Way to goiter!

This is the most emailed article in the NYT today, about the huge effort to iodize salt in Central Asia in the last 15 years. There are some good lessons here for sustainable development work. Mostly, I was interested to read about using local symbols and famous people to get the masses on board.

The target problem was that there was a high level of mental retardation in Central Asia, among other places, and it was found that using iodized salt would be the most effective way to reduce the problem. So, governments and NGO's got together to publicize the benefits of using iodized salt instead of non-iodized. That was half the battle, the other was getting salt producers to iodize their salt.

What they did, and here's what I liked – they devised a recognizable and familiar symbol to put on iodized salt so people at the market could easily tell which salt to buy. Then famous local celebrities who's opinions were respected were brought on board to remove the stigma that iodized salt somehow had to it.

This kind of thing has parallels all over the world, especially in developing countries. When I was working for the Carter Center in Niger doing Guinea Worm eradication work, we used to treat water sources to kill the Guinea worm vector (click the link to learn more) - it was a very mild chemical that would disperse within 3 weeks, and it was as harmless as using fluoride in the water... But depending on how the villagers felt that day, some would blame us for their decreased virility while others would say their kids were smarter.

Perception is everything – the lesson being that marketing is a very important and integral part of any public health intervention.

The Soft Belly of Africa

I wrote about this last summer - about the Darfur crisis in Sudan spreading instability throughout the region. The International Herald Tribune posted this article, with one of the most disturbing pictures I have seen in a long time - especially since my kids are this poor girls age...

What can be done in this region?

Central African Republic has basically been a failed state without an outrageous crisis, so it has languished in desperate obscurity for the last few decades. The only thing I really know about it is those in the know call it the C-A-R and their main 1970's era "big-man" leader is rumored to have cannibalized his people. Sudan is what it is, in some ways a booming, successful country (see Glittering Towers in a War Zone) but in other ways a total hell for its people. Chad is teetering on the edge of being a true failed state, but seems to be holding itself together better than CAR or Sudan.

How can we find the political will to help get central Africa in order? I don't mean in western or American order - not in an imperialist sense. I mean really helping the people out in a truly sustainable way.

This is so much more challenging than helping a country like Niger, which for all its statistics still has a functioning government and a country that is relatively easy to get around. What do you do for an even more foreign, inaccessible, and extremely complicated place like Central Africa? I wish I had the answer.

There's just no international cavalry any more, if there ever was. I get sad thinking about the fact that - and I would bet anyone this is true - that there are probably millions of people in these regions who think, "If only Americans would notice, they would be able to fix this. Americans have so much, they can surely spare enough for us..." I really sincerely wish there was some kind of win-win scenario where a little extra effort on my country's part would help untangle the region.

My guess is that a lot of people see only the problem and not the system that perpetuates the problems. The problems stem from ingrained corruption (so throw the bums out - hold a diplomatic effort to create elections in CAR & Chad), and especially from poverty and scarce resources (so spend just a few extra million in aid money in CAR and Chad especially to bolster institutions and infrastructure and America's image.)

To paraphrase James Baker, we really do have a dog in this hunt.

Innappropriate Technology

Those of you interested in international development should be familiar with the term "appropriate technology" - the concept of having the appropriate tools in the hands of the people who will use them. In practical terms, this means not shipping Caterpillar tractors built for commercial farms in the midwest to subsistence farmers in sandy, dry West Africa.

I've blogged about it before, but the whole one-laptop-per-child thing is really bugging me. The NYT posted another article about it.


I just can't understand how this is supposed to work in a poor country where they have no technology, while here in the US and in Europe where we've had ample time and resources to use and adapt the same thing, it hasn't happened. I've lived around silicon valley since high school - and I've got both family and friends in the education field. They all use technology, but the kids still have to learn handwriting and how to add and subtract on their own. I kind of see this as my parents not allowing my first wristwatch to be digital, so I could learn how to tell time on an analog clock.

I really don't want to be bursting such an idealistic bubble. I very much admire the motivation and idealism that the MIT and OLPC people have invested in the project - I would just love to hear more from the potential recipients. It was my experience in Niger that the locals would never say no when an aid organization offered them something, regardless of what it was. Anything free is good. I'm almost positive that once this starts getting out into the field, the laptops will start being resold immediately.

This is not to mention a whole host of other things in the NYT article I linked above - things like charging up the machine, replacing the screen lamp - "A child could do it!" I'm just seeing a whole bunch of constant hand-holding and tech support making this totally unsustainable as a development project. You just can't introduce this into a place that has absolutely no experience with it. Better to get it into more computer-savvy hands for a while to see if they're a viable learning tool.

Inconvenient Truth

Just rented former VP Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth." I've considered myself to be relatively up to date and informed, but it's a really compelling movie. His argument seems really rock solid and I highly recommend everyone see this. Check out the graphic at the bottom of my site and pledge to see it. If you've already seen it, still fill out the code below so my site has some impact!