As Slate observed yesterday ("Why Nothing the Press Throws at Obama Sticks"), It must be frustrating to be a campaign strategist for John McCain right now. "How did Barack Obama achieve superslipperiness without becoming greasy?" No one's quite cracked that code, but McCain strategists are now trying to portray Obama's sheen as nothing more than empty celebrity. Seth Green, writing for Across the Aisle, is not convinced:

The ad strikes me as particularly odd on two levels. First, McCain has talked a lot about the need for America to use all of the powers at its disposal, not just the military. He regularly says we need to think in terms of cultural and economic influence as well as military might. Thinking in these terms, Obama's crowds in Berlin are a promising sign that America could regain some of our cultural leadership and this could give us greater influence to tackle issues from Iran to Afghanistan with a broader alliance. How we could we be safer, as the ad suggests, to have our current President, who spends his overseas trips doing sword dances with Saudi royalty while demonstrators line up to protest his visit in each country he touches down?

The second irony of the ad is it specifically says that Obama is an actor and therefore not a president. Has McCain forgotten his hero? He was, as we know from every speech he gave in the primary, a "foot soldier in the Reagan revolution." News to McCain: Reagan was an actor and a transformational President. And Reagan's "celebrity style" was part of what allowed him to be such an effective communicator. Reagan's famous "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" was political theater... and it was highly effective.

To my mind, Obama's path to celebrity has been none other than his remarkable ability to communicate, as he said a few days ago "all that is best about America." That, my friends, is not the work of your average celeb.

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 5:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It's not as easy to make political progress against slavery as you might think. Seems like a no-brainer issue, but most people react strongly by turning away rather than getting engaged. It's one issue for which stories can be almost too powerful; they are difficult to hear, and it's challenging to translate their messages into public action. Plus, there are a lot of tricky immigration-related tradeoffs involved in clamping down on the forms of slavery that occur here in the U.S. I found this infographic (click here to view in detail) from Good Magazine to be a helpful, non-overwhelming visual to communicate the problem--and how we might go about addressing it.

On a related note, it's something that the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act advanced, somewhat unexpectedly, out of the Senate Judiciary Committee today. It's an encouraging sign that anti-slavery advocates are making headway.

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It's a (much-bemoaned) fact of life among advocates for action on climate change that a few well-publicized voices questioning this whole dubious proposition (e.g. "Are human beings really destroying our climate, which has been doing just fine for millions of years? C'mon now.") can constitute serious debate and uncertainty in the minds of the public. People read the prevailing view alongside the views of a few outliers (ahem, Exxon, ahem) and decide that the whole thing is still undecided and the best thing is to sit tight and not make any rash efforts to save the world.

As explored in today's New York Times, this is a problem even among scientists who agree on the commonly-accepted basic position that "accumulating greenhouse gases will warm the world, erode ice sheets, raise seas and have big impacts on biology and human affairs." Within that broad consensus, there is lots of healthy scientific push and pull--"two papers forward, one paper back"--in the words of author Andrew Revkin. Scientists accustomed to this sort of give-and-take may be able to step back and see this intellectual tussle as the "evolution of objective scientific understanding," but polls show the public remains "divided and confused" about the issue, probably because they just see a lot of contradictory opinions.

Lots of scientists are looking for ways to get around the urge to dumb down findings by playing up the aspects seem most powerful and important but will later be disputed loudly by other scientists. Instead, they're trying to provide more nuanced information on an ongoing basis, working with reporters to get the emphasis right and giving the lay-person intelligible information on developments as they occur.

Increasingly, scientists are taking their message straight to the public. Realclimate.org, Climatepolicy.org and Climateethics.org are among Web sites where issues are explored in an ongoing way, rather than in response to news releases and scientific papers. Other new Web ventures, like ClimateCentral.org at Princeton and the Yale Forum on Climate Change and the Media, focus on improving media coverage.

Robert J. Brulle , a sociologist at Drexel University, said it was hard to be optimistic about such efforts. "In this public sphere," he said, "it is assumed that the better argument, backed up with solid scientific evidence, will prevail." He said many studies had shown that people tended to sift sources of information to reinforce existing views.

