Blog Contributor:
Kathy McKiernan
May 10th, 2010 10:53 AM UTC
By Kathy McKiernan
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It’s been a whirlwind few days in Toronto with ONE’s Bono and Bob Geldof editing today’s Globe and Mail, Canada’s paper of record, and turning the paper’s focus to Africa just as Canada prepares to host world leaders at the upcoming G8 and G20 summits. Late last night Bob wrapped the last headlines and stories and we made some final adjustments to the cover before it was sent to print. We think the final product is fantastic and hope you do too. The issue examines the question — will the 21st century be the African century? There are op-eds and news stories by and about a wide range of Africans from Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf to Somali rapper K’naan. President Barack Obama responds to questions from Bono about US strategy in Africa. If you’re in Canada get the hard copy too –the red graphic cover is a keeper.
Having Bono and Bob edit the Globe has been a great opportunity for ONE heading into the G8 and G20 meetings in June. The leadership and staff at the Globe, from editor-in-chief John Stackhouse and foreign editor Stephen Northfield to the other editors, reporters, photographers and graphic designers were incredible partners and we’re so grateful that they were willing to take the risk to do something they had never done before.
The Globe and Mail has asked celebrated Kenyan blogger Ory Okolloh to guest edit the globeandmail.com today and over the next month and she will be featuring a great deal of Africa content exclusively through the website including this video of a question submitted by reader Sarah Kibaalya of Toronto in which she asks Bono and Bob if Africans need others to speak on their behalf. Their answers might surprise you. Check it out:
Also check out this live webchat between Bob Geldof and Ory Okolloh which just wrapped up.
We’ll be spotlighting more content throughout the day, so be sure to check back on the ONE Blog for more updates!
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Apr 30th, 2010 6:55 PM UTC
By Kathy McKiernan
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ONE’s co-founder Bono met with President Obama and members of his national security staff earlier today to discuss the Administration’s development strategy heading into the upcoming G8 and G20 meetings in Canada and September’s UN Summit on the Millennium Development Goals. They talked about Bono’s recent trip to Senegal, Ghana, Mozambique, Kenya and South Africa and about how good governance and increased trade and investment are critical to driving economic growth on the African continent.
Bono made the following remarks after the meeting in the Oval Office:
With the first blackberry president, we discussed the power of new technology to empower activists and entrepreneurs across Africa, part of a new rising generation that’s boosting growth and governance and defying stereotypes.
A recurring theme was innovation. We agreed that there are simple technologies that need to be made more available to transform not only public health, but also agriculture, helping farmers check prices and weather patterns. While acknowledging these are difficult times for donor economies, we discussed the President’s food security initiative and agreed to encourage other countries who signed up to keep their commitment to invest $22 billion over 3 years.
The President and his team are preparing for the UN development summit in September where it will have to be admitted that not enough has been done – north or south of the equator – for and by the world’s poorest economies to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, which have as their target a halving of extreme poverty by 2015.
We also discussed the real results American aid is achieving — malaria deaths cut in half across the continent of Africa, 3 million Africans on life-saving AIDS medication and 42 million more children going to school. This is momentum that can be built upon now.
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Apr 18th, 2010 12:33 PM UTC
By Kathy McKiernan
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 ONE co-founder Bono has a new column in today’s New York Times, “Africa Reboots,” that keys off, in part, a listening and learning trip Bono and other ONE board members recently took to Senegal, Ghana, Mozambique and Kenya. Bono writes about the unexpected harmony he heard between business leaders and activists on the issue of poor governance and about some of the brilliant people we spent time with along the way who are rewriting the rules of the game on the continent.
Bono writes:
It’s no secret that lefty campaigners can be cranky about business elites. And the suspicion is mutual. Worldwide. Civil society as a rule sees business as, well, a little uncivil. Business tends to see activists as, well, a little too active. But in Africa, at least from what I’ve just seen, this is starting to change. The energy of these opposing forces coming together is filling offices, boardrooms and bars. The reason is that both these groups — the private sector and civil society — see poor governance as the biggest obstacle they face. So they are working together on redefining the rules of the African game.
