Open Faculty Positions at Keio's Shonan Fujisawa Campus

 We have five, count 'em, five, open faculty positions in Keio's Faculty of Environment and Information Studies. If you are a researcher looking for a tenure-track position, please consider applying.

This call is very open; people of all stripes are encouraged to apply. As chair of the Cyber-Informatics Program, of course, I am hoping we will have the opportunity to hire some first-rate people in computing (defined very, very broadly).

Applications are due the end of March, I believe.

https://www.sfc.keio.ac.jp/en/employment/

Africa and Foreign Aid Today

A week or so ago, as the scale of the USAID cuts was becoming clear, an acquaintance on Facebook gleefully posted a meme about Africa. At best it callously suggested that U.S. aid to Africa is having no effect. A more critical interpretation of the intent was the racist message that Africans have always lived in grass huts and always will, that it's a basket case not worth caring about.

I'm no expert on Africa; I have never set foot on the continent (unlike a number of friends here, some from the continent itself). I know only what I learned in college four decades ago (where I studied under the brilliant Ned Munger and the equally brilliant Thayer Scudder), what I read, and what I hear from working with students, postdocs and collaborators from Egypt, Eritrea, South Africa and Senegal. But if I don't speak up, who will?

First off, of course, Africa is not just one thing. Those four countries I just named are probably at least as different as Finland, Romania, Greece and the U.K. But Africa is often roughly divided into sub-Saharan Africa and North Africa (often lumped in with the Middle Eastern Islamic countries), and the links I include below follow that division.

Africa today is a dynamic and growing place. Over the last three decades, GDP across the continent has tripled, outpacing the growth of the U.S. economy, which doubled over the same period. An increasing number of countries have reached World Bank middle income or upper middle income status; check the links at the bottom of this post.

Africa is urbanizing rapidly. Currently around 45% of the continent lives in cities. This comes with its own problems of sanitation, water, electricity, pollution, transportation and general governance; no one would pretend it's perfect. But the idea of Africans all living in huts is...well, you know.

Life expectancy is also growing rapidly in many countries. Some countries have levels that rival those of some European countries.

These metrics vary dramatically across the continent and correlate strongly with the quality of governance. This is an area where European and American countries are particularly responsible, thanks to centuries of colonial rule and suppression of local voices, and the devastation to West African societies caused by the slave trade (yes, that ended long ago, and the effects persist today). Colonialism has only ended within our lifetimes. The colonies were set up by Europeans without regard to existing cultural, political and economic structures, and some African countries that were amalgams of various cultures were left unprepared to deal with the issues of governance.

Africa is full of ambitious, smart, creative, hardworking people. To get a glimpse, check out the CNN programs Inside Africa and African Voices Changemakers. (I wish CNN had programs as good on Asia!)

How much of all of this progress is due to U.S. foreign aid, I can't say. But PEPFAR alone has saved the lives of millions of Africans, and work done by NGOs on topics such as guinea worm eradication have improved quality of life for all.

We should all celebrate when any country or region grows and improves on these metrics, and worry and offer a hand when they don't.

We are all in this together. If you don't know how to care about other human beings, I don't know how to explain it to you.

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD...

https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/mic/overview