It remains an uphill battle, but at least the messaging piece is now being picked up by more than the activist/advocacy community. That's a step in the right direction.

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Nicholas Kristof is one of many journalists and commentators to lament the gradual decline of the local newspaper. All newspapers are facing stiff competition from the web, cable and mobile applications. Local papers especially, with smaller readership and smaller budgets, feel the squeeze. Usually the squeeze is applied first to foreign news coverage, which is the most expensive and, so the thinking goes, least relevant. Only four American newspapers now have foreign desks, reports Kristof. That means all the foreign news you read comes from a very few sources. At least, according to the traditional journalism model.

There are efforts to broaden the network of free agents feeding us international news. Kristof reports on one: "One new venture is Demotix, which offers aspiring journalists a chance to upload their articles and photos for others to see -- and some possibility that news outlets will publish them." Such extended stringers may not bolster local newspaper bottom lines very much but they might provide the kind of up-close and personal foreign news coverage that would go well with locally-tuned newspapers looking less for the big think piece and more for a compelling personal hook (image above courtesy of Demotix contributor in Darfur).

One innovation that may help to save--by repackaging--the local newspaper is being developed by mobile application builder Verve Wireless, as reported in the New York Times this weekend:

[The company's] mission is to save the local paper by making it mobile. It provides publishers with the technology to create mobile Web sites, so readers can read the paper on their cell phones. Verve or the newspaper then sell ads on those sites. Verve already powers mobile versions of 4,000 newspapers from 140 publishers, including The Associated Press, McClatchy, and the New York Times Regional Media Group.

If you feel the siren call of the iPhone as I do and cannot imagine reading newspaper stories on your everyday cell phone, you will be pleased to know that Verve is already in the iPhone app game, with an excellent entry that "delivers daily headlines and photos and lets users watch slideshows or videos and text or e-mail stories to friends, which took the runner-up spot in the Apple Design Award competition" (high praise indeed).

These are the sorts of creative partnerships that will give local papers, most of which would never have the internal resources or capital to create mobile versions of their content, a fighting chance in our brave new media landscape. Either way, I will reach for the printed New York Times every time. But I for one am much more likely to browse a few local paper stories on the go than invest in an entire print version of the local paper.

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Barack Obama raised $52 million for his campaign in June. Where does it all go, you ask? As prominent as Susan Rice (pictured) and a few others have been on the Obama foreign policy team, it turns out that they aren't sitting around a table for some intimate brainstorming. It's pricey to create a mini, 300-strong State Department of your own. That, reports today's New York Times, is what Obama has done.

Every day around 8 a.m., foreign policy aides at Senator Barack Obama's Chicago campaign headquarters send him two e-mails: a briefing on major world developments over the previous 24 hours and a set of questions, accompanied by suggested answers, that the candidate is likely to be asked about international relations during the day...

Behind the e-mail messages is a tight-knit group of aides supported by a huge 300-person foreign policy campaign bureaucracy, organized like a mini State Department, to assist a candidate whose limited national security experience remains a concern to many voters.

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Michael Gerson tries hard to bring his genuine compassion to his genuine conservatism. In his eloquent writing, the two often come together in a form that even this genuinely skeptical Unitarian Universalist, mushy-middle liberal finds compelling.

But not always.

Mr. Gerson's op-ed this morning in the Washington Post reminds us that climate change deniers ignore our moral obligation to current and future generations:

Since even moderate climate changes could have dramatic consequences, how much risk are we willing to tolerate? What value do we put on the suffering of poor and vulnerable nations? What emphasis do we place on the welfare of future generations?

And he chides "many" environmentalists for indulging in unproductive partisan strategies:

Yet many environmental leaders seem unpracticed at coalition-building. They tend to be conventionally, if not radically, liberal. They sometimes express a deep distrust for capitalism and hostility to the extractive industries. Their political strategy consists mainly of the election of Democrats.

