Category: Africa

malaria & education

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+ (at the end) one hypothesis for why published randomized trials could disagree more than non-experimental studies

This week’s Lancet has a paper about the effect of treating schoolchildren for malaria in Kenya, by Sian Clarke, Matthew Jukes, and several other people. The study seems to have been very well done. Children in some schools received malaria treatment and children in other schools received placebos: Which were which was “revealed to the investigators only after completion of the statistical analysis.”

Children in treatment schools were healthier and had longer attention spans, but “no effect was shown for inattentive or hyperactive-compulsive behaviours or on educational achievement.”

This study is interesting because the intervention doesn’t just treat kids with malaria: it treats all kids. Apparently (from the article and the associated podcast), children who grow up in areas with lots of malaria develop a degree of immunity to malaria flare-ups (with the fevers and other symptoms with which I am intimately familiar) but still can have malaria in their system which has other negative effects like anemia.

The authors conclude “Effective malaria interventions could be a valuable addition to school health programmes.” In the podcast (July 12), the always charismatic World Bank researcher Don Bundy explains that the study is being replicated in Senegal and in a different part of Kenya.

The lack of effects on school performance stands in contrast to a recent study in Sri Lanka that found significant impacts of malaria treatment on children’s school performance. This reminds me of Worrall’s paper (which I blogged about earlier) which pointed to a greater tendency among randomized trials to see disparate results than among non-experimental trials. One plausible explanation for this is that non-experimental trials are subject to greater publication bias: A non-experimental trial has to meet a higher bar to publish a dissenting result than a randomized trial. This could lead to more variance in published experimental trial results.

I don’t find it particularly surprising that we have lots of variation across randomized trials. Contexts are different. Heartening? No. Surprising? No.

ARC: 50 readers and 60 reviews!

David Evans1 Comment

Wow!  When I posted the Africa Reading Challenge back in December 2007, I didn’t imagine so much interest.  50 people have now posted reading lists, and 60 reviews have been posted: here are the most recent ten, from Egypt to South Africa, from Congo to Kenya.  It’s great to see familiar works (Things Fall Apart) and unfamiliar (the Akpan book, which I’ll be getting thanks to Amani’s awesome quote – see No 8 below).

  1. Challenge of the Barons, by Lekan Are / Nigeria (Magic Man)
  2. The Wizard of the Nile: The Hunt for Africa’s Most Wanted, by Matthew Green / Uganda (Rob Crilly)
  3. Paradise, by Mike Resnick / Kenya (sort of) (La Lucuma)
  4. Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad / Congo (elgoose)
  5. Chameleon Days, by Tim Bascom / Ethiopia (Kate)
  6. Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe / Nigeria (elgoose)
  7. Mine Boy, by Peter Abraham / South Africa (Angela)
  8. Say You’re One of Them, by Uwem Akpan / Nigeria, Gabon, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Kenya (Amani): “If you are looking for a super depressing book to read, then look no further… It’s obvious that Mr. Akpan is a tremendous talent.”
  9. The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, by Alexander McCall Smith / Botswana (Alisia)
  10. The Yacoubian Building, by Alaa Al Aswany (tr. Humphrey Davies) / Egypt (Alisia)

best line from the hulk

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Last night I took in some fine Tanzanian culture by going to see The Incredible Hulk at a local theater: I went to the Century Cinemax at Milimani. It was showing The Incredible Hulk, The Happening, Speed Racer, and Indiana Jones.  (The other theater I located was playing three Bollywood films.)  The audience was an ethnic mix as the picture below attests.

My favorite line from the Hulk: Bruce Banner, hiding out in Brazil, warns some antagonists in his poor Portuguese.

Don’t make me hungry. You won’t like me when I’m hungry. Wait, that’s not right.

Here’s the crowd, anxiously awaiting the film!

la cucaracha

David Evans2 Comments

As I’ve been in meetings in Dar es Salaam and haven’t much to offer in the way of experiences, I’ll post this (bad) poem I wrote a couple of months ago in Freetown (Sierra Leone) after a skirmish with an unwelcome visitor to my bathroom tub.

Kakroch

copper warrior, iron armor
i slap at you with a mat, a slipper,
you demonstrate fear to pacify
and hide just inside the drain
waiting
 
robert e lee of the bathroom, the better general
destined to lose by forces beyond you
 
i respect but fear
bully but am powerless to vanquish
bra kakroch

how to write about africa

David Evans1 Comment

This is absolutely brilliant; it made my night.  Read Binyavanga Wainaina’s whole essay in Granta 92.  Here are a few passages I identified with.

Always use the word ‘Africa or ‘Darkness’ or ‘Safari’ in your title. Subtitles may include the words ‘Zanzibar’, ‘Masai’, ‘Zulu’, ‘Zambezi’, ‘Congo’, ‘Nile’, ‘Big’, ‘Sky, ‘Shadow’, ‘Drum’, ‘Sun’ or ‘Bygone’. Also useful are words such as ‘Guerrillas’, ‘Timeless’, ‘Primordial’ and ‘Tribal’.

Never have a picture of a well-adjusted African on the cover of your book, or in it, unless that African has won the Nobel Prize. An AK-47, prominent ribs, naked breasts: use these. If you must include an African, make sure you get one in Masai or Zulu or Dogon dress.

In your text, treat Africa as if it were one country. It is hot and dusty with rolling grasslands and huge herds of animals and tall, thin people who are starving. Or it is hot and steamy with very short people who eat primates. Don’t get bogged down with precise descriptions. Africa is big: fifty-four countries, 900 million people who are too busy starving and dying and warring and emigrating to read your book. The continent is full of deserts, jungles, highlands, savannahs and many other things, but your reader doesn’t care about all that, so keep your descriptions romantic and evocative and unparticular.

