The Idealist

by Nina Munk

  Every few months, as circumstances allowed, I headed to Africa. I visited Mali and Ghana in West Africa. I traveled north to Ethiopia and Djibouti. For the most part, however, my time was spent in East Africa: Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, and Uganda. Sometimes I accompanied Sachs on his official trips to Africa; more often I opted to journey on my own, to accept the hospitality of camel herders and small-hold farmers, and to share meals with people in their huts. I immersed myself in the lives of people in two remote villages: Ruhiira, in southwestern Uganda; and Dertu, in the arid borderland between Kenya and Somalia. I can’t begin to express my gratitude for their generosity. They opened their lives to me. They allowed me to see the world differently, more clearly.

  On one of my first trips to Uganda, I had a beer with a young African doctor. He’d never been to the United States (in fact, he’d never been outside Uganda), but from what he’d seen on television, and from all he’d read and heard from travelers, it seemed unimaginably beautiful. “In America,” he said wistfully, “you are living in heaven on earth.”

  Acknowledgments

  I am indebted to Jeffrey Sachs for giving me the access I needed to write this book and for allowing me to shadow him in his work. We didn’t always see eye to eye, yet he never asked to see my manuscript; nor did he try to censor me. I am grateful to him and to members of his staff. In New York, Erin Trowbridge deserves particular mention, as does Glenn Denning. In Africa, Ahmed Mohamed and David Siriri were extraordinarily generous and forthcoming, responding to my questions with humor and patience. I was inspired by their resilience and their faith.

  Without Graydon Carter, this book would not exist: in 2006 he gave me the go-ahead to write an article for Vanity Fair that became the cornerstone of The Idealist. From the outset, Elyse Cheney championed my project, trusting that it would come to fruition. With each draft, Bill Thomas offered invaluable suggestions and advice. My father, Peter Munk, offered crucial support. My brother Marc-David Munk, a physician, joined me twice during my travels in Africa, and offered vital medical insight. Lara Santoro gave the final manuscript an exacting read. Nadia Zonis double- and triple-checked dates, names, quotations, citations, and other relevant facts and figures. Janet Biehl was a meticulous copy editor. Mickey McConnell and Maureen Spratt transcribed every one of my recorded interviews. And, of course, I could not have traveled through Africa without the help of guides, translators, drivers, and bush pilots: thank you Joseph Mugo, Christopher Nsubuga, Shakilah Bint-Shiekh, Asia Abdi, and Ronald Purcell.

  My deepest gratitude goes to my brilliant mother, Linda Munk, who died on April 16, 2013, as this book was going to press. I’ve lost count of how many drafts she edited and re-edited. Sometimes, for one reason and another (faulty logic, redundancy, dead metaphors, awkward syntax, lazy thinking), she’d strike out entire passages, and I’d start again. She taught me all I know about good writing and critical thinking. She forced me to do my best.

  My children, Lucas and Sofia, have grown up with this book. Wise beyond their years, they put everything into perspective for me, and have promised to bake a cake as soon as the book is published.

  Finally: I could not possibly have finished this book without Peter Soriano. I can’t thank you enough. You came into my life at just the right moment.

  Notes

  Introduction

  “My name is Bono”: Jeffrey D. Sachs, The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time (New York: Penguin, 2005), xv.

  “one of the smartest people in the world”: MTV Networks, The Diary of Angelina Jolie and Dr. Jeffrey Sachs in Africa, 14 September 2005.

  “end the suffering of those still trapped by poverty”: Sachs, End of Poverty, 3.

  the problem can be solved by 2025: Ibid., 1.

  After all, two billion people on the planet are scraping by: The most current data report that, as of 2008, 805.9 million people live on a dollar or less a day and that 2.47 billion people live on two dollars or less a day. Shaohua Chen and Martin Ravallion, “An Update to the World Bank’s Estimates of Consumption Poverty in the Developing World,” briefing note, World Bank, 3 January 2012.

  their life expectancy hovers around fifty: Paul Collier, The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 7. For current data on life expectancy of Africans in general (as opposed to the “bottom billion”), by country and sex, see Haidong Wang et al., “Age-Specific and Sex-Specific Mortality in 187 Countries, 1970–2010: A Systematic Analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010,” Lancet 380, no. 9859 (15 December 2012).

  per capita income: All references to per capita income are “Gross National Income per capita, PPP” for 2011, defined by the World Bank as “GNI converted to international dollars using purchasing power parity.” (An “international dollar” has the same purchasing power in the cited country as does a U.S. dollar in the United States.) Complete data, by country, are available at http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GNP.PCAP.PP.CD, accessed 11 February 2013.

