Resources don't have to be a curse, as a country like Canada can attest, but in much of the world they almost always are. Indeed, British economist Paul Collier, author of The Bottom Billion: Why the poorest countries are failing and what can be done about it, identifies having resources -- especially high value, easily transportable ones, is one of the four poverty traps that keeps subSaharan Africa so poor. But, as I found when I visited diamond-rich Botswana a few months ago, this doesn't have to be the case. ( Click here for my previously published analysis.) Now my collegue Jonathan Manthorpe, the Vancouver Sun's international affairs correspondent, has been weighing the prospects for Ghana to profit -- or not -- from its newly developed oil fields. Manthorpe is an experienced Africa hand, and he notes that Ghana, which has other high value resources including gold, is already one of Africa's best run countries. But managing the revenue from oil, which could boost its

News that 30 of the United States's 403 billionaires have pledged to give away half their money has grabbed headlines because of the amount involved. And so it should. No matter how these gifts are measured -- in the context of worldwide development spending, or in the annual income of many poor countries -- they represent a huge contribution. But I think that just is important is the expertise that will come with much of this money, and the discipline that will be imposed on its spending. The pledge made by the 30 billionaires is to donate at least 50 per cent of their wealth either during their lifetime or after their death. But it's clear that many of these donors -- Microsoft mogul Bill Gates and super-investor Warren Buffett, who spear-headed the idea, as well as more recent recruits like New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and energy tycoon T. Boone Pickens -- are intent on giving now, not when it's too late for them to see the results their gifts will bring. These are business

When businesses fail, they go bankrupt. And when countries fail, they . . . do what? In Haiti, a consistent failure for more than 200 years, the answer appears to be that it endures yet another round of misery inflicted on its people. And another. And another. "Even before the horrific tragedy of the earthquake six months ago, Haiti festered," writes David Rothkopf, a visiting scholar at the influential Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and president and CEO of Garten Rothkopf. "The economy has averaged one per cent growth per year for the past four decades. Haiti's per capita income places it 203rd among all nations. In purchasing power parity terms, it is $1,300 per year, putting it roughly on the same level as Uganda, Burkina Faso and Mali. In nominal terms, the per capita number is only $790, the lowest in the Western Hemisphere by far -- despite Haiti's proximity and ties to the richest economy on earth and aid flows and commitments nearing $10 billion

The policies and practices of many of the world's poor countries go a long way to discourage they kind of investment they need to raise them out of their poverty. Indeed, a World Bank study that analyses laws, regulations and practices affecting foreign direct investment in 87 countries find that the high-income countries, Canada included, are the easiest places for foreign companies to set up shop, and the low-income countries are most apt to have restrictive and obsolete laws and regulations getting in the way. The study looks at several factors, including the approval process, if any, that foreign investors have to go through to set up companies in various sectors, the limitations on what foreigners may own, the difficulty and time involved to lease private or public land and the efficiency of commercial arbitration. The prescription is simple: -- allow foreign ownership in primary, manufacturing and service sectors; -- treat domestic and foreign investors the same; -- enact clear

In most of subSaharan Africa, resources -- especially high-value, easily-portable ones -- have proven to be a curse. All to often they fuel bitter conflicts, and the wealth they produce is shared most unevenly and worsens inequality. But in Botswana wealth extracted from the ground -- specifically, diamonds -- have been a major boon, lifting the country out of the dire poverty it was mired in at the time of independence and into the ranks of upper middle income countries. I visited this peaceful country and looked at how it came to do so much better than its neighbours in a continent where mass poverty. corruption and, often, violence are the norm. My report in the Vancouver Sun not only tracks its economic journey over the past half century, but also looks ahead at what's next as the rich returns from diamonds look likely to diminish. Click here to read the story.

The promises for increased African aid were lofty indeed when the old G7 met in Gleneagles, Scotland five years ago, but the subsequent performance has been mediocre. Now the new G8 (the G7 plus Russia) is preparing to meet in Ontario cottage country, there's little reason to expect anything better than mediocre promises will be forthcoming this time. And whether or not they'll be met, of course, is anybody's guess. Yet the Gleneagles commitments have made some difference, and there are prospects for real progress in some of what have long been the poorest countries in the world. For my analysis in the Vancouver Sun, click here .

A leading proponent of Uganda's anti-gay campaign says the real aim of a bill before parliament is to curb and to "cure" homosexuality, but a provision of the bill calls for persistent or aggressive "offenders" to be put to death. My colleague Tara Carman, one of the recipients of this year's CIDA/Jack Webster Foundation fellowship for young journalists to visit subSaharan Africa, examines the issue in a feature-length story in The Sun. She examines how such assault on human rights came to be taking place in a peaceable country, and she talks to some of the handful of Ugandan gay activists, as well as the people who oppose them. Her story is accessible here. I'll be posting links to other stories from the five fellowship recipients as they are published or aired. The five visited Uganda and Zambia in April.

