This is from a couple years ago. It didn't work out very well. The local government officials wouldn't let them build anything. The technology is cool though; literally.
Then there is the fact that when you're attempting to pull off a genocide of your political opponents so you can get at the oil beneath their land, letting in white do-gooders to build them cool new houses is not exactly #1 on the to-do list.
Plus, any improvement in their living conditions just means the West sends your poor impoverished people less money that you can steal. Look at, say, aid flows to Costa Rica ("not a basket case") vs. pick-your-favorite-usual suspect. If you're a tyrant, miserable people are a rich national resource.
Be that as it may, it never ceases to amaze me how some nifty startups come up with innovative ideas that discreetly transform the lives of people more than what UN’s billion dollar diplomacy fails to pull off. For example the stoves that helped keep Darfur’s women safe.
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/africa/12/27/stoves.darfur...
In most parts, and not just to do business.
A recent crackdown cost Siemens $1.6 billion, as bribes were apart of their standard system of doing business. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/21/business/worldbusiness/21s...
Note that "self-defense" typically is to prevent grave bodily harm or death and is usually reserved for immediate threats. Not being able to build houses for some poor wretch who will probably live at least a few weeks without the house doesn't qualify.
No, you don't. The home govt has decided that bribery is wrong. It's well aware that banning bribery will mean that some poor wretch won't get a house and believes that that's an acceptable price to pay for the benefits of banning bribery.
It's easy to sit in a comfortable home in the U.S and see this as something that would be great for the people in Darfur, but they don't care about this. They just want some stability in their life, and bringing in new materials and things does not work at such times. They want to work with known quantities.
I find it really sad that there is so much that talented people with energy to spend can do to help so much of the world, and they instead choose to expend their energy on the topics that are being hyped by the newspapers. Such a system would have worked excellently in Kenya or Congo or one of the dusty countries of middle asia, why even consider Darfur for this?
One should not see a charity as a fashion statement or a networking tool, one should spend money and time on things that actually matter and make a difference. Not things that are currently trendy, and which one can excitedly tell friends about.