No need to say that I really admire this man and what he has done musically and socially. However, I still couldn't agree on the subject of  what ONE campaign and DATA could do.

I personally don't think the G8 politicians are heartless, could watch so many people die and felt nothing about it. But it's their job, and they have to please most of the power parties to ensure they are "safe" while in the position.

Let's don't forget they do have responsibility to their own people too. The yearly budget is a fixed number, they can't make the real cost far too beyond the planned number. So this money has to come from somewhere else. Increase the existing foreigh aids might mean that the plan of reconstruction of some road will have to be delayed; the plan of improving public transport service level would have less found...or some other stuff like that.

Thousands of African are dying, but it thousand miles away. If their own citizens are not happy about the public service level, they got kick out of the house. In another word, they were fired. Of course none of them want this to happen.

So it's quite understandable why Tony Blair was showing much more passion for the African subject than the newly elected Canadian PM, IMHO.

When ONE campaign called for people to sign up and urge their government to spend more money on foreign aid, it's very easy to move people by showing them hungry children, destroyed houses, aweful living conditions. But it's only one side of the story. I don't know why the government didn't set up a similar website and ask people, can they spend the money which initially was for increase local public school teachers' wage, money for helping single and teenage mother, money for public library;etc, etc for foreign aids? Will the ONE campaign tell people that once Africa started their own development, they would need more resources, especially, oil. So almost everything would be more expensive: plastic, a can of coke, cars....oh, and probably some family would no longer be able to afford a car because the petrol price was too high. Or in the case of US, less money for Iraq, probably means more soldiers would never come home again....

The determine point is not the people understand the urgency of Africa problem or not; but will they agree to lower their own living condition and social walfare to raise a future competitor or even an enemy? We don't always need fire arms to start a war nowadays.

I think ONE campaign and DATA are fantastic idea, when it comes to attract people's attention to Africa. But I found it's extremely hard to understand some of the things they are doing, namely the foreign aid lobby, to be honest.

Moreover, on the DATA Report 2007 they've pointed out that the export from China to Africa has been grew by 48% from 1999 to 2004, and this was labeled as Africa's new challenge. I was pretty happy to see this, actually. Since it does reflect the economic growth of China as well. I hope they did put the export growth from China to US too and people would be less surprised.

Philip is one of the good friend I made when I'm studing in Australia, and he's from Kenya. I went home during last year's semester holiday, and surprisingly, he took the same plane to go home, although we had to change to different plans after stop over at Singapore. During the time flying and the time waiting for the transfer, we talked a lot. He told me Kenya is full of "made in China" now. He was happy about it, because ever since then, the house hold and daily needs products are much cheapter than before, their living condition has been better because of that. He also worried about it, and confused if Kenya could still develop domestic industry with market full of cheap made-in-China products.

I told him that when China firstly got independent, the country even couldn't make a bicycles, and when I was young, from the washing machine, fridge to the radio are imported products and they are all mega-expensive. I haven't seen a vacuum cleaner in real life unti I was 6. 

What I believe the most important is not you produce the products or not, but the way you want to develop your country. China took the path to become the world's biggest factory is because we really couldn't find a better way. China is a communist country, and there still a lot of discrimination around the world to communist countries. The industrial countries didn't want to sell their products to us, even they did, we couldn't afford them. Produce everything domestically had become the only option left, and all we did was simply take it. So the question for Kenya is what is the best option.

I'm not an economics, so I couldn't answer the question. As I view the current condition, I have a very different view point on foreign aids, as I see it is the biggest challenge to the locals. Because the huge amout of money flow in would somehow cause the uneven of the economic condition of the country. Missions like increase the education condition of the local, I will get my hands and feet up to support. But the reality is much more complex than the mission statement itself. If the international society did it for the first year, then they'll have to repeat the same donation every year to ensure the school got enough money, and kids wouldn't drop out. Even worse, there's no predictable ending for the donations. No one can tell exactly when africa could stand on its own feet.