My humble thoughts about Development

Tuesday April 10^th

My trip to Malawi is the third trip that I’ve made to Sub-Saharan Africa, and one of several more to the rest of the developing world. Since my first trip to Ghana in 2007, I’ve thought a lot about “International Development”, what the main problems are and how I would tackle them if I were ever fortunate enough to be in a position to do so. I’m obviously no expert, but here are my views:

Roads and Electricity. I believe that the poorer regions of Africa will fail to fully develop until it gets a handle on these two factors. They affect everything.

Every single village and every single person should be easily accessible with good quality, tarmac roads. Many rural villages in different parts of Africa are only accessible via dirt roads, which are susceptible to weather conditions and are often in such a poor state that motorized vehicles can’t gain access. This means no ambulances if people are sick. No exporting vegetables or other resources, to make money for the village. No importing building materials, people or money. A single tarmac road leading to every village in Africa would allow greater access to healthcare, to schools, to towns and to transport. If I were to give money to a development charity it would be one that is determined to lay tarmac roads to villages everywhere.

How can anybody function properly when electricity can cut out at any moment? Everywhere that I’ve been in Africa has had issues with electricity being scant. I’m not an electrician and I do not have a mechanical brain so I cannot understand why this happens but it needs to stop. Imagine if a surgeon was half way through your operation and the power cut out. No lights, no anaesthetic machine, no nothing. You’re dead. Speaking of dead, the president of Malawi died last week. His body had to be flown to South Africa as not a single hospital in Malawi was capable of keeping his body refridgerated. Sad.

We live in a digital age, and with digital technology comes an increased requirement for electricity. If city office workers, internet café owners, supermarkets, health centres etc. can’t run properly because of a lack of electricity – it costs millions of pounds to the economy.

Having had to experience poor roads and numerous electricity cuts, my personal opinion is that if these 2 factors were sorted out, everything else would follow. People would have more of an incentive to keep to time, healthcare outcomes would improve massively, vehicles would be better maintained [and might actually become safe], tourism would flourish and the economy would make these countries so much richer, giving them the freedom to develop.

I’m sure many of you have more sophisticated views than mine. I’d be interested to hear what you think?

Much love,

Dan