Let's concoct some overly optimistic growth statistics for how this will stimulate the Kenyan economy. Let's say 19% for the first 10 years, then 15% for 10 more, then 12% for the next five.
Based on those fudged figures, we'll convince the government to take on excessive debt to pay for water development, etc. projects. Since the figures are fudged, and since we'll do this hand in hand with local elites / kleptocrats, they'll never be able to repay the debt.
We'll funnel this money right back to Western consulting and construction firms.
When locals who are having their lives destroyed by the development projects start to demonstrate, we'll squeeze them until they turn to violence and call them terrorists.
When the real international terrorists join in to fight the evil imperialists (us), we'll drone-strike, death-squad, and black-site them, citing our earlier failure to act in Sudan.
Can you tell I've been reading _Confessions of an Economic Hitman_? I am excited about the new iPhone, though.
I had only been in 5 or 6 countries in Africa, I want to visit way more. I had seen lots of good from foreign people (some of them giving their lives to others expecting nothing in return) so your comment is almost an insult.
Don't read books, don't listen to other cynics like you. Go see yourself, go to Africa.
You will discover and learn lots of things. In Africa there are things that don't work, but there are things that do. Most Americans have no friends, in Africa communities are very important.
I wasn't trying to insult the people who are doing good work. It's just an observation that individual good work can be completely dwarfed by broken or exploited systems and industrial scale leverage.
Overall, I'm actually quite positive re: human development.
Your advice to meet people and travel is well taken.
Regarding not reading, etc. Overvaluing personal experience vs. what has been observed by others is the basis of many classic flaws in human thinking. It's great for building empathy, though -- which we could use more of.
Think of bottom-up vs. top-down. There's tremendous knowledge to be gained from the bottom up, but often direct observation does not speak to the why of things. When you get an insider's account of events that have been obscured and have affected millions of people, it's not something that should be ignored.
Finally, I don't particularly like people, but I do like systems. I can better add value by fixing broken systems than by chumming around with more people (except to understand them, so I can fix systems).
fwiw, I can tell you haven't watched hans rosling recently either.
We seem to have lost perception of it, but with all the crappy meddling from businesses, UN, ill-managed or bad willed NGOs etc.. life expectancy in sub saharian africa has doubled in the last fifty years, infant mortality has halved or more and many nice things have been happening along the horrible ones.
I do not care for the new iPhone though, that may explain my different world perception.
I took it to be reflexive satire based on a deep cynicism of anything 'good' being allowed to benefit the African people.
Africa is complex, it's broken, and it is rich in resources. People from outside Africa have been exploiting it since wooden ships took its people to be their slaves to the present day where China signs "exclusive" mineral contracts with thugs.
I heard a little cry of anguish that the poster has to watch something that could do great good get crapped upon by unsavory external influences.
Resource thing is not quite true, parts of sub-saharan Africa have valuable resources and parts don't. Resources play a larger factor in African economies because they have little else. For example, while South Africa has gold mines but this place appears to lack water.
Resources play a large role elsewhere too. Norway is stinking rich because it has oil (and is able to manage this well and distribute the riches among the population). Large parts of Europe try to be at least somewhat friendly with Russia because it has oil, etc. etc.
I don't claim to understand African issues very well, so take my comments with the grain of salt that I'm very ignorant.
The civil wars that happen in certain African nations are troubling. But what was more troubling to me was reading news how factions would take control by poisoning wells that provided water for citizens. It was unthinkable to me that someone could actually do that, especially in certain areas where water was scarce. Long-term effects seemed to be ignored in favour of short-term war gains. Having never experienced such a difficult situation, I can't process what kind of motivation and thinking could cause such horrific action.
If such water supplies are found in areas where there is conflict, I worry that it only would add to the conflict, as they would be found as key tactical points to conquer and hold. It makes me sick that such good news brings such negative thoughts to my mind.
As humans, we plan into the future. However, our planning timeframes are limited by how far into the future we can imagine. Further, our ability to imagine the future depends on how likely we believe that future to be.
