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Showing posts from 2014

Obstacle or Opportunity: the case of the online writings of missionaries and aid workers in Lilongwe

The Back Story There is a "why AID/charity?" question that is attached more frequently than ever to aid and charity directed at Africa and Africans nowadays.  1 Trillion US Dollars have been spent in direct, bilateral and multilateral aid (grants, donations, soft loans etc.) over the years and more is in the works (see link under the second bullet point in the section below).  Yet poverty and life-threatening challenges persist.  Writers like Easterly critique the prevalent aid models in use today...and so do others including Zambian-born Havard graduate Dambisa Moyo in her book Dead Aid. The "why AID/charity?" question resonates with me and has done so since I went to a College in Lilongwe that promoted charity-based approaches to anything from tuition fee support, college trips, village interventions etc. Perhaps I am among the priviledged in Malawi because it was the first time for me to see a structure so comprehensively interwoven with donations.  I wa