If I asked most people about the major health problem in sub-Saharan Africa, how likely would I be to hear about soaring HIV rates in places like Malawi, Zaire, Botswana, or even--recently--South Africa? How long has it been since some rock-star celebrity with an American flag sewn inside his jacket convinced Dubya to pony up more American dollars for HIV in Africa? In 2006 the international community spent approximately $350 Billion on HIV/Aids , the overwhelming bulk of which was spent in the developing world (think Africa and Asia) where roughly 380,000 children under the age of 15 died from the disease. But according to the British medical journal The Lancet , this has been a fairly substantive policy error, because what we should be spending money on is combating malnutrition during pregnancy and the first two years of a baby's life. According to researcher Bruce Cogill, malnutrition was responsible for 2.2 million deaths of children under 5 in 2005, and in 2006 the TOTAL glob...

Rain Among the Ruins from A Secondhand Conjecture is lengthy but absolutely essential reading. Swaziland is just emerging (hopefully) from a lengthy drought, which King Mswati III sees as an opportunity to end the dependence of his small nation in southern Africa on international food hand-outs. Given that 80% of Swaziland's population depends on subsistence agriculture, and that good ole Mswati keeps tens of thousands of hectares aside for cultivating not food but cassava for ethanol exports (got to pay for those Mercedes SUVs each of his 13 wives drives), this is just another one of his inspired policies. For another example (and here all humor departs): Swaziland has the highest AIDs/HIV infection rate in the world (26% of all adults, 49% of all young women) and the lowest life expectancy (31.3 years). King Mswati's answer? Sterilize and brand the infected, while announcing a five-year moratorium on all sexual intercourse. We often hear about failed nation-states. This is...