In the West where life is safe and prosperous, planning/imagining 20-30 years out is reasonable. In all likelihood, you will live that long. However, in war-torn African countries, the planning timeframe is much shorter for the people. If one faction can gain an advantage that gives them dominance over another faction for the next 2 years, they'll view that as ok. They do so because they can't actually think further than that. The past has taught them not to. This leads to awful decisions in a 10-yr frame. And so they stay trapped in a shitty situation.
I think the actionable question here is "How can an (x+n) year future be imagined?" where x is the current imagined future whether it be a day, month or year and n is any additional time.
Sadly, this question is philosophical until the basic needs of survival are met.
This is a great observation about how critically important the expectation of long-term safety is. Take a rich developed country and reduce that expectation from decades down to years and watch the economy collapse. Those guarantees of safety allow a huge amount of wealth to be created. People can invest huge amounts of capital into projects with very long and beneficial payoffs
This was also an underlying factor when I tried to find why Russian tourists used to spend crazy amounts of money right across the EU border. Few of them told that looking back, it's possible that things might not last, so you mind as well use what you have now. When your planning perspective isn't long, you make different choices.
What is criminal is that the so-called humanitarian "West" either does nothing to assist longer-term thinking (don't want to create self-sufficient competitors!). Instead we strip-mine, exploit and install puppet governments so our all-important corporations and their profit and resource flows are unhindered.
You raise some important issues, but if anything I actually think that this aquifer is going to reduce the conflict in this area. The civil wars, rape, and poisoning are all symptoms of a deeper illness: poverty. Africans aren't more corrupt or warlike than anyone else, they're just poorer and therefore more desperate.
Conflict minerals (diamonds, coltan, etc) fuel conflict because they are easy to control. It only takes a relatively few men to control a mine, and any diamonds mined can easily be exported. In contrast, an aquifer is hard to control: each liter of water isn't worth that much, and Kenya doesn't have the infrastructure to export water anyway.
The water won't really be a target for militia, but it will be able to be used to develop the region. More water gives more crops, which gives higher living standards, which gives less war.
(As a side note, another potential benefit is that this aquifer will promote regional integration, since it's on the border between South Sudan and Kenya. South Sudan is in the process of applying for membership in the East African Community, which has the stated goal of eventually transforming into a political federation. I expect that the EAC will be a very strong driver for regional security.)
You can't explain away centuries (millenia in some cases) of tribalism, with hatred and fear and discrimination passed from parents to children for generations as mere poverty. Poverty plays a role to be sure, but the situation is more complex (it always is.)
Sorry, I did not mean to discount the impact of tribalism. It is certainly a significant issue in East Africa (I can't speak for other areas). The history of the USA shows that even affluent western countries suffer from the Us vs Them mindset.
That said, I do believe that poverty is the more significant issue. Increased development generally correlates with stronger government [1], and with better access to government. When this happens, disputes are more likely to be resolved through the legal system.
I'm not an expert on the interaction between tribalism and warfare in developing countries, so don't think I'm trying to claim infallibility. This is just what I believe to be true.
[1] I say correlates, because I can't say that development causes stronger government. It could be the other way around
EDIT: Okay, now it's my turn to ask: what did I say wrong? Would you like to discuss it, rather than just downvoting?.
I didn't downvote. Even relatively rich countries outside of Africa like Mexico, Chile, and Panama have very high violent crime rates, but mostly among the poor (in Panama anyway, in Mexico I suspect there's a lot more drug related violence.) So poverty is definitely a big issue, but tribalism plays a big role too, e.g. bloody civil wars and ethnic cleansing. A lot of violence in South Africa is either race related or tribal. So it's not that you're wrong, it's just that the picture is more complex than just poverty alone.
First world countries have an equally long history of the same hatred, fear, discrimination and constant warfare. In general terms, it only lessened when a large proportion of the population could move out of poverty and feel reasonably secure about their future.