VANCOUVER My unplanned, volcano-induced stay in Addis Ababa ended so easily I can't quite believe it, and so quickly I haven't been able to keep up with my blog posts. The long and the short of it is that on Sunday Nancy Macdonald, a recipient of this year's Jack Webster Foundation/CIDA fellowship for young B.C. journalists, and I got serious about figuring out a way home since our planned flights through London were canceled and there was no way of knowing when we might be able to rebook. If we couldn't fly West through Europe, we reasoned, maybe we could fly East through Asia. Monday morning we confirmed that we could, and at a reasonable cost of less than $2,000. Monday afternoon we scrambled to get visas for our 20-hour stopover in Beijing. And Monday night we left on Ethiopian Airlines for Delhi and Beijing, with a connecting Air Canada flight home waiting for us the next day. Wednesday we arrived home. Earlier, the trip took Macdonald, me and four other Webster fellows

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia How many parts will there be to this little series of posts? That' the question. I stopped by the Ethiopian capital late Friday for what was supposed to be a 28-hour visit. I was on my way home -- via Johannesburg, Addis, Rome and London -- from my thee-week, three-country tour of subSaharan Africa. I took a day-long stop here for no other reason that to break the very long flight home, and to get a quick look at a city I'd not seen before. Well, a not-so-quick look as it turns out, thanks to the Icelandic volcano. It wouldn't have made any difference if I'd booked straight through. The earliest flight out of here I could have connected with was at 12:15 a.m. on Saturday, and, like the corresponding flight I was supposed to take on Sunday, it was cancelled. So here I am on what seems to be indefinite stand-by. Ethiopian Airlines is promising space on "the first available flight" but I don't think they have any better idea of when that

GABORONE, Botswana The citizens of many African capitals describe their cities as an over-sized small town, but here this description is more apt than in most other places. And the place is less over-sized. With a laid-back population of somewhere around 200,000 -- the published estimates vary -- this is a sleepy little burg. And with Botswana's substantial resource wealth, mostly from diamonds, that actually goes to providing services for the people, it's an unusually pleasant one as well. Indeed, as I stroll the length of the Main Mall -- a tree-shaded pedestrian walkway, not a shopping centre -- I have the feeling that Alexander McCall Smith got the tone of the place just about right in his gently humorous series of books about Mma Ramotswe, Botswana's leading and only private detective. The pulse of the place, as he describes it and I am experiencing it, its slooow and steady. Botswanans aren't big on giving directions. "It's just there," they typically

LUSAKA, Zambia The five 2010 Jack Webster Foundation/CIDA fellows -- young journalists from British Columbia who have an interest in interational development -- finished their Zambian assignments today (April 10). Three of the five are headed home to Canada, and two are extending their stay as tourists at their own expense. The five were competitively awarded fellowships to spend two weeks in the field -- one week in Uganda, and one week here. They work on individual assignments, which they choose themselves, and their work will be published back in Canada by employers who provided them with the time to travel. The five are Tara Carman of the Vancouver Sun, Andrew Hopkins of Astral Radio and TV in Fort St. John, Nancy Macdonald of Maclean's Magazine, Molly McNulty of Terrace Standard and Darcy-Anne Wintonyk of CTV. I am volunteer project leader, and I tag along to be of help if I'm needed. I, too, am staying in the region for a little extra time, traveling tomorrow to Botswana to

LILAYI, Zambia "Take him to see the toilets," Granny Maonde instructed her husband, Simon, an 80-year-old retired headmaster and diplomat who is known as Papa all over this sleepy, sprawling village a few kilometres outside the Zambian capital. I was a casual visitor, just arrived, but I'd already come to understand that what Granny wants, Granny gets. So if she wanted me to see the toilets at Twitti School -- a little oasis that she and Papa are building in the midst of a parched educational landscape -- then I would hold my nose, metaphorically, and follow along. I know about the importance of toilets for the developing world's rural schools. Many don't have any, and this is a big issue when it comes to keeping girls in school. Young women need a private place when they reach puberty, and if they don't have one they drop out. So even a smelly, ramshackle privy is a big step up from the bushes out back. But Twitti School's toilets? Oh my! Three bright, solid

LUSAKA, Zambia This Zambian capital city is learning at least one lesson from most developed cities in the West -- one that may or may not make economic sense, but one that I'd personally prefer they didn't have to learn. It's that it's most profitable to spent virtually all the property development money -- and there is more around than I expected -- in the city's outer reaches. Many residential suburbs are going upscale -- and expensive -- and higher-end retail has shifted substantially to a couple of modern malls. Lusaka's ever-growing sprawl has not yet generated the kind of traffuc congestion that all but cripples cities like Kampala, which I've just left. But I have no doubt that one day soon it will. And the unequal distribution of development leaves the downtown core to slide down the road to decay. Which I find a pity. The Lusaka downtown hasn't deteriorated to the extent of some I've seen in the developing world, and it's certainly not as

LUSAKA, Zambia I can't remember the last time -- or, for that matter, the first time -- a senior Canadian banker asked me to lunch at his home. But that's just what happened on my first working day on my first visit to this southern Africa country. So, after my last cranky post about South Africa, I thought I should write something about the other face of this huge continent. The lunch invitation -- a spur-of-the-moment informal social affair with a charming host and hostess and good food -- was just one of dozens nice little things that have happened since we arrived on the eve of Easter. Our guest house manager fusses over the safety and comfort of the young B.C. journalists who are traveling with me on a Jack Webster Foundation/CIDA fellowship trip. Most taxi drivers quote a fair price right off the top. Strangers say hello. The only bureaucrat I've met was helpful and super-efficient (the locals have trouble believing that one). Even the traffic -- a nightmare during our

LUSAKA, Zambia Vanoc's trademark notwithstanding, "2010" in this country and all others throughout southern Africa means the FIFA World Cup of soccer, not the Olympics. And two months before the games begin, the excitement throughout the region is at least as great -- I think it's even greater -- than I sensed in Vancouver before our Games began. But if South Africa hopes to present a riveting reputation-building event or to match the explosion of spirit and international goodwill that followed our Opening Ceremonies, oh boy, does it have work to do. I wish them well. This continent needs successes, and it needs a way to showcase for the world the graciousness and strength of so many of it's people. But the country of South Africa -- though not most of its neighbours -- also has a well-earned reputation for shocking levels of thievery and violence to live down. Our little group of Canadian journalists -- me, plus five recipients of Jack Webster Foundation/CIDA fellowships