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Aid, it’s clear, is still part of the picture. It’s crucial, if you have H.I.V. and are fighting for your life, or if you are a mother wondering why you can’t protect your child against killers with unpronounceable names or if you are a farmer who knows that new seed varietals will mean you have produce that you can take to market in drought or flood. But not the old, dumb, only-game-in-town aid — smart aid that aims to put itself out of business in a generation or two. “Make aid history” is the objective. It always was. Because when we end aid, it’ll mean that extreme poverty is history. But until that glorious day, smart aid can be a reforming tool, demanding accountability and transparency, rewarding measurable results, reinforcing the rule of law, but never imagining for a second that it’s a substitute for trade, investment or self-determination.
To read the entire column click here.
And share it with your family and friends!
  
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Jan 3rd, 2010 4:45 PM UTC
By Kathy McKiernan
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ONE co-founder Bono’s most recent column for the New Year Times, on 10 ideas for the next 10 years, was published today. I wanted to share it because it calls attention to a few ideas that are in our area of work, including the rotavirus vaccine and the upcoming World Cup in Africa.
Below is an excerpt. You can read the full column here.
Happy New Year!
-Kathy McKiernan
Taking the Fight to Rotavirus
The thing is, they exist, these vaccines. They’re not a mere hope, like an AIDS vaccine. And one of the brightest bits of news in 2009 is that rotavirus vaccines have been shown to work not only in nations with low child mortality, but in the poorest countries, where diarrhea (not a killer in our house) caused by rotavirus infections takes the lives of 500,000 children a year. The World Health Organization just this summer issued a strong recommendation that rotavirus vaccinations be part of every nation’s immunization program. From this vantage point, I like the look of the next decade.
The World Cup Kicks Off the African Decade
It’s getting easier to describe to Americans the impact of the World Cup — especially the impact it will have in Africa, where the tournament is to be held this summer. A few years ago, Ivory Coast was splitting apart and in the midst of civil war when its national team qualified for the 2006 jamboree. The response was so ecstatic that the war was largely put on hold as something more important than deathly combat took place, i.e. a soccer match. The team became a symbol of how the different tribes could — and did — get on after the tournament was over.
This time round, for the 2010 World Cup, naysayers thought South Africa could not build the stadiums in time. Those critics should be red-faced now. South Africa’s impressive preparations underline the changes on the continent, where over the last few years, 5 percent economic growth was the average. Signs point to a further decade of growth to come. Canny investors will put more capital there. This in turn has the potential to shore up fragile young democracies across the continent.
It would be fitting if Nelson Mandela, who has done more than anyone for Africa’s rising, would kick off the opening ceremonies. If he shows up, the world will weep with joy.
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Jul 10th, 2009 10:33 AM UTC
By Kathy McKiernan
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 ONE co-founder Bono wrote a great a column for the New York Times today about President Obama’s historic visit to Ghana this weekend. Bono writes about the relationship between the U.S. and Africa and about how countries like Ghana, with its peaceful transition of power and growing business sector, are challenging old stereotypes about Africa.
The Times also links to our brand new “Yes, Africa Can” video about Ghana. The video, which we shot in Ghana just a few weeks ago, includes Ghanaians talking about their views of Ghana today and their excitement about President Obama’s trip.
In his column Bono writes:
No one’s leaked me a copy of the president’s speech in Ghana, but it’s pretty clear he’s going to focus not on the problems that afflict the continent but on the opportunities of an Africa on the rise. If that’s what he does, the biggest cheers will come from members of the growing African middle class, who are fed up with being patronized and hearing the song of their majestic continent in a minor key.
I’ve played that tune. I’ve talked of tragedy, of emergency. And it is an emergency when almost 2,000 children in Africa a day die of a mosquito bite; this kind of hemorrhaging of human capital is not something we can accept as normal.
