Economics: African voice against Live8: 100% Black Kenyan, RoomThinker at Thinker'sRoom devastates Live8

G8 Watch

"... [A] good chunk of African countries have the most mediocre leadership ever to sully the face of this planet. We have fellows who buy themselves 400,000$ colossal cars and a week later are at the IMF gates with hats in hand. I dare say if these schmucks had strong grips attached to their trouser seats and they were bounced down the front steps they'd be forced to live within their means. Aid paid to most countries goes straight into numbered Swiss Accounts." - RoomThinker

A thinker who advertizes himself as an all-Black African, obviously an intellectual and a man with smarts, resident in and blogging from Kenya, is the someone who has the fortitude to make the statement above. Putting that in the open, so sweepingly and convincedly, allows those not from his milieu with questions regarding Live8, Christian Aid, and Make Poverty History 2005 to get past certain of the uncertainties about the Geldof proposal to white-sing the G8 into a pro-Africa state of mind. That means, RoomThinker gains an uncontested space, a thawt-space, to make the argument (to some degree tellingly) that the West is for the most part to blame for the economic impasse in Africa. At least, that's how I was reading today's blog from him, "Get Real: Global Politics 101 & Live Aid" (click the live-link blue headline above). In any case, that's an argument I would be unwilling to spend much time on, were not the above large-lettered quote on the table before us and, for immediate purposes, out of the way of the further discussion in which RoomThinker is interested to engage his readers. I am quite engaged by RoomThinker in the present context of reflection.

In an immediately previous post, "Live Aid? Please!, an indignant but thawtful blog entry that has already produced a worldwind of response (reaction mostly?), RoomThinker addressed Live8 and G8 directly - as illusions in which Africa's poverty offered an occasion only for the West (the Rich) once again to attend to itself in a glut of celebritism banging on G8's door.

Remarking on Tony Blair, RoomThinker continued:

And so the Commission For Africa© was born.

Its vision, mission and modus operandi are simplicity in itself -- make poverty and bad governance in Africa disappear by making poverty and bad governance disappear. Some of the presidential members of [Blair'ss new CFA] board, who will remain unnamed, arrived late having missed their flights from the Continent because of being held up to attend to the pressing business of jailing errant opposition members.

Of course the elections [in UK] were held and good old Tony got in by the skin of his grinning teeth and now he is on more pressing matters like bans on fox hunting and how best to commemorate the Battle of Trafalgar.

It is laughable for anyone to take these latest initiatives with anything but amusement. The reality of the matter is that these latest buzzwords are a desperate attempt of a world that has grown decidedly weary of Iraq, Afghanistan, wars on terror and Middle East Peace Accords to find another avenue to massage its collective conscience and feel good about itself, basking in the warm glow associated with selfless charity.

And for me, here's RoomThinker's clincher, stuff I tried to say earlier in my doubts regarding the shape of this whole Western endeavour - altho indeed I signed the petition, and yesterday learned that among others, so had Pat Robertson, the TV evangelist. Despite everything I still have a zone of hope in my heart for that move, and I'm watching to see whether RoomThinker. when everything shakes out, finds anything that is at least useful to Africa at this juncture:

Meaningless concerts and laughable commissions are not going to fight any poverty. Even dubiously benevolent concessions like debt cancellation are meaningless in themselves. It is utterly meaningless to cancel my debt if you do not allow me to earn money. Let us both compete fairly on the International market. Your farmers are already enjoying considerable technological advantages -- they do not need subsidies. Don't wax lyrical about debt relief if without avenues for me earning my own money I shall promptly be in debt again.

[The boldface is inserted by me - Owlb]

RoomThinker does not stop there. He turns back to his African community and says only they can solve their problems, and has some ideas as to what's necessary for that to happen. After you read this Manifesto, then I could suggest you take on his longer and more copious mixed-genre blog entry for today, which doesn't renege the earlier piece just cited, but in quasi-fictional terms returns to blaming the West for the colonialist history to which the African continent was subjected for centuries. I can take that note better now, having read this first piece that I do recommend to you also, while the riots have begun in Edinburgh. What's happening there seems to have no real relation to what Mr. RoomThinker has on his mind. - Owlb