You don't have to look far to see how easy it is to revert to barbaric and uncivilized behaviour and standards when that sense of safety and security is put at risk.
In contrast, an aquifer is hard to control: each liter of water isn't worth that much, and Kenya doesn't have the infrastructure to export water anyway.
My original question was what if these water supplies are found in areas of conflict. In such scenarios, transport is not an issue. And the question remains because although they wouldn't put prices on a liter of water, I'd say it's because the water is invaluable, not because the value is low. If it weren't so, it wouldn't be worth it to poison wells in the first place.
Africans at the moment are, as a group, the most corrupt people on earth [1]. This is equivalent to saying that Prussians were better than the French at making war.
However, this different from saying that Africans are inherently corrupt, or that every Frenchman is destined to make a terrible soldier. I intended to assert that Africans aren't inherently corrupt, and I think you were downvoted because people thought you were disputing this.
Yes, you'd have to define inherently corrupt. Since it could be genetic, cultural, situational... etc.
And even then, you can't really jump to the conclusion that we are all the same.
Being corrupt or warlike are, in my opinions, just traits. They could be evolutionary adaptations to various environmental situations, for all anyone knows. Everyone on Earth is different, with different traits... Africans included. I'm not saying that's what Africans are, but I'm also saying you can't make the claim that those aren't inherent traits. It's a total possibility and nothing should be left out for scientific and reasonable analysis.
As a person from a Nigerian family, I'm already offended... but... let me try and answer you.
1) It's one thing to say something about a country(France & Prussia), it's another thing to talk about a race(Africans). Take a look at Youtube's attempt at defining hate-speech in their guidelines:
""Hate speech" refers to content that promotes hatred against members of a protected group. For instance, racist or sexist content may be considered hate speech. Sometimes there is a fine line between what is and what is not considered hate speech. For instance, it is generally okay to criticize a nation, but not okay to make insulting generalizations about people of a particular nationality.
"
(Note that I think Google should remove the "protected group" part and just say "any group of people")
2) How far down this endless rabbit-hole are we going to go? I can't prove to you the nature of any group of people, anymore than you can prove to me that you're not just another racist/troll that always shows up during conversations about Africa or African-Americans on Google+, on Reddit, on HN or any other site that always ends up derailing the main topic into oblivion.
> It's one thing to say something about a country(France & Prussia), it's another thing to talk about a race(Africans).
Africa is a continent. There are white Africans. If I had said, black people, that would be different, however I did not. I did not because the OP mentioned Africans and I was only pointing out that his statement about a generalization of an entire continent (he implied most Africans cannot be different from most other humans, which is already untrue even if you consider just skin color). However, had the OP stated what he stated and used "black people" instead of "Africans," I would have still asked the same question. Because he still would have made a generalization that he could not possibly know.
> How far down this endless rabbit-hole are we going to go? I can't prove to you the nature of any group of people, anymore than you can prove to me that you're not just another racist/troll that always shows up during conversations about Africa or African-Americans on Google+
Exactly. You can't prove that it's not a trait. That's all I'm questioning. Btw, I can't prove I'm not a racist to you, but I can prove that I have not yet made a racist remark. By YouTube's definition, I have not made an insulting remark based on a generalization of a race. Just because I don't agree with the author's assertions, does not necessarily mean I agree with the opposite assertion (that Africans are more corrupt and warlike). I have not made the claim or generalization that Africans, or black people, are more corrupt or warlike. Just because you are insulted, does not mean what I have said is actually insulting.
That being said, I'm sorry if it offended you, but I stand by my point. All I wanted to say was that the OP himself made a generalization. And I tried pointing it out with a question that might have made me look like I was making a racist remark... but I was just pointing out the fallacy in his claim by implying the opposite could be true..
I won't be in this thread after this. I already see the rabbit-hole falling has begun.
