sulawesigirl4
Rock n' Roll Doggie ALL ACCESS
Jamila said:He must not have read about Kenya's economic growth or Chinese investment in Africa or the Touareg music festival in Mali.
I happened upon the Vanity Fair issue when I was visiting a friend and stumbled across the article about the Festival du Desert in Mali. Nothing could have pleased me more but to see a huge picture of my friend Habib Koite splashed across the article. When I lived in Mali, I knew these people. I used to go dancing at the Hogon while Toumani Diabate played (just like in the article), and I met the organizer of the desert festival on many occasions. My friends and I would go out with Habib and other musicians after a show and stay up till three in the morning talking about life, culture, religion and politics. Reading the article brought back so many great memories not only of Mali but of the amazing resilience of the people who live there. There is a music scene that thrives completely outside the sphere of Clear Channel and Billboard. People in remote villages listen to local radio stations (often broadcast from their own village with local DJs) and do their chores to the strains of Oumou Sangare and Omar Koita. I've had conversations with complete strangers on the bus in Bamako in which they'll say, "we may be poor in money, but we're rich in culture." And they're right.
As for the festival itself, it has brought a lot of money into one of the poorest and bleakest parts of Mali and introduced a lot of people from outside Africa to amazing music they would not otherwise hear. Every year, a lot of money comes into the local economy from tourism and a lot of it is driven directly from this event. (I used to work as an advisor to the Ministry of Tourism when I lived there.) So while the economic situation is bad and while Malian cotton farmers continue to languish in debt because of subsidies to rich Western farmers that keep the price of cotton below the market value, there are still some bright spots. And I was very happy that this article showed us that. There are so many facets to the problem of poverty and therefore many facets to any "solution" that one might propose. In my experience on the ground, any solutions will likely be a mix of aid, investment, development of local infrastructure, education, and above all, a level playing field on the world market. Anyone who thinks that imposing a market economy and then just letting the "invisible hand" work it all out needs to get out and see things for themselves. It's never as simple as you'd like it to be.
That's just my opinion, for what it's worth.