Foreign aid is ruining Africa...

A month ago I visited Kibera, the largest slum in Africa. This suburb of Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, is home to more than one million people, who eke out a living in an area of about one square mile -- roughly 75% the size of New York's Central Park. It is a sea of aluminum and cardboard shacks that forgotten families call home. The idea of a slum conjures up an image of children playing amidst piles of garbage, with no running water and the rank, rife stench of sewage. Kibera does not disappoint.

What is incredibly disappointing is the fact that just a few yards from Kibera stands the headquarters of the United Nations' agency for human settlements which, with an annual budget of millions of dollars, is mandated to "promote socially and environmentally sustainable towns and cities with the goal of providing adequate shelter for all." Kibera festers in Kenya, a country that has one of the highest ratios of development workers per capita. This is also the country where in 2004, British envoy Sir Edward Clay apologized for underestimating the scale of government corruption and failing to speak out earlier. More...

See also:

1. Stopping the albino massacre in Tanzania...
2. Zimbabwe: currency abandoned, cholera rampant; can it get any worse?
3. Secret plot to let in 50 million African workers into Europe???
4. Kenya: From rubbish dump to cabbage patch!!!
5. Thomas Sankara, the upright man of Burkina Faso...
6. Is too much aid the cause of Africa's poverty and corruption?