Food and Empowerment in Africa
Reconsidering ICT4D + the Green Revolution
….Joy found this on all Africa.com; an interview with President Obama. Below is an excerpt of that interview:
….on the ground, in many of these countries, how we think about not high-tech stuff but low-tech technologies to, for example, improve food production is vitally important. I’m still frustrated over the fact that the green revolution that we introduced into India in the ’60s, we haven’t yet introduced into Africa in 2009. In some countries, you’ve got declining agricultural productivity. That makes absolutely no sense. We don’t need fancy computers to solve those problems; we need tried and true agricultural methods and technologies that are cheap and are efficient but could have a huge impact in terms of people’s day-to-day well-being…..
Its great and encouraging thinkin in many respects but also kind of suprising (maybe not so much because politicians are usually the last ones to really “get it”) that Obama is so in the dark about what is going on in India right now with regards to the “green revolution”. The so called Green Revolution put forward by Norman Borlaug and the Rockerfeller Foundation is now beginning to be seen as a huge failure particularly in India where huge numbers of farmers are now committing suicide because there is not enough water to irrigate the fields and keep the farms going.
A report by Daniel Zwerdling ‘Green Revolution’ Trapping India’s Farmers In Debt on NPR’s Morning Edition, April 14, 2009 documents some of the issues begin to emerging with regards to the so called Green Revolution.
Farmers in the state of Punjab abandoned traditional farming methods in the 1960s and 1970s as part of the national program called the “Green Revolution,” backed by advisers from the U.S. and other countries.
Indian farmers started growing crops the American way — with chemicals, high-yield seeds and irrigation. Since then, India has gone from importing grain like a beggar, to often exporting it. But studies show the Green Revolution is heading for collapse.
What we need to do is to rethink the green revolution and make it truly green avoiding the use of pesticides, industrial fertilizers and genetically modified organisms. In this process we need to consider the possible role of ICT to enable the rapid dissemination of truly appropriate technologies to enable sustainable development.
IPC 9 Malawi
Related to the idea of food production…The 9th International Permaculture Conference (IPC9) is coming up in Africa in Nov (2-6) in Malawi. The focused theme is: Plan Africa Food and Empowerment. Our permaculture colleague Agaja just updated us on the upcoming event and also that our mentor and friend George Chan was mentioned in the write up for the previous IPC event in 08 which took place in Sao Paolo Brazil. My colleages Eric Fedus and Alexandre Takamatsu presented on George’s behalf.
Unfortunately George now is very ill and it looks he will not be around much longer. We honor George’s many contributions promoting Integrated Farming through his efforts as a volunteer for Zero Emissions Research and Initiatives (ZERI).
Re-Published: What Can Obama & Ghana do for Each Other? By Bright Simons, Franklin Cudjoe and Kofi Bentil
Ahead of President Obama’s visit to Ghana, White House blog reports Obama’s wish for using technology “in streamlining our aid to countries, making sure that we’re tracking how that aid is being applied, making sure that it’s reaching the people it’s intended to reach.”
However, IMANI-Ghana, Africa’s sixth most influential think tank urges Obama to adopt a meaningful departure from the Bush methodology for foreign assistance to strengthen and dramatically expand the role of such US institutions such as Export-Import Banks (EXIM) and Overseas Private Investment Corporations (OPIC), which, among others, provide political risk insurance, loan guarantees, trade finance, and credit to facilitate interactions between American and private sector operators in other, usually poorer, countries.
Read on at http://africanliberty.org/node/732
Obama’s New Media Strategies for Ghana
The White African blog offered a view of how the Obama team is using Web 2.0 to get the word about its new media approach and also its new development strategy for Ghana and Africa.
A couple weeks ago I had a discussion with President Obama’s New Media team, where we talked about what they might do to reach out to ordinary Ghanaians on his trip next week – which will culminate in his speech in Accra on July 11th. There is a lot of excitement in Africa around Obama, and this trip is going to set the continent humming.
http://whiteafrican.com/2009/07/02/obamas-new-media-strategies-for-ghana/