Since we can actually measure & look at people in a very non-debatable way, you can get unquestionable & unbias data on how tall people are and the color of their skin. You cannot debate 6-foot tall versus 7-foot tall. We've(first-world at least) all agreed on what is a ruler. 12 inches is 12 inches. You also cannot debate the color red versus green as it has been defined.
The OP's generalization of people being equal is a fair generation to make considering the context of the world we live in today.
You should understand and be sensitive to the fact that racism is a real problem in the world today. As such, statements/questions implying directly, or indirectly, a characteristic of a group of people that support ideas aligning with racism should be done with care and not without quality evidence that suggests the negative characteristic; otherwise it just appears malicious. Especially for a group of people who have already experienced very similar abuse for many years and are still dealing with it today.
Africa has a very long history of not only various factions fighting, but tribal conflicts that go back centuries. Things were only made worse as colonial powers played different tribes against each other. Add to this organized crime, religious hatred, and generally low regard for life, and we have what we have.
Also, "poisoning the well" is a well documented military tactic in European heritage as well. Similarly devastating to the local populations are scorched earth tactics, for example used in WWII.
Indeed, African militias do not have a monopoly on "poisoning the well" or other scorched-earth tactics. For a fantastic Western example, I would humbly point us all in the direction of our own nation's conduct in the Vietnam War, viz., with Agent Orange.
The explicit aim of the Agent Orange campaigns was to render cropland useless, starving rural Vietnamese out of the countryside and driving them into (US-dominated) cities. Entire ecosystems were devastated as a result, and generations of Vietnamese suffered the aftermath.
This was basically the 20th Century equivalent of the old Roman tactic of sewing salt into the enemy's wheat fields.
Let's stop thinking about Africa as a single entity, for a start. Even within one country, (Kenya), we can see immense variability in culture, economic and political function etc... For example, Nairobi feels (culturally) closer to NYC than it does to Mombasa. Whilst there is undeniably an immense quantity of grinding, debilitating poverty; there is also great wealth, and a good number of very smart people who are not only doing very well, but also helping to build a good future for the country.
One should not overlook the crazy bureaucracy and inefficiency of course, but equally, one should not have a uniformly negative view ... we still need to operate, and to get things done.
Kenya itself has been relatively stable and relatively peaceful for several decades.
(there was some instability after an election in 2007, and there are simmering issues around the periphery - LRA in Uganda, fiefs in Somalia, continual intervention by Ethiopia in Somalia, North/South Sudan skirmishes).
Actually it's the Kenyan military that has managed to dislodge Al Shabaab from significant swarths of Southern Somalia (up to their Mogadishu, and including the largest port, Kismayu). Ethiopia generally used to roll in, depose the warlord they didn't like, then head on back home. The Kenyan military tried to stabilize the region.
It's not all altruism though, the intention was to create a buffer near the Kenyan border as the country intends to build a large port in Lamu, a coastal town nearer Somalia than Mombasa, the current main port.
It's actually not short-term -- what better way to prevent your enemies from populating an area than to permanently render it unsuitable for habitation?
But what is the purpose of that action? Traditionally warfare [it seems to me] has primarily been about geo located resources. That is you want the land or the resources on the land that your neighbour is on. If you destroy the land/resources then you might as well have let the neighbour stay there so long as you ensured they didn't impinge on your resources.
>If such water supplies are found in areas where there is conflict, I worry that it only would add to the conflict
I think you are completely right. Incoming anecdotal & speculation: My parents, born in Lagos Nigeria, basically saw this happen. They never planned to be in USA this long; I wasn't suppose to be born here. Basically, Shell(A gas station in USA) is strongly suspected of providing, at least in part, funding for a significant military/political action somewhere around 1970 - 1977. My parents, and several other Nigerians, who traveled to USA to get a degree then return to Nigeria no longer felt comfortable to return and came to the realization that they may have to live in USA for a very long time.
"Despite these abundance of natural resources, claims suggest that many Western nations like the United States, Canada, France and the United Kingdom as well as emerging economic powerhouses like China often exploit Africa's natural resources today, causing most of the value and money from the natural resources to go to the West rather than Africa, further causing the poverty in Africa."