But as the example of Ghana makes clear, that’s only one chord. Amid poverty and disease are opportunities for investment and growth — investment and growth that won’t eliminate overnight the need for assistance, much as we and Africans yearn for it to end, but that in time can build roads, schools and power grids and propel commerce to the point where aid is replaced by trade pacts, business deals and home-grown income.
Read Bono’s full Op-Ed on the New York Times website.
-Kathy McKiernan
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May 1st, 2009 11:48 AM UTC
By Kathy McKiernan
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Time magazine honored George Clooney yesterday as one of its 100 Most Influential People in 2009 for his activism around the crisis in Darfur. George has been a great friend of ONE, and working with the organization he cofounded, Not on our Watch, he has been an influential player in the fight to focus attention on the humanitarian crisis in Darfur — and on the responsibility of the US government and other world leaders to do something about it.
ONE cofounder Bono writes about Clooney in the Time 100 Issue:
His commitment to ending the atrocities in Sudan is not a role, not a performance. It is real — and it is serious work. Some people think celebrities should stick to the script, stay feted and fetal in their air-conditioned trailers. Some people think it’s an appalling juxtaposition to see the rich and famous in a photo call with the vanquished and the vulnerable.
It is. George knows that. But he also knows that the cameras trained on you and the column inches dedicated to you could be covering something a little more important than, well, you. Like the slaughter of innocents in Darfur. Like the refugee camps full of starving Sudanese.
And he knows the details, the nuances of his and your sides of the argument. Hey, if you’re going to pay attention to George Clooney, he’s going to insist you pay attention to this stuff. Now there’s a radical idea.
Read the full text here.
Bono also interviewed George on his work in Darfur for a CNN special on the Time 100 hosted by Anderson Cooper that will air Friday night May 1 at 11 PM EDT on both CNN and CNN International. It will re-air on CNN Saturday and Sunday at 8 and 11 PM EDT.
-Kathy McKiernan
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Apr 9th, 2009 2:08 PM UTC
By Kathy McKiernan
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Today the Washington Post is running a great op-ed by President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf of Liberia. In the piece, the President talks about how the financial crisis threatens Africa’s turnaround and she also weighs in on how development assistance – along with stronger African leadership and better governance — has contributed to important progress in Africa over the past ten years.
President Sirleaf’s commentary is directly relevant to the current debate about the value of aid. She makes clear that aid has been an important component in Africa’s recent progress and cutting aid would have negative effects on poverty and stability on the continent. Thus she provides a very different view from that offered in the new book Dead Aid:
While international attention has been understandably focused on events in Darfur, Somalia and Zimbabwe, countries across the continent including Ghana, Tanzania, Mozambique and Liberia have been quietly turning around. Economic growth rates regularly exceed 5 percent in many nations. Since 2000, 34 million more African children are in school. More than 2 million Africans are on lifesaving HIV/AIDS medicines. Malaria deaths have been halved in Rwanda and Ethiopia, and the disease has been virtually eradicated in Zanzibar. Poverty rates are falling fast, from 58 to 51 percent across the continent in just six years, according to the World Bank.
The key to this progress is stronger African leadership and more accountable governance. Today, more than 20 African countries are democracies, up from just three in the 1980s; they have competitive elections and improved human rights, and their news media are much freer. These efforts have been supported by increasingly effective development assistance from the United States and other partners.
The citizens and leaders of donor nations should recognize how important their assistance has been to the new leadership in Africa and how appreciative most Africans are for this partnership. Critics say that African economies are shrinking, that poverty is rising and that failing aid is the culprit. But this argument is at least a decade out of date. Africa’s turnaround is real, the evidence indisputable. Africans themselves have been the key to this reversal, but more effective aid has played an important role. Reducing aid would slow private-sector growth, stall poverty reduction, and undermine peace and stability in countries that are struggling to become part of the global economy.
-Kathy McKiernan
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