Micro-finance; a bridge to the future

Microcredit is the extension of small loans to enterpreneurs too poor to qualify for traditional bank loans. It has proven to be an effective and popular measure in the ongoing struggle against poverty.

Ole Mepukori makes his case for micro-financing. Reading more here.

Moi's Strange Plan for Kenya

On Madaraka Day in 2002, former President Moi posited that Kenya's problems could not be solved this century. He predicted that Africa would continue to wallow in poverty, corruption, tribalism and disease forever.

Solomon Gakungu advices against listening to the former president. Read more here.

Reducing Poverty through Economic Freedom

The worldwide obsession with poverty eradication is a major threat to economic freedom in developing nations. Through central planning, governments and aid agencies are blocking poor people’s road to prosperity.

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To reverse that trend, economic freedom needs to be seen as a development partner. Governments must understand that providing market-friendly environments will enable their societies to develop long-lasting solutions to economic problems and, as Friedman wrote in Capitalism and Freedom, "reduce the range of issue that must be resolved through [ineffective] political means."

Read more here.

Getting Aid or Getting Paid?

Ken Teyie on Paul Collier's book The Bottom Billion.

An emotional must read, the book defines the bottom billion as people who live on less than a dollar a day, people who coexist with the 21st century, but whose reality is distinctly 14th century. Their lives are surrounded by civil war, plagues and ignorance. They are concentrated in Africa and central Asia with a scattering elsewhere. They live in Chad, Haiti, Bolivia, Cambodia and North Korea.

Read more here.

The poor are forgotten

Josh Mwangi paints two pictures, one of the haves, the other of the haves nots. Are the two worlds connected? Have we forgotten Kenya's poor? Read and comment here.

Poverty and AIDS

Bosibori Ndemo's article of the 19^th of February got me thinking about the reality of HIV-AIDS and the power of the media in shaping our perceptions on disease.

The dominant view is that the high prevalence rates in Africa are caused by the nature of sexual behaviour there. This view excludes other important factors such as poverty and biological factors. However only the most prejudiced would choose to ignore the fact that HIV has only a 1% prevalence rate in permissive American society, but reach 25% in Africa. Partner exchange rates and unprotected sex have no reason to be higher in Africa than anywhere else. The charge that it is sexual behaviour that sets African infection rates apart has not been made, but it is implicit in an HIV combat strategy that has the ABC doctrine at its core.

Stephen Wanyama links the AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa with poverty advocating for improved health care and nutrition across Africa.