Thank you for writing a more balance article about Africa. However this article puts too much emphasis on vaccination. Vaccine programs do not work and are use as a tool of eugenics. AID/HIV was caused by a vaccination program to eliminate small pox but was really use to curb the population growth in Africa 1978. People soon discovered the real cause of AIDS/HIV vaccines and the inexpensive cures such as tetrasil and ozone therapies. Another eugenics program going into effect is the H1N1 'Swine Flu' or I called when pigs fly flu vaccine program. H1N1 'Swine Flu' is a manmade bio-weapon design to reduce the world population by 85%. It is the 1918 flu pandemic all over again that was caused by vaccines 40 million deaths. If anyone tries to impose mandatory vaccines on me or my children there will be a .45 magnum and 30 odd six waiting for them and your vests are useless.
Now the best way for Africa to develop is dumping the US dollar and switching to the Gold Standard and have all African banks and central banks complied with Basil III banking regulations. This will make them Gold reserve chartered banks. All African central banks must be government operations only and only the government can print its own interest free currencies that are back by Gold Palladium Platinum Silver and Rhodium bullion. Never allow private central banks to exist at all.
The reasons for this are because the United States Federal Reserve bank will be insolvent 09/30/2009 midnight EST. Once Africa has its Gold reserve banking system in place it will be well prepared for the 21st century.

If you look at Africa in a world context, a different picture emerges.

Witness this chart: http://bit.ly/1pJjHg

Given the degree of improvement in the rest of the world, these small gains in Africa are a crime, not a victory.

Thanks for the reflections on Africa. But I would like to add that Africa will progress if Africans are left to be in charge of most of the systems in Africa without having World Bank 'professionals' from the west deciding what a poor farmer in my village should do. If only African based innovations are given big chance to thrive then the continent would be a better place. For instance we have relied so much on western education which at times is not applicable to the situations in Africa. Most African school curriculum is pretty much what colonial governments left behind. Otherwise good commentary.

Education, health care, technology etc might be accessible to Africa but at whose expense? Africa hasn't yet attained that minimal rate of economic development that can cushion its trade deficits, Africa now need to invest in skills, services, infrastructure. Other wise Africa will remain a market as long as it chose to ignore and take the position of the global last born.

When I was in West Africa with the Peace Corps, I saw a lot of families with televisions and VCRs. I saw plenty of people with cell phones, even in the remote village where I lived. When 'development experts' list off how many cell phones people have in Africa as a measure of how far they've come, they're really missing the mark. People in the village had three or four TVs a piece, but they had no access to running water. Electricity was there, but people were sick all the time because of poor hygiene (again, due to lack of running water). People drank out of wells that animals had fallen into and died in. Sure, there was a local clinic. Development experts see that there's a clinic and automatically assume that the people living near the clinic have access to some sort of health care. While I'm sure that some of these clinic are helpful, the one I went to was a joke. There was lab equipment donated but nobody used it, the doctor prescribed eight different drugs for a simple infection, and he wanted to give me an MRI for no reason at all (but, as he lamented, the only MRI machine was in the country capitol). The people in my area had HIV/AIDS awareness education drilled into them from the time they were born--they knew all about the causes and effects of AIDS and the importance of getting tested--but they chose to follow the spiritual adviser of the village, who insisted that Red Fanta or a cold shower would prevent/cure AIDS.

The above poster is right--expensive World Bank 'experts' are a waste of time and money in some places. We can bring them fancy gadgets or even basic improvements, and we can feel really good about ourselves for doing it, but the fact of the matter is that a lot of people have no hope. They have access to television to see what the rest of the world is like, and they want THAT. They want the houses and the cars and the money, but they don't want to take the baby steps to get there, i.e. sending their girls to school, washing their hands, wearing condoms, using mosquito nets, letting their women handle money and leave the compound every once in awhile, etc. I asked several people if Peace Corps even helped in that area, and they said, "Only if one of you brings one of us back to America with you." Their local language didn't even use a future tense because, as my language instructor said, "What's the point? People don't talk in the future tense because they don't plan that far ahead." It's a vicious cycle of wanting desperately to have a better existence but having no hope that it will ever come.

First, @DeeLee
There are several languages that have no future tense. Among them are Japanese and Finnish. I would caution that this is at best an absolutely terrible way to gain insight into a countries development situation.

As for the article, the general tenor is welcomed and there is a lot of reason for hope. There is, in fact, a lot of hope. The idea that "people don't want to do anything for themselves" is ludicrous. I work daily with NGO's in Africa recieving no aid or encouragement from outside or inside their nations, building schools and other kinds of infrastructure for themselves and their communities. Many of these movements would not be possible without the free flow of information and ideas that the proliferation of communications technologies makes possible. They're able to call ahead to negotiate rates on materials, talk more easily with others in their field, etc etc. No one, not even the author, would argue that this means African nations have arrived. But the fact that Ghana has better cell coverage than the US is something they should be just as good a sign as when other developed nations completed national hardline phone systems. Newsflash - America wouldn't be without the telephone.

There are two things many critics of Africa ALWAYS forget. First, many of these "countries" weren't countries until 40 or 50 years ago. In contrast, Brazil, Argentina, China, South Korea, India, even South Africa have centuries of common culture, mythologies, work ethics, and civil thought driving their economies. Second, Africa is a continent. No, really, it is. Good to keep that in mind before we visit Burkina Faso and generalize our "life changing" experience to Kanzania, Kenya, the Congo, or Ghana. Finally, I would argue that the best use of UN or International Experts would be as teachers in many of Africa's existant universities. But that wouldn't be nearly as sexy.