What’s the solution to world poverty? Some might say food aid; others, training and investment. But, for a growing number of international philanthropists, the next big thing for the Third World might just be the same force that’s been reshaping the First: technology. It all started at the 2005 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, when Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab, announced an ambitious plan to improve education and stimulate economic growth in the world’s poorest countries with the development of a $100 laptop. Just over a year later, One Laptop Per Child [...]
NAIROBI, Kenya — The collapse of the World Trade Organization talks in the past month has presented Africa with a double predicament. On the one hand are the lost trade opportunities following the collapse of the WTO’s Doha Round. If the talks had succeeded in favor of Africa’s position, the continent would have gained better market access to the European, U.S. and Japanese economies. The continent also sought to successfully negotiate for the elimination of agriculture production and export subsidies that make produce from developed countries cheaper than Africa’s in the world market. On the other hand, the preferential trade [...]
ACCRA, Ghana — Taking a break from work, hotel desk clerk Augustine Kumi, 23, briefly wondered aloud why he and many fellow Ghanaians are poor. After all, his stable country enjoys a democratically elected government and, he pointed out, it boasts valued natural resources such as gold, timber and cocoa. That doesn’t account for the high inflows of foreign aid, perhaps comprising more than 40 percent of the annual budget. But then Kumi answered his own question. “We don’t have good leaders,” he said. “They are greedy.” Kumi’s gripes, in part, are tied to his frustrations with President John Kufuor’s [...]
