"The End of Poverty"

Time has excerpted (pdf here) Jeffrey Sach's new book, The End of Poverty. In the book, Sachs, head of Columbia University's Earth Institute, details the depressing and distressing facts about extreme, or absolute, poverty (income of less than $1 dollar per day -- I assume he means per household, but doesn't say), the structural deficiencies that make it impossible for much of the world's poorest to get a foot on the ladder to self-sufficiency, and the attitudes of a colonial residue that has hamstrung efforts at understanding the real obstacles to curing poverty and doing something about them.

The real shocker came with my follow-up question. How many farmers had used fertilizers in the past? Every hand in the room went up. Farmer after farmer described how the price of fertilizer was now out of reach, and how their current impoverishment left them unable to purchase what they had used in the past.

As the afternoon unfolded, the gravity of the community's predicament became more apparent. I asked how many households were home to one or more orphaned children left behind by the aids pandemic. Virtually every hand in the room shot up. I asked how many households were receiving remittances from family members living in Nairobi and other cities. The response was that the only things coming back from the cities were coffins and orphans, not remittances.

I asked how many households had somebody currently suffering from malaria. Around three-fourths of the hands shot up. How many use antimalarial bed nets? Two out of 200 hands went up. How many knew about bed nets? All hands. And how many would like to use bed nets? All hands remained up. The problem, many of the women explained, is that they cannot afford the bed nets, which sell for a few dollars per net, and are too expensive even when partially subsidized by international donor agencies.

A few years back, Sauri's residents cooked with locally collected wood, but the decline in the number of trees has left the area bereft of sufficient fuel. Villagers said that they now buy pieces of fuel wood in Yala or Muhanda, a bundle of seven sticks costing around 30 [cents]. Not only are seven sticks barely enough to cook one meal, but for a lack of 30 [cents], many villagers had in fact reverted
to cooking with cow dung or to eating uncooked meals.

The dying village's isolation is stunning. There are no cars or trucks owned or used within Sauri, and only a handful of villagers said they had ridden in any kind of motorized transport during the past year. Around half of the individuals at the meeting said that they had never made a phone call in their entire lives.

According to Sachs, the situation in this village, and throughout Kenya, is emblematic of the situation throughout the third world: lack of infrastructure, depleted soil and forests, complete isolation. Throw in malaria and, now, AIDS, and the problem at first (and second, and third) glance looks damn near intractable. But not, says Sachs, impossible; the key is addressing specific challenges which can be met "with known, proven, reliable and appropriate technologies and interventions [sic]." His agricultural prescriptions alone are fascinating, as is the statistics on wealth by region and "the giving gap" (the U.S. would need to spend upwards of $35 billion more in foreign aid to reach 0.5% of GDP).

Daniel Drezner thinks about the excerpt, deflects a few criticisms, but adds a few more of his own, and wonders (as do I) why the story hasn't reached wider acclaim in the blogosphere. I agree with him there as well, when he writes that the blogosphere is just as guilty as mainstream media outlets in being blind and indifferent to Africa generally and poverty in Africa specifically, and that "the blogosphere echoes the mediasphere in paying a disproportionate amount of attention to the advanced industrialized world."