New Weapons of War

Knowledge about diabetes is fairly common in Africa. However, many are less familiar with the insulin pump. When they see my pump, they often ask if it is a phone or player (a radio). The other day I heard a new one. Austin, who works for CHDI asked: "Is that a hand grenade?"

Austin said it with a joking tone and normally this would lead to much laughter. But when he said this (and Austin isn't the quietiest person) Sir Tom Hunter, the Scottish philanthropist who co-founded the Clinton-Hunter Development Initative (CHDI), just happened to be visiting the office that day. I was waiting for the swarm of policmen to coming running at the word "grenade" and wisk me away to a small, dark concrete room where I would be interagated by the Malawian version of Jack Bauer and be forced to surrender my "grenade." Fortunately, none of this happened. (As a side note, Sir Tom has a very interesting story that is worth learning about).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Hunter

But as the "hand grenade" was a different approach to describing my pump, the development approach of CHDI is also unique. Many NGOs establish programs and then try to scale them up nationally. CHDI uses the "drag effect." Think of a fisherman's net: He throws it in the water and as he drags it along, all fish in its path are caught up and carried along with the net. CHDI attempts to use the small projects it works on to drag the entire country toward development. For example, in Neno, CHDI is working with a hundred or so cotton farmers. The price for cotton had been MK 40 (less than 40 cents) per kiliogram. CHDI found a market for these farmers at MK 70. The Malawian government saw this and said if CHDI could guarantee a market at this price, the government could do the same and raised the price of cotton to MK 65.. Shotly after, the national price for cotton rose to MK 70. The cotton harvest is expected to reach 45,000 metric tons this year and with the MK 30 increase in price, an additional $10 million will be injected into the country-all from one small project. A small net with a large catch.