I admire Gates a lot, but for him and way too many technophiles the answer is somehow always tech.
Africa does not have a toilet problem. Or a tech problem. Or even a resources problem. They have a lack of intelligent social organization problem; i.e. dysfunctional or non-existent institutions, laws and organizational structures, as well as myriad forms of corruption from top to bottom that make it impossible to create the systems that would otherwise keep them healthy, sanitary, safe, well-fed yada yada.
Maybe he could publicly ask, how every year, the Minister of Finance in Nigeria publishes a note indicating there is somehow billions of dollars missing from the coffers, that didn't make it over from the Ministry of Petro Resources, i.e Oil [1]? Or the like. Tackling the more obvious, glaring wide-open 'in our faces but we ignore anyhow' forms of corruption might be a good start, and would ultimately yield a lot more than functional toilets.
That's super callous and cynical. "Some African governments are corrupt so don't do anything." Deaths from malaria in Africa fell from 800,000 per year in 2000 to 400,000 per year today because of the introduction of affordable mosquito nets. That fact alone refutes your entire arguement.
My take is not cynical, it's pragmatic, moreover, I didn't imply that Gates shouldn't doing what he is doing.
"Deaths from malaria in Africa fell from 800,000 per year in 2000 to 400,000 per year today because of the introduction of affordable mosquito nets. That fact alone refutes your entire arguement."
This statement only enhances my argument. Africa is a bountiful land of resources and ostensible human capital for labour. They should easily be able to afford (or make their own) mosquito nets.
Consider the vast numbers of unemployed people - and that making 'mosquito nets' doesn't require any skill or frankly machinery. The only ostensible 'import' would be some very inexpensive textiles. We're talking a few pennies per person. And that the 'upside' from the effort would yield dramatic benefits, to the tune of hundreds of thousands of saved lives. How on earth are zillions of people dying from something that literally only a few million dollars in 'external financing' (if they don't have the money, which they do) - and some pragmatic planning - should solve? That there needed to be intervention to solve this problem only highlights how dramatically dysfunctional the situation must be.
And as far as 'some' governments, no, it's pretty much all of them, maybe save Botswana, the shinning example, at least for now. [1]
Also - it's not just 'governments', and it's not just 'corruption' - it's lack of civic function all the way up and down society.
One booming industry is kidnapping [1]. I worked on a technology that would have helped with that problem in one of those African states. We made the sale, delivered our equipment, and prepared to install and activate the first phase. The equipment vanished and the negotiations stalled on the next phase. It seems half the government was interested in preventing kidnappings, while the other half was perpetrating them. Furthermore, the budgeting process involved some kind of internal process where someone gets approval to spend some money, the money is issued, but it gets "taxed" on its way to the vendor until nothing is left. Total loss for us.
He/we can't even solve the corruption/political issues in our own country, yet you suggest that he solve all of the corruption/political issues in all of the countries with public health issues.
Much more direct to affect change via the private business route. It makes sense his foundation has stayed apolitical.
It's indeed true that the problem is not caused by a lack of technology. Some places became much more sanitary, safe, well-fed on a much lower technological level.
But a more positive take would be that perhaps better tech offers a way to improve people's lives despite other disfunction.
London had pretty amazing communications 150 years ago, letters delivered 4-5 times a day to any of a million people. This machine took an enormous amount of human capital to run — thousands of literate & honest postmen, for a start. Today we can deliver a better outcome with much less input — just a few guys who know how to set up a cellphone base station. This doesn’t fix the dysfunction, but does offer many benefits.
While I agree with you, and have actually thought about this same problem a ton, this seems dangerous to try and change as an individual rather than a fellow government.
Additionally, removing corrupt officials will just create a power vacuum, and oftentimes officials will become corrupt over the course of their term. I forget the political science terminology, but there's this issue where someone will only be able to take over in a dictatorship if they have the backing of many others, who, unsurprisingly, want more out of them than they get from the current official. So the end result is that nearly always, the new official will be more corrupt, particularly in destitute autocracies and oligarchies where the general public's opinions are either irrelevant or uninformed.
So while, yes, the corruption will throw wrenches into all our efforts, is there a solution to it? Or do we just have to throw enough resources to account for the corruption, and hope that an educated society with better infrastructure can start fighting the corruption problem themselves?
Educated people voted for Donald Trump in the USA, for AfD in Germany, for Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, for Duterte in the Philippines, for Bolsonaro in Brazil.
Education does not appear to make people less stupid somehow...
I respect all the sourcing and data, and I'll read the second and third articles in detail later so thank you for that. Your name is "hindsightbias", however, and you're citing "Americans who thought invading Iraq was a great idea" as a sign of stupidity?
The toilet he want to create are waterless its very important also to the africans but not at least for the large but often expensive cities that are going to grow over the next decades.
He is on of the few that actually do look for problems around him and solve them.