This isn't a new thing. Land mines have been used to deny farmland to the enemy, which has effects that last for decades if not centuries. War has always been hell.
I saw that documentary too[1]. They will see this discovery not as 70 years of clean drinking water, but as 70 years of huge profits. They will do whatever it takes to buy exclusive rights and then pump it out as fast as they can (with little care for the environment), put it in bottles, then cleverly market and sell it to the local people who live there, for prizes that only the middle and upper classes can afford.
They make billions that way. Sickening.
Let's hope the government there will do good and keep multinationals like Nestle from ripping this water off the local people.
I wonder if Kenya's relative underdevelopment (compared to both western countries and farming countries like India/China etc.) is the reason this aquifer has remained undiscovered for so long.
Nonetheless, I hope the people of Kenya will learn from the mistakes of those other countries when it comes to sustainable utilization of aquifer water instead of the indiscriminate use we've seen elsewhere.
That's great news. The aquifer is below a dry and poor region of Kenya, so I really hope that the government will be able to use the water to develop the region.
This region will also have the LAPSSET transport corridor built in a few years. Put together, I'm feeling very positive about the future.
He takes existing satellite, radar and geological maps of the area and layers them on top of each other to create one all-encompassing study of what lies beneath the soil.
This is certainly great news for the people of Kenya!
I've always wondered how they estimate how long a water resource can last. In this case, they said 70 years. But does that take into account the increased usage/population the area will get now that it has more water? It seems to me that the water needs are ever growing, while the water source stays relatively the same.
What ticks me about such announcements is that too often they don't really mean anything besides the media blowing things out of proportion. This is unfortunately very common in anything nutrition or health based, but often applies to scientific "breakthroughs" as well. The media picks up some vague research result and hyping it to make headlines.
I just really hope this is not the case here, because it's truly good news for a dry region where water means everything.
This, along with the large recent oil and natural gas discoveries kind of makes me wonder how many such additional surprises the earth crust hides, that will be discovered soon due to much better discovery technologies and computational resources.
I am amused by the comments on this post and even the story itself.Kenya's primary problem is not a lack of water.Around 70 percent of the land is rich with multiple rivers,which is why it is one of the leading producers of Tea and Coffee.Only some parts of Northern Kenya,around Lodwar have dry spells .Western Kenya has the opposite problem:flash floods that usually occur around April and March.
Corruption and poor management of resources are the major headaches facing the country,not droughts.
Groundwater will become an increasingly important resource, and it will be especially critical in a region that experiences periodic droughts like East Africa. Kenya faces a water crisis, and water cuts were not uncommon even for those with access to tap water when I lived in Kenya around the turn of the millennium (I don't know how it is now).
However, because of its perception as a common-pool resource—land owners think they are entitled to the water beneath their land—groundwater management seems to me to present a particular challenge. Are there any success stories in sustainable groundwater management that Kenya could look at? Kenya does have the framework for managing water resources, but it's a question of implementation and political will. Control over resources seems to often end up in the hands of influential individuals who operate with impunity.
I lived there for several years so I must say this is exciting I can only imagine how they feel, There are so many undiscovered territories on mother earth I'm just glad there is people out there not giving up on humanity and do what it takes to solve the big problems.
Finally, some positive news out of Africa! Let's hope we (both local governments and groups, and Western "aid") don't screw this up.
I'm not familiar with the Kenyan political climate, so if anyone else has some experience or knowledge about this, could you enlighten the rest of us about whether the government is helping the population as a whole or serves minority interests? Is the country stable? Bordering Sudan, Ehtiopia and Somalia can't be easy.
...whether the government is helping the population as a whole or serves minority interests?
I'm not particularly knowledgeable about Africa, but as a human being I observe that all governments are a mix of these two activities. "Good" governments seem to focus more on the former (or maybe they have enough resources that minority interests can do well in less conspicuous fashion), but it isn't as though African governments come from a different planet than governments elsewhere.
