A great article in the Harvard Gazette about rebuilding in Haiti.  Featuring Paul Farmer and the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI) (which has lots of important information).  Read the article and watch the video here.

There was an article in yesterdays, NY Times by John Collins Rudolf about food and agriculture production in Africa - click here to read the article.

In Minnesota and other midwest states in the U.S. the average farmer uses 100 kilograms of chemical fertilizer per hectare and the average farmer in Kenya uses only 7 kilograms per hectare.  Less fertilizer is better for the environment.  The question is how to have a "green revolution" in Africa without the environmental problems.  Dr. Chinkunutha, the economist turned farmer who appears in "What are we doing here?" says organic agriculture is the way to go?  Now the Malawian government is getting results by subsidising chemical fertilizer to it's countries farmers.  Either way, we need to end the way we give out food aid as that has a direct negative effect on African farmers - click here for more information on food aid/African farmers.

A Different Kind of Capitalism - Jacqueline Novogratz, whose Acumen Fund is reinventing that landscape with what it calls "patient capitalism," is charting a third way between investment for profit and aid for free.  Listen to the radio show here on Speaking of Faith

*photo from Acumen Fund

A very interesting talk by Peter Eigen, the former World Bank Director in Nairobi about how corruption happens and what to do.

Click here to listen.

If you have a moment, check out this talk by Nigerian writer Chris Abani

 It is edgy and takes a while to get going, but he has something important to say.  It is part of the TED talks.

Check out this short article that was posted on the Americans for Informed Democracy (AID) website about the screening at Dickinson College last week.

See video here

Video description from Al Jazerra:  In 2008, in the midst of the global food crisis, we travelled to Haiti to look at the politics of rice - how such a fertile country became dependent on food aid.

In the wake of this current disaster, that dependence is - initially - going to deepen.

But as relief efforts slowly turn to plans for reconstruction, it is important to look back at the policies that brought Haiti to the brink in the first place, and the people who had their own vision of self-sufficiency all along.

Avi Lewis talks about the US role in the development of Haiti with PJ Crowley, the spokesman at the US state department, and Emira Woods, the co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies, and an expert on US foreign policy.

After every screening of the film, microfinance gets debated in one fashion or another. Here is a take on it from several experts:

"Microcredit is undoubtedly the most visible innovation in anti-poverty policy in the last half century. In the three decades since Mohammed Yunus gave his first loan to a group of Bangladeshi women, the number of microcredit borrowers has crossed 150 millions. The majority had no access to credit from banks before microcredit came to them. When they needed to borrow, and most people do at some point or the other–to pay for an illness or a wedding, to grow a business or to fix their roof—they would go to money lenders and pay rates that have, justly or otherwise, accounted for the universal unpopularity of moneylenders (they can be over 20% per month). Now they borrow from MFIs at significantly lower (though often high by US standards) rates. At the same time MFIs have managed to find ways to be financially sustainable and to keep growing fast."

Read the whole article.