From the Hammock : World Challenges

First it was southern and northern hemispheres that divided the blocs of the world in two, the hemispheres metamorphosed into first and third world.

There was no second world. Today we are dealing with the developed and developing nations, which is somewhat a more politically correct dissection.

But along the way there were anecdotes introduced in determining how to correctly address the differences between the global class systems. They took the way of the west, the east, and the non-aligned, as well as the extremists, moderates, fundamentalists and now we even have the jihadists.

They are currently named like modern computer software programs. We have the G7 plus 1, the G20, G77 and OECD.

My generation came of age when the hemispheres were gradually getting out of abstract letters to a more contextual meaning and henceforth there were no more east, west, south and north hemispheres. The world instead had rights and challenges.

Applications

Millennium Challenges, MDGs-Millennium Development Goals, CBOs, CSOs and my favourite, world famous wealthy men willing to share their monies with poor people whom they don’t know in foreign places.

By 2001 when I was joining high school, the challenges of the world were determined to be eight and therefore the United Nations was given a new mandate to shape the development of the world.

The UN was coming through a generation where it had played an observer role in the skirmish of the independence and cold wars and even watched shamelessly when a million Rwandan Tutsi were exterminated in 1994.

The same UN had also observed when Charles Taylor, jewel shops in Europe, RUF and FodaySankoh ransacked Sierra Leone for diamonds.

Eight challenges

The role of establishing a mechanism to deal with the challenges by leaders of the UN was also a test for the UN to reshape its relevance and image.

All the noise about arresting some leaders such as Sudanese Omar Bashir, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, Libya’s MuamarGadaffi-and it was even shamelessly rumoured that our own President Paul Kagame was wanted.

All this was a sideshow, background music. But the UN enjoys the soundtracks much more than the action and therefore five years before challenges drive expires; they are still talking about implementation.

Some people were quite serious in taking on the challenges though not least many international Hollywood stars. I have seen many of these folk around Kigali promoting this or that cause. I covered Ashley Judd when she visited Rubale to launch safe water drinking tablets known as PurEau.

I also heard Mat Damon, Mathew McConaughey, Rick Warren and George Bush were in town promoting a solution to one challenge or another. And their efforts paid off in some cases; like when Stephen Lewis went a step further and mobilized funding for a pilot Millennium Village in Mayange and seven other similar villages in other parts of the world.

The results are obvious to Professor Josh Ruxin who runs the Mayange Village. Ruxin says that more children go to nearby schools and fewer are falling sick. And in case they fall to sickness; Nyamate Health Centre is fairly well equipped to effectively deal with any serious incidents.

The Village has supplied bed nets to guard against malaria-infested mosquitoes and thereby tackled one of the eight challenges. As a result the vicinity of Mayange has had malaria incidences reduce by 64 percent to only 4 percent of the health related issue the local clinic handles per day.

Mayange Village

The Village has also established a service to supply good quality seeds for food crops and come harvest season; farmers in Bugesera are some of the happiest in Rwanda. This has seen average prices for a plot rise a hundredfold and price discrimination applies when the buyer originates in other parts of the country other than Bugesera.

To deal with education; the First Lady piloted a school project funded by some generous Americans, the state of the art boarding school will sponsor female children from low income families but with good grades to pursue their education as far as possible.

And as if the government is keeping its ear to the ground; they have decided to construct an airport right about town in Nyamata. The mayor of Mayange who some years ago wrote to the president that his municipal was the poorest in the country is evidence of the changing fortunes of Bugesera. He is a busy man.

And the government went a step ahead further by promoting a new gender balance whereby women outnumbered men on the most crucial challenge table; the parliament and cabinet.

And like the other municipals are keeping things abreast; they have decided to emulate the system of Bugesera. And this has put Ruxin in an even busier situation than the Mayange mayor.

Ruxin is the mentor of the Access Project, which is designing programs that local government authorities can adopt to increase efficiency in health service delivery across Rwanda. And they are working. HIV/Aids prevalence is reduced to officially 3 percent but really JUST below 6.

The people living with HIV/Aids have also been attended to better in Rwanda than IN most African countries and life expectancy per capita has in turn increased.

The changes and linkages in the case of Bugesera and the wider narrative is that most of the challenges were dealt with by the effort of individuals blessed with particular skills and generosity.

It helps that Stephen Lewis was a high profile official of the UN and that Josh Ruxin is also a professor at Columbia University. Having met the latter I was left with the impression that he does his job with a passion and desire that border on instinct, the way Bill Clinton organizes his Global Initiative; which is another successful effort by one individual to change the attitudes of other individuals instead of the banal idea of changing the world that many espouse.

At the UN they are still talking and drawing resolutions and this week they were busy with the Ahmedinejad and the MDGs. Perhaps that’s what the UN does, talking about things and other people doing the things.