TEDxAmsterdam: Mark Kamau from TEDxAmsterdam on Vimeo. This is such an inspirational story by Mark Kamau, a Kenyan who calls himself the “Slumdog Manager”. Born in the poverty of Kenya’s well-known slums, Kamau emerged as a web designer graduating from the NairoBits program. He attributes his success story to four principles: He was: Respected Challenged [...]

I’m a strong critic of our current system for US Foreign Assistance and its systemic inability to effect sustainable social change on a scale worthy of the amounts we invest. This documentary, “What Are We Doing Here?” travels to through the developing world to ask the tough questions about our foreign assistance programs. This is [...]

Here’s your Daily Brief for August 7th: An article in todays Business Daily newspaper caught my eye and has inspired me to begin my discussion on the role of China in Africa. This is a wildly important discussion and I promise there is more to come on this topic. Anyways, this article suggests that the [...]

Here’s your Daily Brief for August 6th: There has been a lot of buzz surrounding AGOA for the last week or so, and I’ve included a few articles in my daily briefs the last couple of days. I figured today I would dedicate the entire DB to AGOA and flush out some of the concerns [...]

Here’s your Daily Brief for August 5th: Paul Farmer out for USAID? (via Foreign Policy) – It appears as if Paul Farmer, the man recently rumored to be appointed head of USAID, is no longer in the running. The culprit seems to be the daunting vetting process itself, including a form requiring the candidate to [...]

Here’s your Daily Brief for August 4th: Investment Into Rwanda to Rise 10% in 2009 (via Reuters) – Hat tip to @whitakergroup for this gem: A more positive outlook than the NYT piece; This Reuters article reports a 10% increase in investment to Rwanda. The growth is attributed to an honest and disciplined government, though [...]

I was speaking with Denise, a fellow DGF alum, the other day by e-mail and have been thinking a lot about a point she made about the acronym ICT. Who in the world, outside of those of us that work with ICT, knows what it means!? (Information and Communication Technology, btw).   It got me [...]

I attended a panel forum the other night titled “U.S. Foreign Assistance and the Obama Administration: The Challenges Lying Ahead”. Much of what was said was covered in my earlier post — emphasizing the point that we don’t know much about what to expect. During the Q&A part, a man stood up and asked about “transformational diplomacy” and the interlinkage between development and national security. He then got quite the applause when he shouted “We should be doing development for development sake”!

On my first day in Irving Rosenthal’s class, “Rethinking US Foreign Assistance”, I remember having this same discussion and I got some scowls when I declared it doesn’t matter how we justify aid in rhetoric so long as the money is appropriated and the projects are properly executed — it’s politics!

With this in mind, I thought I’d post my midterm paper for the class on the inseparability of US Foreign Aid and National Security (if you are wondering why I formatted my sections this way, we were given a list of questions to answer 3 — I tried to make it flow, though):

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