I'm flying back from Nairobi. I had the privilege of making a presentation to a group of African sustainable business leaders. There was a passion in this small, but engaged meeting, a passion that makes one think of a positive future, rather than obsessing about AIDS, poverty, war and corruption, which are the overwhelming images we in the West associate with Africa. Bono and Bob Geldof, despite their inspiring good works, tend to perpetuate this impression that Africa is a basket case, an opinion that Melissa Davis expresses in her article, "Is Africa Misbranded?" and that economist William Easterly opines in the Los Angeles Times, "What Bono Doesn't Say About Africa". The people who attended this meeting hosted by The Environmental Press were thinking about a different basket, a breadbasket of opportunity that can sustainably and efficiently lift the lives of ordinary Africans.
There was no disagreement among attendees that Africa needs, even requires a sustainable future. The extraction industries have run wild here with no regulation that cannot be bought or bent to their will. The issue of Blood Diamonds was brought to the world's attention, but oil, mineral and timber extraction continues to fuel tribal conflicts that lead to the unraveling of communities and environmental destruction on a massive scale. The raw materials used to make your cell phone? They are fueling a ten-year war in East Africa. The piracy off the coast of Somalia? Its root cause is exploitation of Indian Ocean fisheries and toxic dumping. Clearly, the current system of resource extraction must shift to a more ecological and sustainable one.
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