In 2000, Africa became the focus of orchestrated world-wide pity, and not for the first time. The Nigerian humanitarian catastrophe of Biafra in 1971 (the same year as the Beatle George Harrison’s Concert for Bangladesh) had demanded that the world respond to human catastrophe. Consciousness was raised several notches with Bob Geldof ’s July 1985 Live Aid Concert where, with 1.5 billion people watching, public discourse became a public disco.
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An excerpt from Dead Aid.
I really want, neigh need, to read this book.
I’m very interested to dive into this book. Be warned, it’s thick and dense.
I haven’t yet had the chance to read more than excerpts of Dambisa Moyo’s Dead Aid, but from what I’ve seen so far, it may not be worth the time. We’ll see…
For more intelligent criticism, check out Chris Blattman’s blog, here.
Excerpt:
“An early test of the next president’s moral courage will come as he decides how to engage two Sudanese people named Bashir.
One is President Omar al-Bashir, who faces indictment for genocide by the International Criminal Court. The other is Dr. Halima Bashir, a young Darfuri woman whom the Sudanese authorities have tried to silence by beatings and gang-rape.
In 10 days, Halima’s extraordinary memoir will be published in the United States, at considerable risk to herself. She writes in “Tears of the Desert” of growing up in a placid village in rural Darfur, of her wonder at seeing white people for the first time, of her brilliant performance in school.”
