I found a youtube video of an interview of Michela Wrong by reason.tv in which she talks about It's Our Turn to Eat. She highlights some interesting things in her book. When asked about Africa and development, she says that the Jeffrey Sach's school of thought, meaning Africa just needs more aid, has been quite popular and the political instability and corruption has been largely downplayed and viewed as irrelevant. Then she asserts that "you cannot pretend to help a country if you don't cast a very critical eye on the politics of the day". I think this makes sense. When foreign aid filters through a country's government from say the IMF or World Bank it does little or no good if that government if corrupt.

Then she affirms something we have talked about in class several times. When asked what the best thing the West could do to help out Africa progress she said, "At the end of the day it's not going to be Western hands, and that's something we need to recognize, and that's something we haven't wanted to recognize....we can't make an African administration do the right thing."

I think it is very important to understand that our hands are tied in some ways and concern ourselves more with our influence rather than our actions when it comes to governments.