Oprah Out-earns a Country: my birthday and the poverty of a continent

This morning while nursing my mini-hangover (the aftermath of Grey Goose on ice, lots of sushi, unknown quantities of red wine and Irish coffee to finish), I happened upon the bill from my birthday dinner.

It turns out that to feed a lovely crew of 12, along with our share of drinks and sweets, we spent the equivalent of 10 months salary of my gardener.

Wow, that really puts things in perspective. Filling the bellies of 12 people in one evening… added up to 10 months salary for an average Ghanaian?!

Besides feeling like a true Expat – in every spoiled sense of the word – it sparked my interested to take a look at the disparities that abound all around me.

Today I found out that the annual revenue for the entire country of Sierra Leone (one of Ghana’s close neighbors on the West African coast) is USD $96million.


Oprah Winfrey alone made over two and a half times that… OF AN ENTIRE COUNTRY!!! According to Forbes list she pulled in $275million over the same period.

Tiger Woods and Madonna also out-earned Sierra Leone, with over $100m each…

Here’s another eye opening fact. The list below is the GDP per capita (ANNUAL take home pay) of the average person in these countries:

Ten Poorest Countries (based on 2004 GNP per capita in US$)

1. Burundi ... $90
2. Ethiopia ... $110
3. Democratic Republic of Congo ... $110
4. Liberia ... $110
5. Malawi ... $160
6. Guinea-Bissau ... $160
7. Eritrea ... $190
8. Niger ... $210
9. Sierra Leone ... $210
10. Rwanda ... $210

All of these countries are in Africa, and each figure is less than I spend at the Supermarket (in Africa!) every Saturday. People are surviving (really?!) on $200 per year?!!!

I feel a gratitude list coming on, but also a reality check.

Oprah’s 55th birthday this year (celebrated with a Mediterranean cruise for 1700 of her closest friends), cost $10m.

Equivalent to the annual income of over 100,000 Burundians.

Now I don’t feel so bad.

Bono, Angelina and the Hollywood Causes Brigade - Watch Out!

Finally a voice is being heard, speaking out against Aid to Africa, and against the trivialization of Aid through the Hollywood circuit. And this time people will listen because it is an African voice. I read with interest in the Sunday Times Magazine a few weeks ago, and again last week about the upcoming release of the book ‘Dead Aid’ by Zambian Lawyer Dambisa Moyo. Some out there in the blogosphere, like Africa Unchained also highlight the issues, and wrote THIS excellent post highlighting Moyo's point of view. Angel at Woman Honor Thyself has a pretty strong view as well... have a read!

I have been sounding off for years about everything from the pathetic Aid campaigns headed up by ‘Bono and the league of Hollywood Heros’ to the MAC AIDS fund, with spokespeople L’il Kim and Mary J. Blige, and the warm fuzzy feeling it gives girls to buy $20 fire engine red lipstick for their crazy boozy nights on the town, while still feeling like they’ve done their bit to ‘help the poor in Africa’.

All my cynicism is highly disregarded as the jaded perspective of a long term expat, and the complicated issues are glossed over by most. The truth is that Aid does not work. It is an industry that perpetuates itself with no end and no solution in sight. I am so happy that an African scholar has vocalized the issues and hasn’t been shy to point the finger at the culprits as well as looking at viable solutions for Africa – from within.

Below is an interview and an excerpt from Moyo’s interview with the New York Times:



Q: As a native of Zambia with advanced degrees in public policy and economics from Harvard and Oxford, you are about to publish an attack on Western aid to Africa and its recent glamorization by celebrities. ‘‘Dead Aid,’’ as your book is called, is particularly hard on rock stars. Have you met Bono?
A: I have, yes, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last year. It was at a party to raise money for Africans, and there were no Africans in the room, except for me.

Q: What do you think of him?
A: I’ll make a general comment about this whole dependence on “celebrities.” I object to this situation as it is right now where they have inadvertently or manipulatively become the spokespeople for the African continent.

Q: You argue in your book that Western aid to Africa has not only perpetuated poverty but also worsened it, and you are perhaps the first African to request in book form that all development aid be halted within five years.
A: Think about it this way — China has 1.3 billion people, only 300 million of whom live like us, if you will, with Western living standards. There are a billion Chinese who are living in substandard conditions. Do you know anybody who feels sorry for China? Nobody.

Q: Maybe that’s because they have so much money that we here in the U.S. are begging the Chinese for loans.
A: Forty years ago, China was poorer than many African countries. Yes, they have money today, but where did that money come from? They built that, they worked very hard to create a situation where they are not dependent on aid.

Q: What do you think has held back Africans?
A: I believe it’s largely aid. You get the corruption — historically, leaders have stolen the money without penalty — and you get the dependency, which kills entrepreneurship. You also disenfranchise African citizens, because the government is beholden to foreign donors and not accountable to its people.

Q: If people want to help out, what do you think they should do with their money if not make donations?
A: Microfinance. Give people jobs.

Q: You just left your longtime job as a banker for Goldman Sachs in London, where you live. What did you do there, exactly?
A: I worked in the capital markets, helping mostly emerging countries to issue bonds. That’s why I know that that works.

Q: Which countries sought your help?
A: Israel, Turkey and South Africa, primarily.

Q: Why didn’t you get a bond issue going in your native Zambia or other African countries?
A: Many politicians seem to have a lazy muscle. Issuing a bond would require that the president and the cabinet ministers go out and market their country. Why would they do that when they can just call up the World Bank and say, “Can I please have some money?”

Q: I keep reading about a new crop of African presidents who are supposedly free-market guys, including Rupiah Banda, the president of Zambia.
A: There are lots who are nominally free market, but they haven’t been aggressive about implementing those policies.

Q: What do your parents do?
A: My mother is chairman of a bank called the Indo-Zambia Bank. It’s a joint venture between Zambia and India. My father runs Integrity Foundation, an anticorruption organization.

Q: For all your belief in the potential of capitalism, the free market is now in free fall and everyone is questioning the supposed wonders of the unregulated market.
A: I wish we questioned the aid model as much as we are questioning the capitalism model. Sometimes the most generous thing you can do is just say no.

Paris would say, "That's hot"

Today's photo entry comes from a Darfur awareness campaign on a great site called Osocio. Not much needs to be said about this one either. I just appreciated the visual image and the way it throws Hollywood extravagance out there as absurd, when paired with the starving African boy...
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