Then he reserves particular scorn for a "disturbing minority of the environmental movement" who "seems to view an excess of human beings, not an excess of carbon emissions, as the world's main problem." His evidence:

In two recent settings, I have heard China's one-child policy praised as an answer to the environmental crisis -- a kind of totalitarianism involving coerced birth control or abortion. I have no objection to responsible family planning. But no movement will succeed with this argument: Because we in the West have emitted so much carbon, there needs to be fewer people who don't look like us.

I couldn't agree more with that sentiment. In fact, we have worked with advocates for reducing unsustainable consumption patterns (like dependence on oil and coal) for fifteen years and with other advocates who promote responsible family planning. Indeed, it's often the same advocates. One of the most thoughtful people at the intersection of population, environment, and reproductive health and rights is our friend Laurie Mazur, who co-authored a thoughtful blogpost this week taking aim at retrograde efforts to link environmental damage to illegal immigrants.

So please - let's not tar climate change advocacy with the "cares more about bears than people" trope on the basis of two (two!) holdovers from the "Population Bomb" generation. It's a concern unworthy of Michael Gerson's subtle mind - and certainly not a reason to delay the building of broad, trans-partisan coalitions for action to reduce carbon emissions.

Full disclosure: Sadly, an intellectually (and chronologically) old codger at the Aspen Institute's Ideas Festival provided one of Mr. Gerson's two examples. I attended the same session. I suspect his second example is similar. I could have strangled the codger in question (though there's a good chance he was an Aspen trustee). But I recognize him to be representative of a small, aging and frankly ignorant minority, rather than anything remotely representative of those seriously responding to the moral and political challenges of climate change that Mr. Gerson acknowledges. So let's get to it, and leave the straw men out in the cold.

Posted by David Devlin-Foltz at 10:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Back in February, I wrote about President Bush's budget allocation toward funding a U.S. Civilian Response Corps. We finally have one. The Washington Times reports that Secretary Rice "inaugurated the U.S. government's first-ever civilian nation-building team Wednesday in a bid to learn from missteps in Iraq and Afghanistan reconstruction efforts."

At last we'll actually be able to examine how "integrating diplomacy, development and defense" actually works in practice. The Times reports:

The "active" component, called the Civilian Response Corps, is a team of 250 federal employees from several agencies - diplomats, development specialists, public health officials, law enforcement and corrections officers, engineers, economists, lawyers, public administrators, agronomists and others.

Their primary responsibility is to deploy to crisis spots around the world within 48 to 72 hours.

"This is a mission that requires the integration of security, diplomacy and development," Miss Rice said at a State Department ceremony.

For the team's active members, the response corps will be a full-time job. Another 2,000 who have other federal jobs will serve as the "standby" component, said John Herbst, the department's coordinator for reconstruction and stabilization.

About 37 percent of the active corps will come from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), about 30 percent from the State Department and the rest from the departments of Justice, Commerce, Agriculture, Homeland Security, Health and Human Services and Treasury, Mr. Herbst said.

Budget appropriations challenges persist for the CRC. Nonetheless, this is finally a functional, funded program and an intriguing experiment in what it will look like for America to deploy "smart power teams," if you will, to places that need a set of tools that only a diverse team with varied expertise can provide.

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Last week I wrote about the difference in the way Africa was perceived during the 2005 G8 summit versus the way it is being viewed this year, as a serious place to explore doing business. Today the Washington Post went one step further, running a Business section front-page piece about how emerging economies--Russia, Kenya, India--are acting as anchors amid the economic turmoil that's making life difficult for us right now in developed countries. The argument is almost always made the other way around: "If we're not careful, instability in X or Y developing country will spill over into our economy." This is quite a role reversal:

As global wealth has shifted during the past decade, emerging markets have become not only increasingly stable but they have also been claiming a larger portion of the world's riches than ever before. If Californians are rushing to withdraw money from banks there, the situation in Kenya is just the opposite: People are flocking to banks to open accounts. The Nairobi exchange, which lists mostly Kenyan companies and a handful of multinational firms, posted 10 percent gains in the three months ended in June as local and foreign investors flocked to the initial public offering of the cellphone giant Safaricom.

"I don't think there has been any impact," said Peter Wachira, a manager with AIG Global Investment in Nairobi, referring to the market turmoil. "Where markets in developed countries have been going down, ours has been going up."

