pioneers who began settling the continent's southern tip centuries ago, are renowned for their ability to coax food out of African soil. Eager for their expertise and capital, African countries from Ghana to Nigeria have offered them incentives to set up shop. South African farmers have turned Mozambique into a banana powerhouse. Zambia became self-sufficient in maize after welcoming farmers from Zimbabwe and from South Africa.
As with foreign (i.e. non African) land investments/grabs, such programs are equally controversial, as they raise the very same issues of land tenure, colonialism, and eviction as do those by China, the United States, Saudi Arabia or any other countries. According to the contract governing the investment, South African farmers will enjoy a five-year holiday on corporate tax and the dismantling of taxes on the import of agricultural inputs such as seeds, fertilizer and machines. The farmers will be allowed to take all their profits out of the country and are under no obligation to sell their output on the domestic market. Oh dear.

Land grabs in poor countries: blessing or curse?

Apologies for my recent absence: I dashed off to Nantucket for the Memorial Day weekend and - to be perfectly frank - postponed my return to the 'real world' (for me part of which entails blogging) for as long as humanly possible thereafter. It was such a lovely time! Alas, one can only put off the inevitable for so long, so here I am: back at long last.

While doing a bit of sunbathing on the beach over the weekend, I happened to stumble across an excellent overview of the issues surrounding present-day land grabs (or "outsourcing's third wave") in last week's Economist. I wrote about this matter earlier this month when a similar story appeared in Canada's Globe & Mail, though I feel the Economist does a much better job of teasing out the issues at stake.

As the Economist piece aptly observes, land grabs are particularly common among countries that export capital but import food (think the U.S. and China, for instance). Countries such as these outsource their farm production to countries that need capital but have land to spare; the vast majority of which are found in Africa (see map). And while investments in foreign farms are not a new phenomenon, there are several factors that differentiate today's 'land grabs' from those of the past, foremost among which is the scale (in Sudan, for instance, South Korea has signed deals for 690, 000 hectares! Before, a 'big' land deal use to be around 100,000 hectares) and the fact that the investors are no longer private entities alone: governments (and their state-run enterprises) have now likewise taken to investing in global farmland. China, for instance, has set up 11 research stations in Africa to boost yields of staple crops, and has secured several large deals across the African continent.

Duncan Green writes: 

The obvious motives for the deals are the spike in food prices and the subsequent decision of governments in several key producer countries to restrict their exports, threatening the food security of food importing countries such as the Gulf states, China and South Korea (the main participants in the deals). However, water shortages are another, hidden driver. Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, the chairman of Nestlé, claims: “The purchases weren’t about land, but water. For with the land comes the right to withdraw the water linked to it, in most countries essentially a freebie that increasingly could be the most valuable part of the deal.” He calls it “the great water grab”.

According to a newly released report by the International Fund for Agricultural Development and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN, farmland investments in the past five years total approximately 2.5m hectares - equal to about half the arable land of the UK. Other estimates posit the total farmland investments in Africa, Latin America and Asia at over 15m hectares, about half the size of Italy. While supporters of such deals argue that they are a tool for development, providing new seeds, techniques and money for agriculture, mounting evidence suggests they produce quite the opposite effect, driving out local farmers and in many cases depriving poor people of access to land, water and other resources.

Among the many underlying problems is that of the conflict between customary and statutory laws in the countries where the investments are transpiring. Writes the Economist:
Host governments usually claim that the land they are offering for sale or lease is vacant or owned by the state. That is not always true. “Empty” land often supports herders who graze animals on it. Land may be formally owned by the state but contain people who have farmed it for generations. Their customary rights are recognised locally, but often not accepted in law, or in the terms of a foreign-investment deal.

So the deals frequently set one group against another in host countries and the question is how those conflicts get resolved. “If you want people to invest in your country, you have to make concessions,” says the spokesman for Kenya’s president. (He was referring to a deal in which Qatar offered to build a new port in exchange for growing crops in the Tana river delta, something opposed by local farmers and conservationists.) The trouble is that the concessions are frequently one-sided. Customary owners are thrown off land they think of as theirs. Smallholders have their arms twisted to sign away their rights for a pittance.
The mechanisms for averting such losses would entail measures such as respect for customary laws, stable property rights, and increased transparency surrounding the land deals (among countless others, to be sure!). The trouble is that the majority of the countries which are party to today's land investments lack these very mechanisms and have been struggling with them for quite some time; in many cases decades. A potential solution might be the formulation of some international code, though I'm not quite sure as to what that would look like or what, exactly, it would entail. It would appear that our best option presently remains one of 'wait and see.'