One of the things Gates' money pays for is Guinea Worm Eradication.
Guinea Worm is literally a parasitic worm. The eradication programme isn't about injecting people with a vaccination, building modern water treatment plants or deploying sophisticated drone technology, it's stuff like:
- Here are some free water filters. Filter the water from that murky pond before you drink it.
- When you have a worm, don't go in the water. Yes it feels cooler, that's because the worm wants you to go to the water, go to a free treatment clinic instead.
- If your neighbour has a worm, go to the clinic, tell them who the neighbour is, you both get cash money and the clinic will treat the worm. Hooray.
The biggest obstacles to Guinea Worm Eradication are not about Africa's lack of technology or its corruption.
The big obstacles are "insecurity" (ie civil wars or just violent criminals who control outlying areas) and "inaccessibility".
Inaccessibility is hard to comprehend for most of us, we're not used to truly being far from civilisation. People who live two days walk from anything resembling a road may have only heard rumours of the existence of the Guinea Worm clinics - for them a parasitic worm chewing its way out of your leg is just a routine hazard of normal rural living.
But yeah, Gates is already investing in the very lowest technology fixes, he isn't some tech nutjob who thinks we're going to solve desperate poverty with a Docker image.
"The biggest obstacles to Guinea Worm Eradication are not about Africa's lack of technology or its corruption.
The big obstacles are "insecurity" (ie civil wars or just violent criminals who control outlying areas) and "inaccessibility".
"
This is a contradiction.
My grandparents grew up on farms way in the back country of Canada, in ruthlessly inhospitable weather, on not exactly fertile soil. When my ancestors landed there they were 'many days walk' from anything remotely resembling civilization.
And yet there were no 'civil gang wars' etc..
If there were civility and rule of law, there wouldn't be gangs controlling territory willy nilly, and the term 'two days walk' wouldn't exist because there would at least be some form of basic transport, however crude.
I do accept that there might be some specific problems (i.e. diseases) that make it much more difficult, and I don't think Gates is wasting everyone's time - however - he's not after root causes, which are civic.
I googled Guinea Worms and was pleasantly surprised to see Jimmy Carter working on the problem. Supposedly, the worm is 99.9% eradicated and is on its way to be completely wiped off the face of the earth. Jimmy Carter and the people involved int his are awesome!
As an African I am with you on Africa's true problems. From the article though it seems Gates isn't just looking for a solution for Africa. He is looking at his from a humanity perspective. We aren't getting the most from our sewage. There are some low tech toilet designs that work relatively well in Africa. The Blair Toilet[0] being one.
He could well as, but I expect nobody would be much surprised over the answer: as you say, the problem of corruption is well known and merely exposing it again won't do much.
Tough if he secretly bought out a few accounting agencies and published all documents of the illicit money transfers going on that could probably have an effect as it makes the laundering harder.
> the problem of corruption is well known and merely exposing it again won't do much //
I disagree. Exposing it is what is needed as a first step. Continual, explicit, widespread exposure.
The problem there I suspect is those with power to do anything fear their own exposure; or they prefer to gain from being party of the international elite; or they choose to use it as leverage for other things.
hastily searches brain for a contrived intuition pump
In "Star Trek: The Next Generation", Lieutenant Commander Geordi La Forge does not have a tech problem. He has a lack-of-properly-functioning-eyes problem.
It's been solved with technology, though.
In this case, maybe technology will enable people to create a sanitary environment even in the face of impediments from the state.
Sure, there's corruption in developing countries. You think Gates doesn't know that? The option in face of that is to do jack shit or make tech that can help.
Africa (and the world at large) has lots of problems. Some are technical and some are political. Just focusing on one issue means missing out on opportunities to improve people's lives in other ways.
There are already a lot of organizations working on governance -- maybe it's best if tech people focus on tech problems and let the governance people work on governance problems?
The corrupt leaders would use any plausible excuse to defend their fiefdoms ...'colonialism' would be an easy one to hide behind, and a lot of naive actors on our side would chime in in support. Sadly.
Maybe. It's hard to prove that a quick big revolution followed by a civilization is better or worse than a long-term slow suffering-ridden development.
Africa does not have a toilet problem. Or a tech problem. Or even a resources problem. They have a lack of intelligent social organization problem; i.e. dysfunctional or non-existent institutions, laws and organizational structures, as well as myriad forms of corruption from top to bottom that make it impossible to create the systems that would otherwise keep them healthy, sanitary, safe, well-fed yada yada.
Maybe he could publicly ask, how every year, the Minister of Finance in Nigeria publishes a note indicating there is somehow billions of dollars missing from the coffers, that didn't make it over from the Ministry of Petro Resources, i.e Oil [1]? Or the like. Tackling the more obvious, glaring wide-open 'in our faces but we ignore anyhow' forms of corruption might be a good start, and would ultimately yield a lot more than functional toilets.
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/03/ni...