Race Against Time: Searching For Hope in AIDS-Ravaged Africa - Content

Content

What makes me nearly apoplectic—and I very much want to say this—is that the Bank and the Fund were fully told about their mistakes even as the mistakes were being made. It's so enraging that they refused to listen. ... The fact that poverty became increasingly entrenched, or that economies were not responding to the dogma as the dogma predicted, made no difference. Race Against Time, page 16.

The book consists of five chapters, from which the five lectures were derived: Context, Pandemic, Education, Women, and Solutions. Before these chapters are sections titled Preface and Acknowledgments, and afterwards a Glossary section. The book's second edition contains an Afterword section written in May 2006. In the Preface, written by Lewis in August 2005, he states that his preferred genre is the spoken word and that the nature of the topic would not allow him to comprehensively cover every aspect. He justifies his writing by proclaiming himself a devotee to the United Nations and outlines the roles he has held with the organization since 1984. In the first chapter, Lewis tells anecdotes of visits to Africa and other UN-related events like, in 1986, brokering the resolutions from the General Assembly's 13th Special Session. He acknowledges colonialism and Cold War ideologues as historical influences on the African situation, but focuses on the effects of international finance institutions' conditional loans since the late 1980s.

In the second chapter Lewis discusses his history in Africa, beginning in the 1960s as an English teacher in Ghana. He contrasts Africa of the 1960s shedding colonial rule, optimistic in future prospects, with Africa of the 2000s struggling with AIDS and increasingly widespread hunger. He acknowledges the brain drain trend, noting "there are more Malawian doctors in Manchester than in Malawi". In the third chapter Lewis examines how the UN, World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) failed to fulfill promises of free access to primary education. In the instances where school entry fees were eliminated, additional fees (e.g. fees for uniforms, books, exams, and registration) had the same effect of limiting access. The fourth chapter elaborates on how women's issues are ignored or dismissed at international conferences and by African governments. Lewis identifies the gender discrimination that occurs even within the UN organization, whose management staff was dominated by males. He links the World Bank and IMF conditions of low social spending on education and healthcare by governments of recipient countries to the rampant spread of AIDS in those same countries. The disease decimated Africa's working age and farming population, leading to famine. He calls on the international financial institutions to pay "reparations" in the form of debt relief.

Lewis concludes that dramatic changes are required to meet the Millennium Development Goals by 2015. In the final chapter, he considers some potential measures that could help in Africa. He laments the shortfalls in funding by G8 countries, despite the continued renewed promises for full funding of Millennium Development Goal implementation. His proposed measures include:

1. the expansion of the Jubilee Coalition to include cancellation of agricultural subsidies;
2. the amalgamation of UN Development Fund for Women, the UN Division for the Advancement of Women, and relevant portions of United Nations Population Fund into one UN agency funded to a similar level as UNICEF;
3. maintenance of the momentum on the World Health Organization's 'three by five' (3 million people treated by 2005) program;
4. addressing revenue shortfall in The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria through donations from private sector organizations that profit from Africa (e.g. pharmaceutical companies);
5. creating an agency that can provide emergency food aid in a much shorter timeframe than current programs;
6. supporting Jeffrey Sachs' Millennium Village Project;
7. investing in vaccine and microbicide research;
8. eliminating school fees for primary education;
9. using microcredit money pots for women to care for orphans;
10. planning for capacity replacement on a country-by-country, sector-by-sector basis.