The Sunday Independent: A good capitalist in Africa
Robert Calderisi, the Canadian-born economist and former World Bank spokesman for Africa, says he is not an Afro-pessimist and he is not lumping all of Africa into one basket.
But judging from his book, The Trouble With Africa, the continent – give or take five countries that take poverty reduction seriously – is a basket case. The five countries he cites are Ghana, Uganda, Mozambique, Tanzania and "perhaps Mali".
Calderisi is basking in the heat in a garden at a Johannesburg hotel. It is welcome after the cold of Montreal where he has retired after 30 years at the World Bank.
He is a taut, lean, well-preserved man with steel-grey hair. Initially his presence is a little too intense for comfort. He is far more sensitive than I expected, having submerged myself in his litany of the continent's woes and his often-hectoring tone.
But he loves Africa and has its interests at heart, he says.
A devout Roman Catholic, he is committed to bettering the lot of the less fortunate and he wants to see foreign aid working to reduce poverty – and kept out of the coffers of the powerful. After all, aid is rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition, he says, and he tries to set out the reasons why aid has gone for a ball of chalk. …
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