To be sure, there has been an impact in many emerging economies, like China. But, arguably, the slowdown has been good for China, whose red-hot economy, driven largely by exports and foreign investment, needs an external brake to help it to grow at a sustainable pace and protect against eventual inflation and other overheating-related dangers.

It must seem strange to Americans to see other countries doing well while we, along with our prosperous traditional allies like Britain and Germany, struggle. I hope that, instead of provoking a protectionist reaction, Americans will see this role reversal as a greater incentive to toward openness with countries that are outside of our comfort zone.

Even the hint that an African country acts as a financial anchor in the world economy is pretty radical shift for Americans raised on pictures of starving African children.

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Before I came to The Aspen Institute and long before I began writing for this blog, I did a brief stint at a Washington, DC public relations firm that represented the government of Saudi Arabia. This was not long after 9/11--new books and articles were hitting the shelf every week outing, in no uncertain terms, the menacing brood of vipers posing as our Saudi "allies." (Such books always put that word in quotes. One example: Robert Baer's book was titled Sleeping with the Devil - how's that for tactful diplomacy?)

The firm was tasked with fending off--in the United States--all sorts of specific accusations leveled at the Saudi government (pass-through financing of terrorist groups via Islamic organizations, for instance), while also trying to make forward progress toward building an overall more positive rep for Saudi Arabia among the U.S. public and lawmakers. Not an easy task, to be sure. And, being that I had all the authority befitting a summer intern, I can't say that I ever knew exactly what raw facts and data the firm had to work with. But it seemed to me, even in my young and tender state, that the Saudis (by which I really mean the large and fractious al-Saud royal family that makes all decisions that count for the country) were actually trying to build a respectable country. The family has a long and checkered past, no question, and its present is riddled with dischord between the several thousand princes and bit players who occupy Saudi's political arena. But the Saudi leaders and citizens with whom I interacted struck me as genuine in their desire to live out their faith respectfully, peacefully--and in their desire to prepare their country for life after oil.

So I read with great interest today's Washington Post piece, "Saudis Look Beyond Oil to New Economy in Desert." Saudi Arabia is making money hand over fist (oil revenues will top $700 billion over the next two years), but the country will fall hard when oil's record prices drive global industry toward other energy sources. So leaders are finally getting serious about giving Saudi youth more than a token madrasa education, and about creating industries and local economies where that new education will be valued:

Over the next few years, Saudi officials say this stretch of desert will be transformed into a buzzing hub of scientific research and development, with cutting-edge universities, hospitals and housing for more than 130,000 people attracted by the idea of living in the city where Islam's prophet Muhammad is buried.

The project, called Knowledge Economic City, represents a first serious step by Saudi Arabia toward building a post-petroleum economy. It is one of six major industrial centers planned to rise over the next 15 years. At a cost of more than $100 billion, the sites are expected to provide housing and jobs for the country's fast-growing population, half of which is younger than 21.

Note, among all of this, the folly of looking at the terrorism/extremism problem in a silo or vacuum, apart from economic factors and technology developments. In Saudi Arabia, it looks very likely that globally-competitive schools will phase out madrasas (though those may yet prove resurgent; too early to tell) not because of shifting ideology but because of shifting economic drivers, which in turn create a new political reality for Saudi leaders. Such is the tale of our interconnected world.

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 12:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It's strange to think that it's been four years since JibJab creators enriched our political discourse with their viral, breakout hit, "This Land," in which a puppet-like versions of George W. Bush and John Kerry reinterpret Woodie Guthrie's tune in homage to campaign gaffes and slogans. The JibJab creative team just released (with impressive production values!) an update--"It's Time for Some Campaignin"--on Dylan's classic song that revels in 2008 campaign stereotypes (Barack Obama rides a unicorn and sings an ode to Change; McCain helms a tank primed for Jihad containment).

