Nairobi writer on Banking, Finance, Technology, and Investments
Thursday, September 25, 2008
World Bank Africa Blog
The World Bank has a new blog from its Chief Economist for the Africa Region - Shanta Devarajan.
3 comments:
Anonymous
said...
World bank seems to have a special talent of:
1. Telling us what we already know.
2. Making impractical textbook recommendations (due to high number of bookworms) with unclear milestones and unspecific / unmeasurable deliverables.
3. Vague action plans. "We need to do something to eradicate porverty. Strategy x will work for all countries!"
4. Addressing symptoms - rather than root causes of global poverty (well known but difficult to address e.g. Western funding of conflict in Africa... how to address this when the perpetrators pay the world bank salaries?).
5. Condescending attitude towards Africa and Africans. All discussions begin from a position of negativity "e.g... now that Africa is failing to do xyz, how can we help the poor, miserable souls?"
..and progress to a position of absurdity...
"..We need to get Africa experts from USA to tell us what to do".
C'mon - it took them all those years to find out that the root cause of infant mortality in slums is more to do with environment - rather than "poor health facilities"???
I would be laughing if it wasn't such a maddening thought.
Maishinski: at least there's an open forum now for exchange of ideas without having to go through 'governemnt-to-government seminars' . I'd welcome more banks & companies to blog on policy and products as well.
3 comments:
World bank seems to have a special talent of:
1. Telling us what we already know.
2. Making impractical textbook recommendations (due to high number of bookworms) with unclear milestones and unspecific / unmeasurable deliverables.
3. Vague action plans. "We need to do something to eradicate porverty. Strategy x will work for all countries!"
4. Addressing symptoms - rather than root causes of global poverty (well known but difficult to address e.g. Western funding of conflict in Africa... how to address this when the perpetrators pay the world bank salaries?).
5. Condescending attitude towards Africa and Africans. All discussions begin from a position of negativity "e.g... now that Africa is failing to do xyz, how can we help the poor, miserable souls?"
..and progress to a position of absurdity...
"..We need to get Africa experts from USA to tell us what to do".
C'mon - it took them all those years to find out that the root cause of infant mortality in slums is more to do with environment - rather than "poor health facilities"???
I would be laughing if it wasn't such a maddening thought.
:-(
Maishinski: at least there's an open forum now for exchange of ideas without having to go through 'governemnt-to-government seminars' . I'd welcome more banks & companies to blog on policy and products as well.
World bank is not really a bank. Its a political institution.
What you will see on the World Bank blog will, more likely than not, be cleverly disguised western propaganda.
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