Lunch hour with author @ 12:30 on Friday 8 Feb '08

Lunch hour with author @ 12:30 on Friday 8 Feb '08
@ BOEKEHUIS Bookshop for South African and World Literature

BOEKEHUIS cordially invites you to a short talk by former World Bank official, Robert Calderisi author of, The Trouble with Africa Why foreign aid isn't working

Where: BOEKEHUIS, Cnr. Lothbury and Fawley streets, Auckland Park
When: Friday 8 February 2008, at 12:30 RSVP:: by Thurs 7/02/2008 on
011 482 3609 or boekehuis@boekehuis.co.za Drinks & sandwiches available

About the author:

Robert Calderisi.has had a thirty-year career in international development, principally at the World Bank, where between 1997 and 2000 he was the Bank's international spokesperson on Africa. He studied at the Universities of Montreal, Oxford, Sussex and London.

About the book:

In the introduction to Calderisi's The Trouble with Africa, he reminds us that Africa is the only continent that has grown steadily poorer over the last thirty years and the only part of the globe where population growth has been out of control. It's the only region of the world where savage wars break out on a regular basis and it's no accident that two thirds of the world's AIDS cases are in Africa but where African government have largely ignored the problem.

Drawing on many years of first-hand experience, The Trouble with Africa highlights issues which have been ignored by Africa's leaders but have long worried ordinary Africans, diplomats, academics, business leaders, aid workers, volunteers and missionaries. It ripples with stories which only someone who has talked directly to African farmers - and heads of state - could recount.

Calderisi argues that Africa is now responsible for most of its own problems and that outsiders can help only if they are more direct and demanding in their dealings with the continent. It's time to move beyond the hand-wringing and politeness that dominate most discussions of Africa and to suggest concrete steps that Africa and the world can take to liberate talent and enterprise on the continent.

Quotes:

".. a blast of fresh air over a continent that has for decades been suffocating under a blanket of well-meant concern, ineffectual at best, and harmful at worst." -
Michael Holman, former Africa Editor, Financial Times