Extrapolating on African Solutions for Public Health

This post is a quick information dump about my problem with western celebrity altruism in Africa. It has to be hastily done because I have to run to class afterward, but it's important.

Some of you may be aware of Ashton Kutcher's current competition with CNN. The celebrity is in a race with the CNN news feed to be the first to 1 million followers on twitter. Kutcher started the race as a testiment to the strength and vitality of new media forms. He is quoted saying that he is ragingly impressed with how Twitter can allow a single individual to be as widely read as a media conglomerate. In principle, that is a race I can get behind. It's facinating and conceptually trnasformative.

Where I start to have problems when Kutcher promised donate $100,000 dollars to the Malaria No More Fund. Kutcher is nearly to the million followers mark. He is 40,000 followers away. He posted on twitter an hour ago that,

We are 10k followers away from surpassing CNNbrk. I'm calling to have a check made out for $100,000 to the Malaria No More Fund.

Project Diaspora has a wonderful article about how this type of philanthropy and alturism is harmful to the whole of Sub Saharan African development. Malaria No More's slogan is that, "nets save lives." This is undoubtedly true. No mosquitos while you sleep equals less inceidence of a dibilitating disease. Their plan though does not coordinate the many stages and aspects of the malaria problem.

Malaria No More purchases cheaply produced malaria nets from Asia that have synthetic antimalarials. They do not coordinate with farmers and small scale producers of the natural deriveatives of these antimalarials in east Africa. They do not invest in a net making factory in Africa that can employ Africans to make the nets while earning enough to pay for one themselves and feed their families. And this organization doesn't look any farther than nets - they only protect you while you are in bed. What about the rest of the day?

The entire project is an external bandaid for African issues that should be solved within Africa. This does not preclude external actors - investors, supporters, beneficiaries of other kinds - from getting involved. They can and often should. I agree with Sachs in this way - western riches can help the poor. I think the rich can take advantage of the current neoliberal order to create beneficial markets. I disagree with Sach that we should do this exclusively through aid. Initiatives like the one Kutcher is about to fund are a bandaid.

There is nothing wrong with a bandaid. Bandaids stem bleeding, but they are not a solution. Those who get a net from this and do not contract malaria because of it are perfect examples of how bandaids shouldn't be condemned. The problems compound however if this net inititative continutes the poverty of others by de-incentivizing an indigenous anti-malaria industry that could employ tens of thousands or more.

Kutcher's initiative is specifically related to public health, but one can extrapolate to other areas of development, job creation, profit management, and infrastructure projects. I there are particularly close correlations between this argument and current US food aid practices.

These are the things that we have to be aware of. These are the things I am studying. It's facinatingly important, and simply facinating. Read the article (linked to above). Have a good rest of your thursday.