In JibJab tradition, the video is, to be clear, a blunt instrument. Look elsewhere if you crave nuance. But it's kind of an interesting tradition in the making. These videos enshrine the pieces of each campaign that have stuck in the popular mind into one neat, silly package. That said, what makes me sad about the video is that, in stark contrast to the 2004 presidential election, it doesn't hint that we've got two of the best and most promising candidates for president that we've had in many years. I'm all for poking fun across the board (I'm an evangelical, but I love the Simpsons, Flanders and all), but let's not let a healthy habit obscure the areas where we really should be proud of what our country is up to.

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 11:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Just a quick note to thank Steve Clemons of the New America Foundation for engaging Jane Mayer in a chilling but measured dialog this morning about her new book, The Dark Side, subtitled "The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into A War on American Ideals." Video of the full hour-long conversation is HERE.

Mayer's reporting for The New Yorker in recent years foreshadows many of the themes explored in more depth in the book and interview: the power of the Vice President's office, for example, and the eerie logistics of the "extraordinary rendition" program through which suspected terrorists were tortured in secret locations.

More soon about some of the superb advocacy work going on among seemingly improbable constituencies to help turn the page on this tragic, outrageous, demeaning period.

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A colleague and mentor of ours in the advocacy evaluation field, Julia Coffman, sent the following note out to a few of her pals today, nicely capturing a common problem in the advocacy field and offering a useful example of a good idea finding the right moment and (perhaps) the right champion. Julia writes:

"You know how we're always talking about the fact that policy outcomes may actually take years to show up? Here's a real-life example passed along by evaluation colleague Carlisle Levine at CARE International. Mayor Bloomberg's administration has now picked up the cause for a new federal poverty measure--based on work that the National Academy of Sciences did and proposed 13 years ago."

Late? Yes. Useful nonetheless? Hell, yes.

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Have you seen the one where Barack Obama is an American flag-burning, Bin-Laden adoring Muslim and his wife is packing heat guerrilla-style? The New Yorker cooked up a good cover this week, rivaling the one they ran a few months back (my colleague Tarek reminded me) that had Hillary and Barack tucked snugly into bed, grandfather clock hands pointing to three o'clock, and both candidates reaching, wide-eyed, for a ringing red phone. For my money, both covers do a nice job of provoking thoughts about how absurd the insinuation game in politics can get.

This latest cover--the one pictured--has resulted in a classic flashbang media kerfuffle. The sort that, to my mind anyway, liven up what can be long, drudgery-filled months of carefully-vetted presidential campaign talking points. I really enjoyed the piece, "It's Funny How Humor Is So Ticklish," that Philip Kennicott wrote about this tempest in a teapot in today's Washington Post. Among my favorite portions is Kennicott's analysis of The New Yorker's real audience versus the one imagined, or perhaps only implied, by the Obama campaign:

The cover, like so many self-deprecating, wryly funny, overly self-referential New Yorker covers before it, is just another prism through which New Yorker readers confirm something that is true and easily caricatured at the same time: They are an elite, a minority, and while they might be more educated or sophisticated or adept at the play of humor, they will always be outvoted by Texas. And Kansas. And the rest of the states beyond reach of the A train. The cover says as much about the political influence of Manhattan as it does about the prejudice of the rubesoisie...

The prissy tone of dudgeon from the Obama campaign was a relatively well-pitched political twofer: It distinguished them from the New Yorker and its untouchable demographic (educated, literate, well-informed people from New York or New York-ish enclaves) and it gave them a news cycle on the high ground of victimization, defensively crouched against credulous souls misreading the New Yorker in coal mines, truck stops and smoky saloons.

That last sentence especially is just wonderful. Makes it obvious how important it is to keep your real audience in mind when you speak (or draw). The New Yorker did that. As Bill Maher is quoted saying in another piece in the New York Times today that talks about how hard it is to land a joke on Obama, "If you can't do irony on the cover of The New Yorker, where can you do it?" Audience, my friends. Audience.

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This week I was one of three judges at Americans for Informed Democracy's delightful Campaign Idol contest, in which high school students in AID's Global Scholars Program compete to present the best new idea for an advocacy campaign. (I like to think I was a judicious blend of Randy and Simon, with a big dash of constructive feedback to substitute for saucy entertainment value). Let me tell you, everyone should be required to articulate why good advocacy matters to a group of high school students at least once every six months. It is a wonderful way to hone one's "real people" skills.

