Archive for the ‘Africa’ Category
by Thando on Jan 13th, 2012
Wilbur Smith spoke on the New Dehli Television programme Just Books about his latest novel, Those in Peril, which tells the story of a woman who tries to rescue her teenage daughter from Somali pirates. Smith says it is “his kind of story”, with all the elements of suspense that readers have come to expect from his writing:
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by Thando on Jan 9th, 2012
In an adapted excerpt from his new book, Lifeblood, Alex Perry looks at the corruption and inefficiency that has come to define a lot of aid work and explains how Ray Chambers’ anti-malaria campaign is creating a “new age of philanthropy”:
Does aid work? After half a century of giving billions of dollars to Africa and Asia, donors are finding the answer is often no.
The reasons are well known: ignorance, inefficiency, corruption and the creation of dependence and disincentives to business. There is also rising unease about the way modern aid feels unnervingly like a giant business.
Global aid is worth about $120 billion a year, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, about the same as the annual output of the 20 poorest countries in Africa.
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by Thando on Jan 5th, 2012
Kai Ryssdal of Marketplace recently spoke to Alex Perry, author of Lifeblood: How to Change the World, One Dead Mosquito at a Time, and Ray Chambers, the philanthropist whose goal it is to rid Africa of Malaria forever.
Perry discusses why he was drawn to the work of Chambers, whose anti-malaria campaign, Malaria No More, adds business techniques and “entrepreneurial hustle” to aid work. Listen to the podcast or read a transcript of the interview:
Ryssdal: Alex, let me start with you and ask what might seem like a fundamental question: What drew you to this story?
Perry: Living in Africa, working in Africa, I knew how devastating malaria was. I knew its cost. And to get rid of malaria would be an extraordinary boost to development, and to getting a fundamental measure to send Africa on a path towards prosperity. So it was its ambition, but there was a bigger story here about the innovations that the campaign was bringing to aid and development work. They’re applying, essentially, business techniques and a little entrepreneurial hustle to aid.
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by Thando on Dec 22nd, 2011
Real transformative justice has not yet taken place in South Africa, Moeletsi Mbeki, author of Architects of Poverty and editor of Advocates for Change, told Fiona Forde, author of An Inconvenient Youth: Julius Malema and the ‘New’ ANC, in an interview for Africa Report.
Mbeki says that after the ANC came to power, they put measures in place that “began to shrink rather than grow the economy”. According to him, transformative justice will only take place when the earning power of the worker is raised.
If this does not happen, Mbeki warns that the ANC will cause a “war” with its own people:
“Whatever transformative justice there has been has run out of steam,” says Moeletsi Mbeki. “And now we are paying the consequences for the half measures that were put in place in those early days.”
The 65-year-old author and political analyst doesn’t deny the changes that have taken place in South Africa since 1994: his home country is no longer defined along racial lines; white political dominance is long gone; and the days of the police state belong to the past.
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by Thando on Dec 19th, 2011
Alex Perry, author of Lifeblood: How to Change the World, One Dead Mosquito at a Time, took a trip to Lake Kwania in Uganda where he was shocked to find a “town of zombies”. Malaria is a major epidemic in the area, and contracting malaria is usually the beginning of a “long cycle of illness and poverty”, says Perry:
To reach the most malarious place on earth, head north from Kampala, cross the Victoria Nile at Karuma Falls and just before you come to the refugee camps that mark the southern edge of Uganda’s 20-year civil war, bear right into the vast swamps of Lake Kwania.
Unlike the other Great Lakes, known for their freshwater beaches and cool evenings, Kwania is a poor place to live. It is wide, stretching about a 100km from its eastern end to the rocky sluice at its western tip through which it pours into the White Nile. But it is shallow and choked with lilies, papyrus and water hyacinth, and it has no shoreline: the point where land and water meet is lost in miles of ponds and creeks that resemble silver fishbones from the air. Swamps are bad for farming and even worse for fishing.
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by Thando on Dec 9th, 2011
In an interview in Business Day, Alex Perry, author of Lifeblood, tells Sue Blaine about the two years he spent closely following the Malaria No More campaign.
One of the important things Perry learnt about the world of aid was that, unless it reforms itself, “it will get reformed on the back of scandal”. He refers specifically to the lack of discipline and regulation in most organisations.