  “The countries at the bottom”: Collier, Bottom Billion, 3.

  “Have you seen the children dying?”: Jeffrey Sachs, speech delivered at the Millennium Promise Conference, Montreal, 9 November 2006.

  Chapter 1. Shock Therapy

  “He never had a rebellious day in his life”: Andrea Sachs, interview by author, 13 December 2006.

  “His father was extremely bright”: Joan Sachs, interview by author, 15 December 2006.

  “Sachs not only fought against precedent”: Will Muller, “Perseverance of Young Lawyer Reopened Apportionment Battle,” Detroit News, 20 May 1962.

  “I was teaching the graduate macroeconomics course”: Martin Feldstein, interview by author, 18 December 2006.

  “In the beginning, Jeff would say”: Sonia Ehrlich Sachs quoted in John Donnelly, “The New Crusade,” Boston Globe, 3 June 2001.

  “I was twenty-five years older”: Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, interview by author, 1 February 2007.

  “Kuroń sat at a crowded desk”: Sachs, End of Poverty, 115.

  “This strategy can be called a ‘shock’ approach”: Jeffrey Sachs and David Lipton, “Summary of the Proposed Economic Program of Solidarity,” paper presented to Jacek Kuroń, August 1989, personal files of Jeffrey Sachs.

  “One of the most spectacular”: Lawrence Weschler, “A Grand Experiment,” New Yorker, 13 November 1989.

  “Polish shock therapy has been described”: Susan Benkelman and Ken Fireman, “The Economy Doctor: Can Jeffrey Sachs’ Prescriptions Save Russia Before Political Unrest Kills the Patient?,” Newsday, 2 February 1992.

  “shock program will cause disruptions”: Sachs and Lipton, “Summary of the Proposed Economic Program.”

  “pure, unmitigated disaster”: Weschler, “Grand Experiment.”

  “In any event”: Sachs and Lipton, “Summary of the Proposed Economic Program.”

  “Look, when a guy comes into the emergency room”: Sachs quoted in Weschler, “Grand Experiment.”

  “virtuoso”: Sylvia Nasar, “Three Whiz Kid Economists of the 90’s, Pragmatists All,” New York Times, 27 October 1991.

  “probably the most important economist”: Peter Passell, “Dr. Jeffrey Sachs, Shock Therapist,” New York Times Magazine, 27 June 1993.

  “He was clearly capable”: Nasar, “Three Whiz Kid Economists.”

  “I mean, Jeff had some good articles”: Robert Barro, interview by author, 16 December 2006.

  “I said, ‘Gee, you know’”: Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2008), 279.

  “If Poland can do it”: Sachs quoted in Passell, “Shock Therapist.”

  “As a broad measure”: Jeffrey Sachs, speech presented on receiving the Frank E. Seidman Distinguished Award in Political Economy, Memphis, Tenn., 26 September 1991.

  In one decade, between 1989 and 1999: Joseph E. Stiglitz, “Whither Reform? Ten Years of the Transition,” pap
er presented at the Annual Conference on Development Economics, World Bank, Washington, D.C., 28–30 April 1999.

  “a misunderstanding of the very foundations”: Ibid.

  “I took a ridiculous amount of criticism”: Jeffrey Sachs, e-mail to the author, 23 April 2007.

  Since the industrial revolution: Angus Maddison, Growth and Interaction in the World Economy: The Roots of Modernity (Washington, D.C.: AEI Press, 2005), 7. While the industrial revolution began officially in the late eighteenth century, historians generally agree that its full force was not felt until the early nineteenth century. Maddison uses 1820 as the starting date.

  “Economists say”: Sachs quoted in Douglas Birch, “Ailing People, Ailing Economies,” Baltimore Sun, 12 November 2000.