So when I ran across Katya Andresen's post to her blog (called Getting to the Point; an excellent resource if you don't know it already) about "knowing your audience as real people," I immediately understood what she was getting at. Cut out the jargon; speak to your audience as they are, not as they are in your head.

I started getting the vivid sense of audience I have when I speak to groups in person.

My little thought process caused me to reflect on the importance of keeping our audience in our minds when we engage with them. I don't mean audience in the abstract. I mean a few representative, REAL human beings. When we're writing a blog post, fundraising appeal, annual report, whatever--it really helps to think of it as a direct communication to Bob or Nancy or Andre, rather than a missive to a sea of faceless folks. It inspires us, motivates us, improves our work and enriches our tone.

By the way, these student groups who competed in Campaign Idol were not messing around. I wish half the advocacy plans that I've interacted with were as clearly thought-out as the winning group's idea, which connected (in amazing, theory of change-level detail) an artist who is showing Sri Lankan life--beautiful and wrenching sides both--in all sorts of ways with a fundraising campaign for local markets that will bring Tamils and Buddhists involved in that country's civil war together to rub shoulders in their day-to-day lives. A remarkably good idea, actually.

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The International Criminal Court will seek an arrest warrant for Sudan's president Omar al-Bashir today, as reported in the Washington Post. This is really something. Like anyone who is looking honestly at the situation in Sudan and other troubled places where the UN has been minimally useful, I have many moments of severe skepticism. But let's take a moment and address those of us who have a hard time thinking of anything good to say about multilateral law and institutions: the ICC has taken a bold action that is fraught with political risk in the pursuit of justice. Full stop.

One can take issue with the ICC's actions for any number of reasons: it will endanger UN peacekeepers, it will complicate U.S. counterterrorism efforts in Sudan, it will inflame tensions further, it may push a political solution further down the road. But the bottom line is that the charge consistently leveled against international institutions--they take the path of least resistance--is not so, here.

"Bashir will certainly use the indictment to justify some awful reactions, such as humanitarian aid restrictions and further barriers" to the joint U.N.-African Union peacekeeping mission in Darfur, said John Prendergast, co-chairman of the Enough Project, an initiative to end crimes against humanity. "But if the international community stands firm and makes it clear that these kinds of responses will only make matters worse for Bashir . . . then he will relent."

ICC advocates contend that such court actions contribute to peace efforts. Previous indictments of world leaders -- such as former Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic and former Liberian president Charles Taylor -- by other U.N. tribunals have ultimately contributed to stability in those countries, said Richard Dicker, director of the international justice office at Human Rights Watch.

"I would never belittle the potential dangers" of such international prosecutions," Dicker said. "It is the prosecutor's job, however, to follow the evidence wherever it leads, regardless of the people in high positions, he investigates. . . . Will it be controversial? You bet. What is at stake here is limiting the impunity of those associated with these horrific events in Darfur since 2003."

Among the many iffy ideas I've heard thrown around as the international community casts about for a workable way forward on Sudan, none sounds as attractive to me as simply pursuing justice and seeing where it leads.

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 9:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This morning I had coffee with an Ethiopian gentleman who works as Chief of Party for USAID's AGOA project--which is to say that he works to connect Ethiopian businesses with American markets. He told me some amazing stories. For instance, back in the late 80's, when the country faced the civil war and terrible famines that have shaped U.S. perceptions since, it was illegal to own a business in Ethiopia.

Now, if you want to start an export-driven business, particularly an agribusiness, the Ethiopian government will sell you cheap land and stake you up to 2/3 of the start-up capital with a low-interest loan. Currently, instead of two Ethiopian flower farms employing 500 that existed in 2002, there are forty, employing 30,000. Those jobs are almost all entry-level, rural jobs that provide sustainable livelihoods in turn for about 125,000 family members.