Didn't something like this happen in the Left Behind series? African nation gets better irrigation and raises food for rest of nation, or something like that?
The BBC's main UK competitor. It's not really big news, but rather follow-up from an interesting disvoery about a year or so ago, which was widely covered eg http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2133339/Massi... which is a surprisngly good story by DM standards, but which I picked mainly because it has a good map.
Hopefully people will, you know, stop dying and we hackers can go back to do real relevant things like instagram clones and settle once and for all which one is the better Lisp.
Some other suggestions along the same lines as you suggest:
Interrupt a court case so that the courtroom can appreciate the
plight of dying African children before they get back to quibbling
over legal wording.
Speak at a conference for accountants so that they can appreciate
the plight of dying African children before they get back to
fiddling with spreadsheets.
Share this in sexual abuse groups so that they can appreciate the
plight of dying African children before they get back to discussing
their own troubles.
Visit schools and interrupt classrooms so that they can appreciate
the plight of dying African children before they get back to
learning about math, English, or history.
---
Or... how about we keep human interest stories that would otherwise be covered by major media off of HN unless there is a component of the story which is particularly hackerish and gratifies one's intellectual curiosity? As it stands, this story is little more than "large underground aquifers exist" which is unlikely to gratify anyone's intellectual curiosity any more than "large deposits of coal exist". If finding this aquifer was accomplished via innovative new technology, let's see the story on that.
How about a discussion on Alain Gachet's WATEX publications which I understand to be the technological basis that enabled this find:
Ultimately, he's a hypocrite for being here to dole out sarcasm rather than actually working on resolving the plight of dying African children that he implies outweighs others' petty concerns.
I think there's a very good reason why pg and the editors actively curate HN (eg: blocking certain sites from submission) and don't let democracy do its thing: it doesn't stand a chance against Eternal September.
(Besides which: those publications, like this story, aren't all that interesting from an intellectually gratifying perspective.)
Cmon, you can't really expect an audience base that is probably mostly introverted and cynical to actually find joy in reading about a positive find in a third world country could you? In all seriousness though, I think this can be well developed if it isn't exploited by privatization. Since, ya know, most things that would be greatly beneficial to developing countries usually are.
There's a difference between caring about something and thinking it's intellectually stimulating. There's no need to insult people because they think HN is a bad place to post good news that has no takeaway value.
(I feel dirty for using the word 'takeaway' but I can't think of anything that fits better to mean an overly-broad version of 'learning'.)
I would like to voice my support of this question. There are plenty of other places for this news, but few places for computer science stories. Perhaps www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/ ?
You're ignoring the 'think it's important that the point is raised' factor. If there was a user-visible flagging mechanism, then a hate-to-be-that-guy would use it and never feel any urge to make an annoying post, win-win. I strongly doubt that most people claiming to 'hate to be that guy' are lying.
I do realize that, which is why I said 'user-visible'. Flagging as HN currently has it can be used for moderation purposes, and for downvotes in extreme situations. But a user-visible flag would provide a warning to users that an article is fluff or otherwise problematic, and possibly attract more discriminating attention.
Let's concoct some overly optimistic growth statistics for how this will stimulate the Kenyan economy. Let's say 19% for the first 10 years, then 15% for 10 more, then 12% for the next five.
Based on those fudged figures, we'll convince the government to take on excessive debt to pay for water development, etc. projects. Since the figures are fudged, and since we'll do this hand in hand with local elites / kleptocrats, they'll never be able to repay the debt.
We'll funnel this money right back to Western consulting and construction firms.
When locals who are having their lives destroyed by the development projects start to demonstrate, we'll squeeze them until they turn to violence and call them terrorists.
When the real international terrorists join in to fight the evil imperialists (us), we'll drone-strike, death-squad, and black-site them, citing our earlier failure to act in Sudan.
Can you tell I've been reading _Confessions of an Economic Hitman_? I am excited about the new iPhone, though.