P.S.  I doubt that this falls into the category of 'land grabs,' but the story does speak to the increased prevalence of the phenomenon of giving away land: touched by Biden's speech to the Bosnian parliament last week, a local farmer and war veteran offered Biden a piece of his land as a gift. Go figure.

Noteworthy….

Tsvangirai on what it's like to share power with Mugabe, from Foreign Policy

Keep your friends close and... export your enemies? Zvika Krieger on the newly appointed U.S. Ambassador to China, Jon Hunstman Jr., and the fate of the GOP, from The New Republic

Rwanda's national English paper, The New Times, slams Human Rights Watch (and Kenneth Roth specifically) for their "insensitivity" towards the people of Rwanda... and general meddling (the HRW piece in question can be found here)

A brilliant and fascinating piece in today's Guardian on the evolving nature of the Chinese Communist Party and changing face of modern-day China

Decreasing the number of currencies in Africa as a means of stimulating growth and trade

Via VoxEU, Thorvaldur Gylfason writes:
Does every country in Africa need a currency of its own? No. Because national currencies constitute an exchange and trade restriction, a further reduction of the number of currencies in Africa would likely encourage trade and growth in Africa. This is why the African Union aims at pooling all the continent’s currencies into a single currency by 2028. In the meantime, several regional monetary unions are on the drawing board, and two monetary unions already exist, one de jure and the other de facto. First, fourteen countries belonging to the Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa and the West African Economic and Monetary Union use the CFA franc. Second, Lesotho, Namibia, Swaziland, and now Zimbabwe use the South African rand. Botswana used the South African rand for ten years following independence, 1966-76, before introducing the pula.

... A strive for efficiency dictates the use of fewer and larger currencies and so do foreign investors who are understandably wary of weak and volatile currencies. This centripetal force is opposed by a centrifugal force rooted partly in national pride but also, more importantly, in the belief that sovereign national currencies make it possible to pursue independent and flexible monetary policies to foster economic and social development. This was the vision of Nigeria’s leaders in 1973, even if things turned out differently.

Dear Africa, We would like to invest. Sincerely, the U.S.A. (P.S. Just fix some things, first...)

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce today launched the Africa Business Initiative (ABI) intended to help bridge the investment gap between the United States and Africa. Together with Baird's Communications Management Consultants, ABI today also released a report entitled The Conversation Behind the Boardroom: How Corporate America Really Views Africa. Driving the study is the ever-perplexing question of why Africa has not attracted more attention from the U.S. business community.

The answer, it seems, is that Africa is attracting the attention of U.S. businessmen - particularly in the technology sectors, and particularly now more than ever - but the costs of investment (political instability, a general lack of a business-conducive framework, and a poorly defined rule of law, among others) continue to outweigh the potential profits to be reaped.

What would it take for corporate America to fully take the African plunge? In short: a stable political environment; an educated (African) workforce; a fair business environment; and improved infrastructure. Goodness! If this is, indeed, the wish list then any such investment may be a lonnng way off! Given that the Chinese seem to have little trouble with the continent's current state of affairs, too, many African states now have little incentive to reform so as to accommodate U.S. desires. If nothing else, such U.S. demands may well result in more African leaders 'looking East,' much to the disadvantage of American corporations.

Regardless, the report itself is quite interesting and forms the first part of a two-party study. Part two, The Public Sector Conversation, will be conducted over the next several months and will focus on African government responses to the corporate American responses put forward in the currently available study. This may be quite telling, indeed!

The easiest, most obvious way to help poor people

Give them money.


No, seriously, give them money. 