The U.S. gives $600 million in aid to Ethiopia, my friend informed me ("George W. Bush has been Africa's best friend," he said). But, he continued, almost all of it is unsustainable--food aid or PEPFAR funding. Both do good things in the short term, but neither touches the leveraged, sustained impact of those flower farms.

It's very interesting to me to sense a small but perceptible shift in the conventional wisdom about "what to do" with Africa. (That's a terrible turn of phrase, as if African countries needed constant minding. But let's recognize that it has both defined past framing and contains elements of truth.) The Gleneagles G8 summit in 2005 was a big deal, as you may recall, because of the pledges that rich-world leaders made at Tony Blair's prodding to increase their aid funding to African countries. I am not one of those that dismisses such pledges as a waste of time--so long as the aid is directed toward really useful purposes. Interaction is tracking this year's G8 summit because we are all still waiting, and calling, to see those pledges fulfilled and put to good use.

But "good use" for foreign aid is getting harder--though not impossible--to define; education and health infrastructure continue to be key components that nearly everyone agrees on. If you've read this blog for a while, you're probably familiar with these key messages from NGOs like the One Campaign. But take a look at IBM's Global Innovation Outlook report on Africa (that's the cover pictured above). It's a different picture. How often have you hear this one from development organizations? "Over the past decade Africa has averaged 5.4% growth"--beating out the S&P 500 and most European markets in recent years. I'd never heard that number. But that's pretty important context for this analysis from IBM's report on Africa's business prospects:

"I think the climate for business in Africa has never been better than it is right now," says Dr. Tukur, Chair, NEPAD Business Group. "We are witnessing many opportunities for productive long-term investment and public-private partnerships that will facilitate and sustain economic growth and development. Africa is now being taken seriously within the global economic community and it won't be disappointed."

Essays contributed from GIO partners, such as Nepad and Uganda's Makerere University, IBM, and other GIO alumni, explore topics as varied and wide open as the continent itself. For example, there is a compelling look at the African wireless industry, which boasts unprecedented new mobile applications and services. And there is an analysis of how African industries are beginning to move up the value chain, capturing more of the total value of the continent's vast natural resources.

Or take filmmaker Carol Pineau's article, written as an investment column cum development wake-up call in Sunday's Washington Post: "Hey, Here's a Tip: Try Africa."

What surprised me most about Africa's stock exchanges weren't the high returns, but the reason for these amazing rates: prejudice.

No, not the black-white variety; it turns out that even Africa's diaspora shares the aversion to investing in the continent. Experts estimate that only 10 percent of Africans living abroad invest back home. It's that we just can't see Africa as anything more than a basket case. It's easy to envision Africans as child soldiers or victims of famine or poverty. But if you envision a stockbroker, an investor, a financial adviser or a mutual-fund manager, chances are you don't conjure up images of Africans. Yet Africa has all of these.

Kim Jaycox, chief executive of the Africa Fund I at Emerging Capital Partners, one of the first and largest equity funds to invest in Africa, explains that the returns are high because the perception of risk is much higher than the reality. When the perceived and real risk levels even out, returns will go down. In other words, as long as we stick to our belief that Africa is a coast-to-coast disaster zone, even well-managed African companies operating in peaceful nations will have to pay a premium to attract capital.

Pineau touches a raw nerve for development practitioners and advocates. We're big on talking about solutions here at the GII, but even so it's easy to reinforce the perception of an endlessly needy Africa in our calls to make good on G8 promises. Let's be sure, as we advocate for needed aid, that we don't make it harder to build the businesses that will help Africa grow up and out of our to-do list.

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 11:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A good blog goes out into the wide world of the webosphere to procure the tastiest morsels for its readers; too much self-promotion and things get stale fast. But, dear readers, there are exceptions to this rule, as I've learned this week. The Aspen Ideas Festival ended day before yesterday, and the "virtual festival" page boasts an embarrassment of riches. Already, a tightly-organized mountain of pithy video clips stands ready for you to stream instantly--most of them expertly edited courtesy of my colleague and erstwhile Exchange blogger Tarek Rizk, who is now The Aspen Institute's Director of Interactive Services.

