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Title: The Trouble with Africa: Why Foreign Aid Isn't Working
ISBN: 0300120176
Author:
Robert Calderisi
Publicate Date: 2006-09-15
Publish: 2006-09-15
List Price: $40.00
Average Customer Rating: 3.5
Format: Hardcover
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $34.02
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $32.00
Amazon Merchant Price: $40.00
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1: "The Trouble with AFRICANS" would be more like it....
For Robert Calderisi, experienced development economist and ex-World Bank official, Africans would be a lot better off today if it weren't for their backward culture. "The Trouble with Africa" presents Calderisi's argument that the continent's scourges of poverty, corruption and mismanagement are of Africans' own making; "Africa's handicaps are inbred," he writes bluntly (143). The author believes aspects of what he calls "the African character" (e.g. fatalism, undue deference to authority and an ethic favoring collective distribution over private accumulation of wealth) must be corrected before African societies can develop. In making this case, he presents himself as a hard-headed realist doling out uncomfortable truths which other Africa specialists are too politically correct to utter--even if they secretly recognize they're true.
Many Westerners who've worked in Africa will recognize the cultural characteristics Calderisi describes; as a returned Peace Corps Volunteer I know them well. The problem I have with his approach is that it's based on an outdated concept of culture as a set of essential traits, and it confuses cause with effect. Culture is not some timeless essence passed down unchanged from the ancestors, but a dynamic system constantly being reshaped by politics, economics and history. As an anthropologist I'm uncomfortable with the author's reference to "the African character"--not because I'm concerned it might offend someone, but because a vast scientific literature accumulated over the last half century has shown the danger of viewing culture as an independent variable. Another ex-World Bank economist (Paul Collier in "The Botton Billion") convincingly outlines structural and historical explanations for Africa's plight which have nothing to do with culture and aren't even specific to Africa. Calderisi, alas, completely ignores such explanations.
"The Trouble with Africa" tries to account for the near-universal failure of Western development policies in Africa over the last four decades using little more than personal vignettes and anecdotal evidence; its author seems uninterested in rethinking the assumptions that underlay those failed policies. To apply a metaphor from my own profession, Calderisi is like a teacher whose students have all flunked the exam. Such a teacher should at least stop to wonder, "What's wrong with my approach? Where did my instruction fall short?" Calderisi, in contrast, asks only "What's wrong with them? Why don't they get it?" As long as he keeps focusing on these questions and grounding his answers in antiquated culturalist fallacies, he is not the hard-headed realist he thinks he is.
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2: Straight B.S!!!!!!
I think Books like this are part of the reasons why it has become so necessary for Africans to begin to voice their opinions on the constant degradation and misrepresentation of the continent. This Author and those that agree with the author's perceptions fall into the category of what I like to call a "post-imperialist syndrome" that's plaguing a majority of the Western community.
I think it's time people stopped playing ignorant and take sometime to fully understand and do the right research on the African continent. I have an advice: Go to Africa, live there for up to three years (not in hotels) and find out the truth about the continent. And please for all these so called experts or professors who believe they understand everything about the genesis and present state of Africa, I'll advise they start spending their time on other projects they understand because Africa doesn't need people like them.
Reading books like this further confirms the reason why Africans need to stand up and change all this B.S. Good thing is a new generation of Africans are on the rise and we are out to shut all this nonsense!!!
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3: Review of Trouble with Africa
The evidence given is more anecdotal and 'desk reviewish' than based on solid research. The author indulges a bit too much in touching on his personal life business which a reader is unlikely to have bought the book to want to read about. Nevertheless there are many conclusions that are worthy and valid.
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4: There really is trouble
For those that can go this way and that, there is trouble in Africa, there is trouble with Africa. Without placing blame squarely on the shoulders of the guilty, there will be no resolution. While the author lived only a couple of places in Africa, the indictment of the continent as a whole is not too far from the mark. Foreign aid does not work, because they are getting too much of what they really don't need which is lots and lots of money and no way to manage it except stealing it and whisking it away to banking institutions abroad. There are far too many well meaning Americans and Europeans that see the problems with a filter and fail to grasp the magnitude of the problems on the continent. For instance, instead of sending people to live in Africa, to learn and understand what is going to work, everyone sends money, money and more money. Someone props up this dictator for 10 years or so and then wonders why he spits in their face when the winds change and we ask him to behave. Africa and the Middle East were the two areas that were carved up by colonial powers in the 1800s and 1900s, the middle east is beginning to recover and come into its own, Africa is in far worse shape. This book does bring ideas back to the discussion regarding why it is in turmoil and how the rest of the world can manage it.
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5: This tells the story....
IF you want to get a great idea of the screwed up programs and screwed up governments of the continent, then read this book. The author does a great job descibing the situations and their historical significance. I learned a lot about Africa. He tells things people don't want to hear.
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