Aid Watch's Laura Freschi has a brilliant post on the innovative (though arguably really, truly obvious) aid approach taken by Oxfam GB and Concern WorldWide after the horrible flash floods that swept through the Western Province of Zambia in 2007. People lost their homes, livestock, and crops - in short, their livelihoods. Yet where USAID sent $280,000 worth of seeds and fertilizer, training for farmers, and emergency supplies, Oxfam and Concern Worldwide gave every affected family from $20 to $50 monthly, with absolutely no conditions:

An evaluation found that common fears about cash transfers—that the cash infusion will cause inflation in the market, that the money will be squandered, or that men will take control of the money—were unrealized.


What did people buy with the money? The list includes maize, beans, salt, cooking oil, meat, vegetables, clothes and blankets, paraffin, transport, soap and body lotion, and lots of other mundane household items. They also loaned it to friends, used it to pay back debts, purchased health care, education and transport, and rebuilt their homes. Only a very small fraction of the money (less than .5%) was spent on “unproductive” items, like liquor for the men.

Huh, go figure: poor people are capable of determining the depth and breadth of their particular needs! Shock horror! Who would have thought? And why didn't anyone discover this sooner?! *sigh* 


Of course such cash transfers remain laden with concerns as those noted above and others, among them targeting the right people and equipping individuals with the knowledge to truly capitalize on the funds given to them. Regardless, such cash transfer programs appear to be the logical way to help people who have lost their livelihoods regain control once again. As Freschi writes:

With the cash transfers, the people can decide for themselves how to meet their most urgent needs. This gives people who have lost their livelihoods, belongings or loved ones a new feeling of control over their lives, builds money-management skills, and restores to them their power to make economic decisions. If you were in their shoes, which would you prefer?

Lula in Beijing to "defend a new economic order"

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva arrived in Beijing today where it is expected that he and President Hu will strengthen bilateral relations between their two countries, promote oil contracts, strike deals on the sale of Embraer aircraft, and negotiate meat exports and biofuel for cars, among other top agenda items.

Already in March, China surpassed the U.S. as Brazil's biggest trade partner, and the trip seems to signal even further shifts in the global economic arena: namely, the U.S. out, China in. Or, perhaps more realistically - the U.S. down, but not (yet?) out; China up, and rising: 
"I think the trip that I am about to embark on... is one of the most important I am going on to defend a new economic order and a new commercial policy in the world," Lula told reporters before leaving Brazil.

Roberto Jaguaribe, a Brazilian foreign ministry official, said last week the trip represented a "reorganisation of the international scene" in which the top emerging economies were playing a bigger role in world affairs.
Among the more curious agenda items to be discussed between Lula and Hu is Lula's proposal that the countries conduct bilateral trade through each nation's currency, removing the U.S. dollar as an intermediary. Silva has been urging the end of the use of the American dollar in South American trade for some time now, suggesting such a move would reduce transaction costs for both exporters and importers, especially those operating on a smaller scale. Brazil and Argentina have agreed to trade with each other using their own currencies, and China and Argentina have likewise agreed to establish a 70 billion yuan ($10.24 billion) currency swap system that will enable trade between the two nations to be settled in Chinese currency. Might we be witnessing the gradual usurping of the U.S. dollar as the world's currency reserve by the Chinese yuan?

Such a reality may still be some way off, but the Chinese are slowly laying the ground for the yuan's ascendance, one bilateral negotiation at a time.

From bad to worse in Somalia

There is sufficient reason to believe that things in Somalia are going south. Wayyyy south. Mere months after the inauguration of the Transitional Federal Government, lead by moderate Islamist President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, the opposition party (and by 'opposition party' I mean noted terrorist group) al-Shabab is doing everything in its power to bring the country to the ground. And is doing a pretty good job, at that:

After a week of heavy mortar and rocket attacks that have left at least 135 people dead and sent tens of thousands fleeing, the insurgents have moved to within a half-mile of the hilltop presidential palace in Mogadishu, the Somali capital, which is being guarded by African Union peacekeepers with tanks and armored vehicles.


The Islamists, reportedly joined by hundreds of foreign fighters, didn't move on the palace Friday and almost certainly would lose a ground confrontation with the better-armed, 4,300-man peacekeeping force. Still, Aweys, a veteran hard-liner who US officials charge is linked to Al Qaeda, vowed to topple the government and institute "the Islamic state of Somalia."