  Chapter 2. Ahmed Maalim Mohamed

  when the colonial powers carved up Africa: Of the many histories of modern Africa, I relied above all on Martin Meredith’s authoritative The Fate of Africa: A History of 50 Years of Independence (New York: Public Affairs, 2005). Surveying the haphazard way in which the colonial powers carved up Africa in the late nine-teenth and early twentieth centuries, Meredith quotes Britain’s then prime minister, Lord Salisbury, as saying, “We have been giving away mountains and rivers and lakes to each other, only hindered by the small impediment that we never knew exactly where they were.”

  “To the people who live in the Northeastern region”: Quoted in Nene Mburu, Bandits on the Border: The Last Frontier in the Search for Somali Unity (Trenton, N.J.: Red Sea Press, 2005), 131.

  “O you who make such a sound of beauty”: B. W. Andrzejewski with Sheila Andrzejewski, trans., An Anthology of Somali Poetry (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), 7.

  “a military onslaught”: Alex de Waal, Famine Crimes: Politics and the Disaster Relief Industry in Africa (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), 40.

  “The hyenas now don’t even eat”: Charles Mohr, “Drought in Kenya Results in Famine,” New York Times, 7 April 1971.

  Eventually, however, the Kenyan government revised: BBC World Service, “Kenya Admits Mistakes Over ‘Massacre,’ ” 18 October 2000.

  the actual number of people: Alex de Waal, “Genocidal Warfare in North-East Africa,” in The Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies, ed. Donald Bloxham and A. Dirk Moses (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 542.

  Chapter 3. The End of Poverty

  “I remember when [Sachs] came to Haiti”: Dr. Paul Farmer, interview by author, 10 December 2006.

  With an annual investment of $66 billion: Hope Steele, ed., Macroeconomics and Health: Investing in Health for Economic Development, report of the Commission on Macroeconomics and Health, chaired by Jeffrey Sachs (Geneva: World Health Organization, 20 December 2001), 103.

  “He’s not embarrassed”: Richard Feachem, interview by author, 19 December 2006.

  “Jeff really changed the way we think”: Dr. Paul Farmer, interview by author, 10 December 2006.

  “It is often said that past aid to Africa”: Jeffrey Sachs et al., “Ending Africa’s Poverty Trap,” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity 1 (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2004), 117–216.

  Since the end of the colonial era: William Easterly, “Can the West Save Africa?,” National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper no. 14363, September 2008.

  “Millions of people die every year”: Jeffrey Sachs, speech delivered at the 61st session of the UN General Assembly, New York, 27 November 2006.

  “I’m a happily married single parent”: Sonia Ehrlich Sachs quoted in John Donnelly, “The New Crusade,” Boston Globe, 3 June 2001.

  “He’s an irritant”: Bono (Paul David Hewson), interview by author, 6 February 2007.

  “this magnificent battering ram”: Mark Malloch Brown, interview by author, 19 December 2006.

  “clinical economist”: Jeffrey Sachs, The Price of Civilization: Reawakening American Virtue and Prosperity (New York: Random House, 2011), 6.

  “you had stood on a London street corner”: Adam Hochschild, Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire’s Slaves (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2005), 7.

  “Slavery had existed before money”: Ibid., 2.

  “bend history”: Robert F. Kennedy, “Day of Affirmation Address,” speech presented at the University of Capetown, Capetown, South Africa, 6 June 1966.

  Time magazine added him to its list: “The Time 100,” Time, 18 April 2005.

  “How do you know what would have happened”: Esther Duflo, “Social Experiments to Fight Poverty,” speech presented at TED Conference, Long Beach, Calif., 10 February 2010.

  for $6 billion in 2000: Comcast Corp. acquired Lenfest Communications in January 2000 for 121.4 million shares of Comcast common stock, then valued at $6.077 billion, plus $1.777 billion of debt. (See Comcast’s 1999 Form 10-K Annual Report, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on 1 March 2000.) The Lenfest family, which at the time owned half of Lenfest Communications (AT&T owned the other half), received 60.7 million shares—of which 56 percent, or 33.992 million shares, went to Gerry and Marguerite Lenfest, and the balance to their children.

  “the first rung on the ladder of development”: Sachs, End of Poverty, 14. (This is one among many uses of the phrase by Sachs.)

  “Millennium Villages Project”: “United Nations Millennium Declaration,” resolution adopted by the 55th session of the UN General Assembly, New York, 8 September 2000.

