LogFAQs > #899415537

TheCyborgNinja posted...

In poorer areas, they need to learn how to grow on their own.

Mouthing meaningless platitudes about how people in poorer areas should "learn to grow on their own" isn't some miracle formula that cures poverty, though -- it's just an excuse for turning your back on it.

What the Democratic Republic of Congo needs to help lift its rural population out of poverty needs isn't a finger-wagging lecture about the need for poor people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, but massive investment in (among other things) transport infrastructure.

For example, the most widely eaten staple in DRC is cassava, but the big obstacle that farmers face to getting more money for their crop is that delivering it to urban markets is a race against time, because cassava starts to rot as soon as it's harvested -- which means a decent transportation system is essential to developing the rural economy. (The recently completed road between Kisangani and Bunia is eastern Congo shows that highway rehabilitation can pay big dividends, because cassava leaves harvested in the morning in Bandundu can now be sold and feed Kinshasa families that same evening.) Roads offer a better chance than finger-wagging.

I'd point out that local communities aren't hopeless, bottomless sinkholes for charity and aid. Again in the DRC, it was Nande traders in Butembo who combined their efforts to build and maintain the city's airport. But fuck knows how genuinely poor people are supposed to "grow on their own" and fund massive infrastructure projects when they lack access to credit to invest in seeds, pesticides or fertilisers, and they're deprived of secure title to land. It's not poor people who usually need lecturing -- it's the rich governing elites.
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texty bastard