This is among the worst violence Mogadishu has seen this year, and what's more, it appears that there is little that outside forces can do about it save but sit and watch. Any peacekeeping mission will likely end in disaster,  tantamount to or perhaps even surpassing that caused by the African Union's mission to the country. And, as Elizabeth Dickinson aptly notes, throwing money at the problem won't fix it either; in fact, it may well exacerbate it.


With little prospect for intervention or monetary aid, the international community is seemingly at a loss. This is horrible news for both Somalia and Western interests alike (obviously more so for the former than the latter). I'd venture to guess that life under a militant Islamist regime is not all that rosy, nor is its existence particularly promising for the ongoing war on terror. Hopefully the current state of affairs will not end in such an arrangement, though the present outlook is quite grim. Quite grim, indeed.


Update: Oh! I forgot to mention another somewhat disparaging factor implicated in all of this: the UNDP seems to think that Somalia's plight makes for a brilliant comic strip. A comic strip!! The alleged intent is "educational," but it all sounds a bit demeaning to me....

A sign of the times; dispatches from Ethiopia

Via Owen Abroad:

Here in Ethiopia it is common for little children to shout ferenj when they see a white face.  I am told that this comes from the Amharic word for a French person, ፈረንሳዊ (pronounced färänsawi), because French people were among the first white people Ethiopians had seen.

Today G and I were running down a dirt track through a small village and a small girl, about 4 years old, saw us running past.   She shouted,

China! China!

I heard the other day that there were two old men sitting on a hillside in north Wello, watching the Chinese labourers building a new road.   They were old-timers, who had fought against the Italians in 1935, and then watched the Italians build the first roads across the Blue Nile gorge and up to Eritrea. (”What have the Romans ever done for us?”)  As these men watched the Chinese roll out the tarmac, one of them said to the other:

The Italians are back. Only now they have narrower eyes.

Chris Blattman shared musings on this very shift in global influence - captured in the shouts of African children and casual conversations - in 2008.

My humanitarian crisis is bigger than your humanitarian crisis

Earlier this month I grumbled (ever so slightly) over the selective coverage of humanitarian crises in the mainstream press (I was then alluding to the dearth of coverage regarding Sri Lanka). Another case in point: Congo v. Darfur:


According to Julie Hollar of Fair and Accuracy in Reporting:
To put the death rate in perspective, at the peak of the Darfur crisis, the conflict-related death rate there was less than a third of the Congo’s, and by 2005 it had dropped to less than 4,000 per month. The United Nations has estimated some 300,000 may have died in total as a result of the years of conflict in Darfur; the same number die from the Congo conflict every six and a half months. 

And yet, in the New York Times, which covers the Congo more than most U.S. outlets, Darfur has consistently received more coverage since it emerged as a media story in 2004. The Times gave Darfur nearly four times the coverage it gave the Congo in 2006, while Congolese were dying of war-related causes at nearly 10 times the rate of those in Darfur. 
Hollar goes on to suggest several potential explanations underpinning such a media disparity, among them: journalist access to the conflict zone (or lack thereof); celebrity attention (or lack thereof, until recently); and U.S. political interests which, Hollar argues, are the foremost drivers of where the West happens to invest its attention. While there may be some merit to this claim, my understanding is that the crisis failed to attract much initial attention in the U.S. and beyond, which weakens her argument. Thoughts on this, anyone?

On a somewhat unrelated, albeit related note, Texas in Africa has a great post examining why the Congo remains an "anarchic war-zone" despite all humanitarian, Western, peacekeeping, democracy promotion, and celebrity awareness efforts. Definitely worth a read.

Rwanda: mHealth pioneer?

Rwanda has been in the news quite a bit lately, and appears to in many ways be emerging as a model for African development (ironic, isn't it?). Indeed, Kagame's mantra of entrepreneurship over aid has seemingly lead to a significant upturn in the country's development, and Rwanda appears to be rising.