  Less than a year into the project: Sachs, End of Poverty, 236.

  “This is a village that’s going to make history”: MTV Networks, The Diary of Angelina Jolie and Dr. Jeffrey Sachs in Africa, 14 September 2005.

  “to help to build a country”: Michael Lewis, “The Speculator: A Trip with George Soros,” New Republic, 10 January 1994.

  “Almost unanimously,” Soros told me: George Soros, interview by author, 22 November 2006.

  “There’s a certain messianic quality about him”: Ibid.

  Soros proceeded to override his board of directors: “Soros Invests $50 Million in Poverty Ending Projects in Africa,” Millennium Promise press release, 13 September 2006.

  “I don’t know whether I want to describe it”: George Soros, interview by author, 22 November 2006.

  Chapter 4. It Doesn’t Get Harder Than This

  “highway banditry and hijacking”: Taya Weiss, Guns in the Borderlands: Reducing the Demand for Small Arms, Monograph no. 95 (Pretoria, South Africa: Institute for Security Studies, 2004).

  a permanent state of catastrophe: For a thorough background report on the long-standing instability of North Eastern Province, see Ken Menkhaus, “Kenya-Somalia Border Conflict Analysis,” prepared for USAID and Development Alternatives Inc. (Nairobi: USAID, 2005).

  the camps housed an estimated 300,000 refugees: Josh Kron, “Somalia’s Wars Swell a Refugee Camp in Kenya,” New York Times, 11 November 2010.

  “change agents”: Bronwen Konecky and Cheryl Palm, eds., Millennium Villages Handbook: A Practitioner’s Guide to the Millennium Villages Approach (New York: Earth Institute at Columbia University, 2008). Note: There were a number of earlier drafts and iterations for internal use only.

  But twenty liters was not nearly enough: According to the respected Sphere Handbook 2011: Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Humanitarian Response (Geneva: The Sphere Project, 2011), the minimum quantity of water needed for drinking, cooking, and personal hygiene is between 7.5 and 15 liters per person per day.

  Kenya’s parliament rewarded themselves: For more on the outsize compensation of Kenya’s parliamentarians, see Kathrin Behnke et al., The Dynamics of Legislative Rewards: An Empirical Analysis of Commonwealth Countries for the World Bank Institute (London: London School of Economics, 2008). As noted on p. 83, “Kenyan MPs [are] among the highest paid legislators not only in Africa but in the world.”

  “Create opportunities for critical mutual and collective reflection”: Konecky and Palm, eds., Millennium Villages Handbook
.

  Chapter 5. Every Problem Has a Solution

  Joseph Kony: For an outstanding (if now somewhat dated) profile of Kony and the L.R.A., see Elizabeth Rubin, “Our Children Are Killing Us,” New Yorker, 23 March 1998.

  An estimated twenty-four thousand children had been abducted: This is the low end of the “24,000 to 38,000 children” estimated to have been abducted by the L.R.A. as of April 2006, according to Phuong Pham, Patrick Vinck, and Eric Stover’s “Abducted: The Lord’s Resistance Army and Forced Conscription in Northern Uganda,” report prepared for Berkeley-Tulane Initiative on Vulnerable Populations, June 2007.

  “The Honorable Excellency who is going to the United Nations”: Yoweri K. Museveni, “Ours Is a Fundamental Change,” swearing-in address, 29 January 1986, reprinted in Museveni, What Is Africa’s Problem? (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), 8.

  a $30 million Gulfstream IV: More recently, in 2011, Museveni replaced his GIV with a new $50 million GV.

  “influence peddling, vote buying, nepotism”: Center for Basic Research, “The Impact of Political Corruption on Resource Allocation and Service Delivery in Local Governments in Uganda,” report prepared for Transparency International Uganda, March 2005.

  Year after year, as much as half: Marie Chêne, “Overview of Corruption in Uganda,” U4 Anti-Corruption Resource Center, Transparency International, 4 March 2009.

  Chapter 6. Everything Is Written

  fertility rates drop: Sachs, End of Poverty, 323–26.

  “One of my strongest memories”: Carl-Henric Svanberg, Ericsson AB, “Letter from the CEO,” 2009 Annual Report, 6.