Into Africa: Philanthropic Travel

"To build a hospital, the tangible evidence of where your money is going is very satisfying."

Excerpts from "Into Africa," written by Alex Williams in The New York Times August 13, 2006.

"We had this sudden awareness that there were all these people out there who hated us (USA), and we needed people who, as far as we know, don't hate us, and are in great need and we can help," Professor Easterly said. "It's the perfect meeting of needs, an intersection where we need Africa and Africa needs us."

Regardless of the exact reasons why Americans are responding, say educators, philanthropists, and activists, there is little doubt that the current burst of interest in Africa is markedly different from those of the past. Rarely, they say, has the popular interest in Africa spanned so many different issues and countries and inspired so many different people to take action.

"Africa issues in the 80's were usually concentrated on one country," said Una Osili, an associate professor of economics and philanthropic studies at Indiana University who grew up in Nigeria. "Live Aid was concentrated around one issue, famine relief. Now, multiple issues are being addressed: HIV/AIDS, Darfur, the ongoing issue of poverty." The focus now is regional, she said, "multi country."

In terms of financial giving to the continent, no agency keeps track of every dollar directed there, though "it would be very safe to say it is going up," said Carol Adelman, director of the Center on Global Prosperity, at the Hudson Institute in Washington. The fact that dollar wielding Bills; Clinton and Gates, are on the loose, traveling to support their foundations, doesn't hurt.

Individually, many smaller charities say they are experiencing unprecedented generosity. "The response to our outreach has been dramatically improving, it's risen fivefold" in the past few years, said Paul Newell, a director in the New York office of the Ubuntu Education Fund, which helps South Africans.

A recent celebrity, dotted fund raiser at the Puck Building in Manhattan featuring Kevin Bacon as the master of ceremonies, Donna Karan and Iman attended, blew past its initial fund raising target by 50 percent, to raise $600,000, Mr. Newell said.

And people are being inspired to start small charities of their own. In June, for example, 125 people, who in another time might have been content to mail Halloween pennies to Unicef, banded together at a Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., restaurant and held a silent auction to raise money ($30,000) for a hospital in Tanzania.

"To build a hospital, the tangible evidence of where your money is going is very satisfying," said Susan Konig, an organizer of the event. She added, "It was not some amorphous thing, but a tangible cinderblock building where in Tanzania people can get their eyes checked, receive AIDS medication, they can get pregnancy care."

The new Africa benefactors also want to experience Africa first hand, educators and tourist officials say. Over the last few years, tourism among Americans is up in Kenya, Rwanda, Zambia and South Africa, according to national tourist boards and embassies for those countries. From 2003 to 2005, travel to Kenya doubled to 73,000, and is up nearly 16 percent so far this year.

"Because Africa seems unfinished and so different from the rest of the world, a landscape on which a person can sketch a new personality, it attracts mythomaniacs," he wrote, arguing that Africa needs to cultivate its own saviors.

But, said Morgan Binswanger, a former liaison between performers and philanthropies for Creative Artists Agency in Los Angeles: "There's self interest and there's enlightened self interest, and the fringe between the two is gray. I think those that step forward and really carry out enlightened self interest move an agenda."

Alyssa Milano certainly hopes that is true. The actress, who toured civil war torn Angola in 2003 (and strayed into an active minefield, without incident), said Africa is one way celebrities can transform an unprecedented level of scrutiny into their lives into something productive.

And much as it may strain the limits of good taste to say it, Africa, rife with disease, famine, poverty and civil war is suddenly "hot."

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