Let's see, what mood are you in? Concerned? About the global food crisis? Paul Collier, author of "The Bottom Billion" is here to talk you through it. About Afghanistan and Iraq? Senator Sam Nunn and Colin Powell discuss bipartisan consensus on those wars.

Pensive? Shelby Steele, the Robert J. and Marion E. Oster Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, mulls his big idea: The end of white guilt.

Curious? Irshad Manji and Dalia Mogahed discuss the system of leadership in Islam.

Practical? Inventor Dean Kamen discusses the prosthetic arm his company invented for recent war veterans who had lost limbs, along with initiatives to bring potable water and sustainable electricity to underserved populations. Or listen to a stacked panel brainstorm where the next great R&D breakthroughs will come from.

Ambitious? Bill Clinton discusses Nelson Mandela's work on HIV/AIDS, rebuilding Liberia, market-based solutions to global health problems, revitalizing urban economies through environmental initiatives, and more.

Or, perhaps you just want to hear (and see) some really good news, like Ghanaian educator and Microsoft alum Patrick Awuah doing country-changing work.

Enjoy.

Posted by Josh Weissburg at 2:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I could make a cheap crack: "I spent three days at the Aspen Ideas Festival and all I got was this swanky schwag bag with corporate-logo'd goodies," but I won't because I like my bag and schwag. And I got lots more from my time at the Institute's signature public event. One highlight among many: a challenging talk by my new Aspen Institute colleague, Clare Lockhart. Lockhart co-authored Fixing Failed States with Ashraf Ghani, the former finance minister of Afghanistan. The book builds on their five years of collaboration as they invented several radically sensible approaches to building a functional state. What worked, and didn't, in Afghanistan inspired them to study success stories and failures in search of lessons for others.

Her talk included a pretty stunning denunciation of "the aid complex," with its bewildering array of competing priorities, high overhead charges, overpaid expatriates, and disregard for local opinions. (Ghani spent most of his time mediating among, and providing information to, 30 UN agencies, scores of bilateral donors, and 3,000 NGOs.) Some of the key reforms they proposed were ultimately undercut by well-meaning but thoughtless outside interventions. Their call for simple steps to build markets and promote market-based solutions is a challenge to aid as we know it, at least in the context of the world's roughly 40-60 failed or fragile states.

Lockhart and Ghani may be just as angry as Bill Easterly, who shares with Lockhart an earlier career as a World Banker. And their suggestions may be similar: prioritize local consultation and capacity; get the incentives right; insist on accountability. But Lockhart's delivery is, well, more civil. And that may help her sound more optimistic. After all, as Clare noted in her Aspen talk, she and Ghani went looking for things that worked. They found common features in the remarkably disparate cases of economic transformations they studied: Singapore; the Republic of Ireland; Spain; and states in the American South.

Four intriguing features drawn from their case studies:
1. Combine a long-term vision and the flexibility to adjust.
2. Keep a relentless focus on competent, accountable management of public finances.
3. Invest in secondary, tertiary, and vocational education to begin creating competent local administrators, engineers, and mid-level managers.
4. Develop an indigenous construction industry to create jobs and housing.

See? Simple.

Posted by David Devlin-Foltz at 8:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So you have a lot to say about your favorite organization and little time to say it? Try creating an "itty bitty messaging guide" like the one that our friends at the Initiative for Global Development give to their trustees and staff and members.

The guide is simply printed as a booklet that fits in the breast pocket of a shirt or inside a wallet. (If you love the finer things, like the New York Metropolitans Baseball Club, it's about the size of a Mets pocket season schedule.)

The itty bitty guide starts with a simple description of the IGD that doubles as a mission statement, written in nicely accessible language. Then it expands one sentence at a time into what is in effect an "elevator speech" for a five-floor ride, a ten-floor ride, and then a deluxe version that might take thirty floors. Finally, it has a more conversational version and some tips for personalizing the user's pitch.

I have it only in hard copy and so for now can only share the idea, not the thing itself. (But maybe our friends at IGD would make it accessible online and send us a link.) It's a great way to inspire the chronically verbose to tighten it up and achieve vertical eloquence. 'Nuff said.

Posted by David Devlin-Foltz at 12:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)