According to Perry, Malaria No More – run by Ray Chambers and Peter Chernin – is different to the others in that it brings to the organisation the business ideals of “efficiency, investment and returns, plus concrete goals and deadlines”:
After 10 years as Time magazine’s bureau chief in Delhi, Alex Perry decided he had “done my time” on a tough assignment and moved to reporting on Africa. It’s not what many would call an easier option.
“I cover 49 countries (everything south of the Sahara), so I have to pick and choose, which is great for me, but shit for Africa,” says Perry, in Johannesburg to promote his new book, Lifeblood: How to Change the World, One Dead Mosquito at a Time (Picador).
The malaria story that has developed into his second book came to Perry, who lives in Cape Town with his wife and three daughters, in a press release.
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by Thando on Oct 31st, 2011
Love Books and Pan Macmillan are pleased to invite you to join Alex Perry for a discussion about his new book, Lifeblood: How to Change the World, One Dead Mosquito at a Time.
The discussion takes place on Thursday 3 November at Love Books, 5.30 for 6.00 pm.
See you there!
Event Details
- Date: Thursday, 03 November 2011
- Time: 5:30 PM for 6:00 PM
- Venue: Love Books,
The Bamboo Centre
53 Rustenburg road
Melville
Johannesburg | Map
- RSVP: kate@lovebooks.co.za
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by Thando on Oct 28th, 2011
Best-selling author Wilbur Smith was recently interviewed by Heather Walker for The South African, about his latest thriller, Those in Peril, and what motivates him to keep writing. Smith says his books are like his children: “Some are uglier than others, but like a father I love them all equally.”
Your first book was never actually published – what lessons did you learn from that experience?
I learnt a lot about writing, it certainly put me on the right track; I wasn’t writing books for other people, I was writing them for myself. After the success of my first published novel in 1964 I was wondering, what on earth am I going to write now? My publisher at the time, Charles Pick said ‘No one should ever tell you what you are going to write, you should tell us what you’re going to write’.
What motivates you to keep writing?
Yesterday a taxi driver said “I know you, you’re Wilbur Smith. Are you still writing?” I replied, “I’m still breathing aren’t I?” It’s what I do, I write books, it’s my life.
There was a time when I wrote a book every year, now I’m slowing down a bit, in future I may write a book every third year. It’s no longer some kind of mission I’m on, just what keeps me going, keeps me interested in life.
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by Tarryn on Sep 30th, 2011
The launch of Lifeblood: How to Change the World, One Dead Mosquito at a Time by Time‘s Africa bureau chief, Alex Perry, was an extremely well attended event at Kalk Bay Books. Tim Butcher, author of Chasing the Devil, was the perfect choice of interviewer for this book, which examines the revolutionary malaria eradication programme that philanthropist Ray Chambers is effecting in Africa. The two British journalists, who have both settled in the Cape, held the audience captivated with their wry and understated wit in a dialogue on a fascinating topic.
Butcher asked Perry what it was about Chambers’ campaign that prompted the leap from a great newsroom story to writing a book. Perry reflected on the plethora of PR agencies always claiming that this or that intervention is saving the planet. He said, “I dutifully sift through the press releases but this one stood out. The ambition of it was enormous. They were basically proposing to wipe malaria off the planet. This was unusual. I did an initial series of interviews in the south of England, then something else became apparent. The people I was speaking to were not aid workers. They were businessmen. This wasn’t about stakeholders and community based healthcare. They used words like ‘killing malaria’, ‘returns on investments’ and ‘aggressive deadlines’.”
“At the time I thought this is a great magazine story, but the more I got into it, the more I realised it was a book because it addresses loads of questions about the state of the aid industry and the general dissatisfaction and pushback against it. The malaria campaign offers a lot of answers.”
Butcher described Ray Chambers, a Wall Street banker and pre-Bill Gates ultra-philanthropist as “a really good guy”, not a term he often uses. Perry confirmed this, saying Chambers was “the most powerful man you’ve never heard of”. He’s one of the few people who has employed a PR agency to keep his name out of the press. A pioneer of “venture capitalism”, Chambers had a change of heart when he discovered that money couldn’t buy happiness and he set about tackling the problem using a different, business-driven model in a bid to eradicate the disease.
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Liesl Jobson livetweeted the event using #livebooks:
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by Tarryn on Sep 19th, 2011
Kalk Bay Books and Pan Macmillan cordially invite you to the launch of Lifeblood: How to Change the World, One Dead Mosquito at a Time by Alex Perry.
Perry will be in conversation with Tim Butcher, author of Chasing the Devil, on Thursday 29 September at 6 for 6.30 PM.
See you there!
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