Make sure you show how Africans have music and rhythm deep in their souls, and eat things no other humans eat. Do not mention rice and beef and wheat; monkey-brain is an African’s cuisine of choice, along with goat, snake, worms and grubs and all manner of game meat.

mention near the beginning how much you love Africa, how you fell in love with the place and can’t live without her. Africa is the only continent you can love — take advantage of this. If you are a man, thrust yourself into her warm virgin forests. If you are a woman, treat Africa as a man who wears a bush jacket and disappears off into the sunset. Africa is to be pitied, worshipped or dominated. Whichever angle you take, be sure to leave the strong impression that without your intervention and your important book, Africa is doomed.

And so much more!  That’s why we recommend reading books by African writers.  Lots of recommendations here (plus a few offenders).

Hat tip to Blattman, the one blog I take time to read in the field (I’m in Tanzania, by the way).

Africa Reading Challenge review: Challenge of the Barons, by Lekan Are

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My thoughts on this angry battle cry of a Nigerian novella.  (I love a battle cry that takes place in the halls of academia… once in a while.)

searing critique of aid to Africa tied to services from the donor country, wrapped up in university faculty intrigue

I was at a tiny bookshop in Banjul, the Gambia, picking up novels by African writers when the bookseller showed me this slim volume and said, You wouldn’t like this one! Why not? Because it speaks out against you guys. (I work for an international aid agency.) How could I resist?In 158 pages, Nigerian writer Lekan Are tells a story exemplifying how aid can hurt the people it is intended to help and pad the pockets of the most incompetent from the donor countries. Dr. Onaola Jungu, our protagonist with a PhD in horticulture, accepts the offer to move from his native Nigeria to the fictional country of Kato,* where he will be chair of the Department of Horticulture at the University of Serti.

However, when he arrives he finds the university faculty largely populated by poorly qualified Americans and other ex-pats, hired only because of strings attached to American aid to Kato. Dr. Jungu is unjustly deprived of the promised chairmanship in favor of an American and is made a mere professor. The rest of the book details the intense battle between – on the one side – Jungu and his African colleagues, who seek to improve the education environment and perform research that will help the country, and – on the other side – the American “experts” (and a few African cronies) battling to protect their special interests.

The book is heavy handed, the right and wrong are too stark, and the prose is clumsy.

BUT the story engaged me throughout (except the long account of the dog dying), and many of the critiques ring true. An absurd amount of American foreign aid (much more than most other countries**) is still “tied,” meaning that we “give” to poor countries but only in the form of American goods and services. Lekan Are paints a picture of just how inefficient and counterproductive that can be.

* It’s always a bad idea to move to a fictional country, unless it’s Brigadoon and your true love lives there.

** The Center for Global Development’s Commitment to Development Index states that 57% of our aid is tied to American goods and services, which puts us at 20 of 22 in that category (just above Greece and Japan).

 

 

 

Africa Reading Challenge review: Wizard of the Crow, by Ngugi wa Thiong’o

David Evans5 Comments

I enjoyed pretty much all of this book, which is saying something for a tome of 765 pages.  That said, it took me months to finish (which has been my previous experience with Ngugi).  My thoughts:

rarely lags, many laughs: Thiong’o hits the mark

Ngugi has here written a weighty but engaging tale of … well, it’s a little hard to describe. There’s an African dictator, three sycophantic government ministers (so sycophantic that one had his eyes surgically enlarged to be able to spot the Ruler’s enemies, another his ears…), a traditional healer, an activist, an opportunistic businessman, a wife fed up with beatings, condescending representatives from the “Global Bank,” and Much, Much More.

Having worked in and read about African countries for a number of years, many of the players seemed familiar: for example, the former revolutionaries co-opted into the ruling party reminded me of Richard Leakey, the Kenyan opposition politician who lost credibility by joining the ruling party.

In short, I really enjoyed this piece: part farcical satire, part magical realism (as the Ruler blows up like a balloon and begins to float – yes, really), part political activist’s anthem, and occasionally just a drama. In the drama occasions, I usually wished for more farcical satire, but still, I highly recommend this book.

I’ve read three novels by Ngugi wa Thiong’o: The River Between, Petals of Blood, and this one. This is definitely the most fun (okay, it’s the only remotely funny one). I’d recommend Petals of Blood for a much more serious and depressing account of post-colonial disillusionment with local leadership. Another novel that I found illustrative of post-colonial African politics was Chinua Achebe’s A Man of the People.

Note on content: the book has a bit of strong language and lots of absurdity.

advice to students visiting a developing country for the first time

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Tyler Cohen and then Chris Blattman offer some great advice to aspiring researchers visiting poor countries.  I endorse their comments and can add little, but here’s the little.  (The above is some of the finest street food I’ve had recently, in Sierra Leone: if I can see you cook it, I’ll eat it.)

  1. Attend a religious service if you have the opportunity.  In many of the countries I work in, religiosity is much higher than in the USA and so experiencing this can be very revealing.
  2. Buy and read a local newspaper.
  3. Even short of learning the local language (which is excellent advice but not always realistic for a short visit), make the effort to learn greetings and simple phrases in local language(s) [not just the colonial language].  This garners an immense amount of good will and can open doors.
  4. Buy a good map of the country and ask people where they are from. 

Oh, and don’t accept soda on a bus, don’t walk around downtown Nairobi early in the morning, don’t walk around the bus station in Aruba at night, don’t leave love letters lying around your hotel room…