Robin Ingenthron Academia.Edu - Two decades of building a case in favor of Trade between Global Geeks

The blog has almost as many unfinished and unpublished posts in 2021 than posts that made it online. Twitter and Facebook and Linkedin force me to make the points more succinctly, and that can be good if the subject is retreading of past fair trade recycling posts. 

Given no word limit, I find myself tiptoeing up to the edge of obfuscation. But at the same time, there are a few people out there still who appreciate the intellectual bedrock of Right To Repair, Right to Own, Right to Recycle, and the tactics of Action Networks and Big Corporations.

 To make sure everyone can find copies of articles I've published, or authors and researchers who've done research on projects of mine at Fair Trade Recycling - Here are some of the highlights of 20+ years of research, and the untangling of a charitable industrial complex that doled out heaps of collateral damage on the E-Waste Hoax. 

 https://independent.academia.edu/RobinIngenthron 

Note that the oldest one is a paper I had to hand-write on completion of my 1983 semester at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland (couldn't fit a typewriter in my backpack). I'd gone to research the Infant Formula controversy and the USA's refusal to participate in a motion by the UN General Assembly to restrict the trade of infant formula to developing nations (LDCs). 

At Carleton College I worked to re-instate the Nestle Boycott by circulating petitions, and was pretty confident that I'd discover the US was wrong. But after deep interviews with Americans at World Health Organization, the leaders of the INFACT* 'Infant Formula Action" group, and Geoffrey Fookes (VP of Nestle) I got a taste of the "career path" of activism. I could not see any way the boycott could have traction without targeting Nestle, the most wealthy and conservative and best-practices-oriented manufacturer. And I didn't see how the NGO could grow and build on a micro-issue.

"WHO's in charge?" was a pretty decent pun summing up the problems I saw with UN and World Health Organization acting as pharmacists to police sales of baby food.  The real solution was right under my nose 2 years later, when I served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Cameroun, Africa.

(*or was it INFORM? One was the USA counterpart)

Women in Africa are not morons. 

The real epiphany came when I was posted as a teacher at a new middle school in Ngaoundal, Cameroon.  I drew a picture of a breastfeeding mother and brought in a can on Nido (Nestle powdered milk), and asked the students which was better?

The girls were a minority of the class in those days, but the 25% or so of female students stood up the loudest. No, sir, breast was best.

What that says is that NGOs are prone to take a horrific snapshot of a real problem, a real exploitation, and freeze it in time to keep rallying people to their cause.  But the smart people in emerging markets tend to spot snake oil salesmen the same way we did, and 15 years after the Nestle Boycott was launched, African women had plenty of real problems to contend with and passing laws against formula sales was probably depriving the UN of attention to more pressing problems in Africa.

Which of course was the whole point.  African politicians represent an industry of excuses and deflection. Not that colonialism wasn't messed up, and not that exploitation doesn't need to be addressed and called out today. But most of Africa's problems are the result of African women being politically dispossessed, and I don't think blaming Nestle is a recipe for progress.

CES de Ngaoundal Cours d'anglais 1985