Writing in the UN-Vodafone Foundation Technology Partnership blog (the Foundation is the leader in the mHealth field), Claire Thwaites reports that Rwanda is on the leading edge of the mHealth frontier:
Supported by the Rwandan Ministry of Health, Voxiva, and the Treatment Research and AIDS Centre (TRAC), TRACnet is an electronic records system that can be uploaded to mobile phones. In Masaka it is being used to track and record the distribution of anti-retroviral medications, ensure drug adherence, electronically create and submit patient reports, and access the most up-to-date information about HIV/AIDS care and treatment.

[...] In Masaka, I was guided through the health clinic by the local program manager, Hareuhana Diaedonne. During the tour, Hareuhana spoke at length about the simple but significant benefits that have been brought about by the introduction of mobile phones to the local healthcare system. Using TRACnet, he reported, data entry that used to take months to record and aggregate now can be collected in just 5 minutes.
A booming mHealth industry may not only be the ticket for improved public healthcare in Rwanda, but may also be the perfect opportunity to attract more investments into the country, in turn continuing to fuel Rwanda's rise.

African clichés, brought to you in taxonomic form

While already picked up by the ladies at Wronging Rights, I feel that Rachel Strohm's comparative taxonomy of African clichés is sufficiently invaluable (and indeed amusing) to likewise find its way onto this here blog. An excerpt for your reading pleasure:
Africanus occidentalis: This cliche is at home in a broad variety of habitats, be it among development practitioners or wide-eyed teenagers visiting Africa for the first time.  It can be distinguished by its prominent belief that concerted Western action can solve all of Africa’s problems.  The Africanus occidentalis studentia lives a peaceful life in the dorm rooms of university students, who often react to its presence by talking at length about the spiritual connection and cultural vitality that they experienced while visiting one country in a very large continent for two weeks last summer.  (The tragedy of receiving a university education whilst children in Africa are dying is an alternate topic, although this should not be confused with actual discussions of Rawlsian justice.) 
Rachel's rather brilliant self-proclaimed rant plays into timely discussions regarding frames of references in addressing development issues (i.e. the inherent problem in talking about development from a purely Western paradigm, much to the disregard of the culture, traditions, ideologies, etc. of the country one is seeking to assist). I could go on, but Rachel does such a brilliant job in her post that there really is little need for me to do so.

Chinatown, Angola

A superb video from Current TV examining the growing presence of Chinese in Angola. While the video's focus remains largely on China's infrastructure projects across the country, it nevertheless does a great job touching upon the variety of sectors in which the Chinese have become quite active. The video itself is somewhat lengthy, but certainly worth a viewing for those seeking to gain a better sense of 'China in Africa' (or Angola, as the case may be):

Whither Chinese growth?

A lead story in today's FT sounds the alarm bells over China's steep drop in export figures in April:
The total value of Chinese exports fell 22.6 per cent from a year earlier in April to $91.9bn, a faster rate of decline than the 17.1 per cent year-on-year drop in March, which many analysts and officials took as a sign that external demand for Chinese goods was starting to recover.
Back in March I posted on a story coming out of Bloomberg, which raised the question of the importance behind China's plummeting export figures for the country's growth. Somewhat curiously, the piece concluded that exports are only marginally important, as China is a continental economy driven primarily by domestic investment and consumption. 

A great piece by James Kynge lends credence to the Bloomberg story. Kynge argues that growth in the Chinese Mainland - and rising domestic consumption - is now powering the economy:
Retail sales have held up much better in China this year than in other big economies, growing at a real 15.9 per cent in March 
year-on-year. But more important than the overall trend is the composition of the retail spending.

The most robust consumer spending figures are coming from inland and lower-tier cities rather than from the traditional growth powerhouses clustered around the Yangtze and Pearl river deltas. A China Confidential survey assessing consumer spending intentions among an estimated 64m middle and upper income households in 189 cities in March showed a much higher propensity to spend in lower-tier cities.

Overall, 51 per cent of respondents in 15 second-tier cities said they planned to increase spending this year from last – a full 9 percentage points more than the number from the first tier. In 170 third-tier cities, 49 per cent of respondents said they would boost their spending this year.
As Gideon Rachman observes, "if this is a real and sustainable change, it is critically important for the future of the world economy" -- and indubitably so for future analyses of China's economic progress. We'll see if the trend keeps up.