As Simple as That...

In many parts of rural Sub-Saharan Africa, the prevention of malaria boils down to keeping children under 5 years old protected from mosquitos as they sleep and providing villages with clean ground water. What good could such simplisitic solutions do? Prevent up to 80% of malaria cases.

In acknowledgement of the US failure to prevent the Rwanda genocide of 1994, the U.S. ambassador in Kigali, during the Clinton Administration, David Rawson, stated "Most of us thought that if a war broke out, it would be quick, that these poor people didn't have the resources, the means, to fight a sophisticated war. I couldn't have known that they would do each other in with the most economic means" (i.e. machetées and garden utensils). George Moose, then Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, agreed: "We were psychologically and imaginatively too limited."

Africa is a continent far more simplistic than any western power can imagine. We look to fix a '74 Pinto with the parts of an '05 Mercedes. Though it will be beneficial, would it not be less expensive, less intrusive and more practical to fix the Pinto with Pinto parts? Even if we forgive 100% of their debt , give them billions of dollars in aid and go home feeling like the saviors of the universe for throwing money at problems that are direct consequences of our irreverent behavior in the past: who will actually get the money? The leaders will use the money to build government buildings, pay government salaries, the salaries of soldiers and to build roads. This is what western nations see as progressive; yet, what of all of the displaced, diseased and impoverished? They don't come to visit the capital of their country, they don't have cars to drive on the roads, and now the corrupt and brutal leaders and soldiers will be able to rule them comfortably.

"It takes two days of an engineer's time and about two days to build." As simple as that. I say Halaburton, Vought Aircraft, Lockhead, and Rand Corporation fly a load of engineers over to Africa (in coach) with one C-130J Hercules full of privately donated mosquito nets and another C-130J full of industry donated hand pumps and large plastic bowls stolen from Corporate America's plethora of crappy SWAG items and save the bloody continent! I'll even coordinate it!