The Real Solution

The on-going exhibition at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York that show-cases “a grasp of the depths of world poverty and ingenious ways to attack it” is an eye-opener particularly with the seeming novel ‘inventions’ that are on display. The exhibition is an eye-opener in another but related regard as far as the issue of world poverty and how it can be attacked in Africa is concerned for instance. It’s probably only the starry-eyed Westerners who will quickly presume that the solutions that could emanate from the ‘inventions’ being show-cased at the exhibition would be far-reaching enough to bring about the much-desired dent on world poverty in any culture where some of the inventions are adopted.

This is because some of those ‘inventions’ may not rival some of the age-old methods that villagers in say Africa use to preserve whatever harvests they bring in each year, build durable homes to respond favorably to their tropical environment, etc. without being caught in traps that bind them to the whims and caprice of a Western manufacturer or their failed state structures at home. The items that are featured in the exhibition might look good and trendy, but some of them seem to have the potentials of creating new levels of dependency for the rural dwellers. Take the Lifestraw drinking filter as a case in point. Although it is capable of killing bacteria in the water that is sucked through it, it does raise issues of dignity of use as well as affordability. Stooping down to use it doesn’t seem dignifying at all. Are people supposed to carry it along with them everywhere they go? Where will it be manufactured and fabricated? A device that purifies water from source would be a more appropriate tool for rural African dwellers as far as solving the problem of unhealthy drinking water supply is concerned.

A visit to local universities in Africa will reveal that poverty remains endemic on the continent not because Africans have been incapable of devising credible ways to attach it themselves. The continent’s greatest undoing can be traced to the state structures that plague the lives of its peoples. There was an invention sometime ago at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, which delivered photocopying by capturing solar power. The inventor of that device refused to pitch it for fear that he’d be penalized by jealous individuals in the University administration. In Kenya’s Kenyatta University, professors are being compelled by the University authorities to submit the outcome of their research for vetting prior to submitting it anywhere else for publication. The ploy is to ascertain if they have funding that they University can cream 15% from.

The complexities of poverty in Africa should be properly understood. Westerners who are keen on helping Africans break out of poverty must coordinate their efforts with locals to ensure that they don’t deliver them into another bind altogether.