Development: Different Takes from two impressive Muzungu women - (Editor's warning, long and academic)

"Muzungu" is the word used in East Africa to refer to white people - similar to the way the word "gringo" is used in Latin America.  Last night Michele and I were lucky enough to meet two impressive women able to share insights based on practical experience in one case, and academic research in the other.

Take 1:  A project that seems to tick all the boxes

By definition it is almost impossible to find a project that ticks all the boxes in terms of impact and long term viability.  In a typical scenario, a dynamic big hearted individual or group, does more than walk to the other side of the street when confronted by abject misery.  The problem, of course, is what happens when the founders are no longer around.  This is the toughest box to tick when it comes to building a sustainable project.

Finally, after visiting countries in Latin America, East and North Africa, we have stumbled on a project that seems to tick all the boxes for impact and long term viability:

This project is the Hands Across Borders charitable society's Jambiani Tourism Training Institute ("JTTI").   One of the ironies of Zanzibar tourism is that so many of the staff come from the mainland.  The reason for this is that in Zanzibar the government schools fail completely when it comes to imparting the rudiments of arithmetic and the English language.  Students graduate high school not knowing their times table.  Whatever the reasons for this situation, the result is that much of the economic benefit of the islands' hotels flows overseas. 

The JTTI addresses this problem head on.  Tuition is free, and places are reserved for students so poor that they cannot afford the fees at other colleges.  Students are also provided with the nutrition they need to study effectively.  Graduates can look forward to gainful employment with one of the islands' many hotels.

The "secret sauce" of this project is the adjacent guesthouse property (see the Air BnB description), which should generate the necessary funding for the indefinite future.

To understand how this was achieved it is necessary to know a little bit about the ups and downs that Pat, and her husband Dr Alistair Pirie, have had to go through along the way. 

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

One amazing part of the story is that prominent members of the local Jambiani community did not just twist Pat and Alistair's arms to start the project, they also came up with three quarters of an acre of prime beach front property to locate the project on.

As Jambiani has developed into a popular tourist destination, the value of this land endowment has increased exponentially.

The project's prospects  looked even brighter when the founders won World Bank funding for the construction of a guesthouse to generate an income for the vocational school.

However this a part of the world where good deeds are frequently punished.  Even though the money from the World Bank came through, and even though the builder was paid, the construction was left incomplete.  The matter is now before the courts, and may well be resolved by the year 2050.

No Evil Deed Goes Unrewarded

During Zanzibar's 1964 Revolution, thousands of the ruling Arab class were massacred. The survivors escaped to places like the Gulf, with little more than the shirts on their backs.  However many of them have subsequently prospered.  In many cases, through a mixture of ability and hard work, they have been able to ride the Gulf region's boom, to restore their family fortunes.

Incredibly, given the history, they still feel an affinity for Zanzibar and have set up a foundation for supporting worthwhile projects on the islands.  Pat and Alistair obtained the funding needed to complete the construction of the guesthouse, from this foundation.  The guesthouse is now open for business, and training at the JTTI will resume once sufficient funding has been generated by the guesthouse.

Take 2:  Re writing the accepted Chinese African narrative

The academic at our table was Dr Lucy Corkin, who earned her PhD from the London School of Oriental and African Studies by writing about the relationship between the Chinese and Angolan governments.  That work has been repackaged as a book:

The accepted Western narrative on China's role in Africa, is that a monolithic China plays the various African regimes for dupes, obtaining vast resources from corrupt governments in return for punitive loans and dodgy infrastructure.  In other words, they are repeating the trick of the early Dutch settlers who managed to buy Manhattan Island for the price of a bunch of trinkets.  Lucy, who hails from South Africa and speaks Mandarin, spent three years investigating this narrative using Angola as a case study.  

In the case of Angola, she found that country's elite had used the relationship with the Chinese to bolster their position in an astute manner.  They were far from being the dupes portrayed in the standard Western narrative.  Of course whether the man in the street derived any benefit from the relationship is a different issue - one that she does not investigate in her book.

Using Lucy's book as a pulpit for my own two cents on the subject....

What I like about this book's thesis is that it is a reminder of the "agency" perspective.  The agency perspective attempts to navigate between blaming the victim on the one hand, and giving a free pass to every murderous kleptocratic dictator on the other.  

From an agency perspective the outcome of any injustice is a function of two things:  first, the original injustice, second the response to that injustice.  In other words the consequences of an injustice are not necessarily predetermined.  They are also affected by the actions of those in a position to dictate the response to that injustice.

Nelson Mandela's heroic conduct is illustrative.  After the terrible injustices that he had endured, nobody would have been surprised if he had become just another brutal dictator pursuing a policy of violent retribution and personal enrichment.  He chose another path.

The contrast between modern day Chile and Argentina provides another example pointing in the same direction.  Both countries endured the rule of violent dictatorships backed by the U.S. in the 1980s.  Given this common legacy it is interesting to see the difference between the two countries now.  Chile is the richest country in South America, while Argentina is a basket case that continues to lurch from one crisis to the next.

The important thing about the agency perspective is that it asserts that the actions of an evil dictator like Idi Amin are not pre- determined, and we should not give him a free pass for all the terrible things that he did.

In 2014, an Amazon reviewer of Ruth First's book, "The Barrel of a Gun" using language that prefigured Trump observed:

The book covers Africa's Big Man syndrome, which is again rearing its ugly head.  The misappropriation and outright theft of assets and resources is sad.  Maybe the time has come to prosecute those in developed nations who make it all possible.

Am I the only person who finds these sanctimonious sentiments written by a non African irritatingly patronising? They imply that Africans themselves have no agency.

Far more bracing are the words of the great Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe.  In his 1983 book "The Trouble with Nigeria", he wrote:

"The trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership.  There is nothing wrong with the Nigerian character.  There is nothing wrong with the Nigerian land or climate or water or air or anything else.  The Nigerian problem is the unwillingness or inability of its leaders to rise to the responsibility, to the challenge of personal example which are the hallmarks of true leadership" 

Two weeks ago, a Nigerian newspaper, The Daily Trust, published a column where the writer observed that Achebe's trenchant criticisms are just as valid today as they were in 1983.