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Now, I’m asking you to translate technical language (coming from bureaucrats like them) to popular language
(coming from infocrats like us). A bureaucrat is a stickler for language; an infocrat is a stickler for information, a
hoper for insight. The real exercise here is: Trying to catch an insight. The thing is, when you’re not paying attention,
when you’re not logical, when you’re not reasoning out, only then may you catch an insight. Only then Eureka!
In any case, let me help you – you read, I translate, amplify, simplify. To paraphrase Henry David Thoreau: ‘As you
simplify your list, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty,
nor weakness weakness.’ Translating is one road to insight. Let’s see:
Poverty, malnutrition, food insecurity and degradation of the natural resource base are major problems
afflicting many countries in Eastern and Southern Africa (ESA).
Translating: The people of the drylands of Eastern and Southern Africa are poor, malnourished, don’t have enough
food. Their lands are infertile; their soils lack water; their crops yield only so much; their livestock don’t produce
enough. To catch an insight: What’s common among the four problems?
Translating:
The people of the drylands of
Eastern and Southern Africa
are poor, malnourished, don’t
have enough food. Their
lands are infertile; their soils
lack water; their crops yield
only so much; their livestock
don’t produce enough. To
catch an insight: What’s
common among
the four problems?
Sub-Saharan Africa is at the epicenter of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The
short-term effects have been a decline in agricultural labor, production
and incomes and a concurrent and dramatic increase in expenditures
on health and funerals. In the longer term, there will be loss in intergenerational
transfer of knowledge and traditional social security
mechanisms.
Translating: Sub-Saharan Africa is the nerve center of infectious,
contagious, preventable AIDS. Today, the farms are short of workers,
the workers are short of income, the funeral parlors are short of coffins.
Tomorrow, this generation shall have passed away, including its wisdom,
including its social fabric. Insight: Avoidance is worth a pound of
prevention.
The ESA constitutes some 21 countries with a population of over 350
million people, more than half of whom live in extreme poverty, making
the region one of the highest concentrations of poor people in the
world.
Translating: The ESA covers 21 countries, more than 350 million people,
more than 175 million of whom are extremely poor, lead lives of quiet
desperation.
Over the last decade, the region has witnessed increasing incidence of poverty through its various manifestations
including an increase in the number of hungry and malnourished people.
Translating: In the last 10 years, the region made more poor, more underfed, more under-nourished citizens.
About 75% of the population live in rural areas that account for over 80% of the total extremely poor.
Translating: In ESA, 3 out of 4 people live in the countryside, 4 out of 5 are very poor.
To Catch An Insight