Visit with USAID, and trip to the coast

First of all, pictures from my homestay are now posted on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=178467&id=617471723&l=bfc55f0c4b

This week we visited the Windhoek offices of USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development), which has a particularly convenient acronym, since their job is to spend foreign aid money from the United States government. See: http://www.usaid.gov/locations/sub-saharan_africa/countries/namibia/index.html It was interesting to get to talk to them to hear about some of the work that they are doing and learn about how they decide what projects get funded (answer: it is mostly determined by congressional earmarks).

This week our group also read a few chapters from Dead Aid (http://www.amazon.com/Dead-Aid-Working-Better-Africa/dp/0374532125/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top). This book argues that foreign aid has been harmful in a number of ways and is in fact responsible for a number of current problems in various African countries. I am convinced by her arguments that foreign aid has, in at least some cases, been quite harmful (or at least not particularly helpful), but I am not convinced that foreign aid is inherently flawed and cannot possibly be helpful, as she seems to argue in the selections we read....


This week, we are traveling to Swakopmund on the Atlantic coast. We'll be visiting a research center, an "export processing zone" (foreign companies get various financial incentives to operate from there), a uranium mine (mining is a big industry in Namibia), and a couple of other programs. We'll also get to do some touristy things like climb a sand dune and go to the beach...