In her ongoing work about daily life in Angola, Ghana and Kenya, among other countries affected by the oil and gas activities, photographer Nicola Sacco has sought to understand the impact on youths and their local communities of the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in oil and gas-rich African countries have established a number of projects that aim to support local communities, embrace responsibility for corporate actions and encourage a positive impact. Some observers criticize these projects, saying it’s not always clear if they really intend to improve living conditions of the residents or are only “greenwashing” — putting on a mask of being eco-friendly. In Sacco’s view, a paradox exists in many regions where oil and gas is extracted and processed, but the communities lack the necessary infrastructure to take advantage of the resources for their own internal use.
“My photographs try to highlight the so called ‘oil curse.’ The photographs show not only desperate areas like the Niger Delta, where the environment and the society are devastated by decades of oil spills, oil thefts, government negligence and corruption, but also daily life images where you can see the hard work that schools, NGOs and local individuals carry out in order to alleviate these imbalances for the betterment of the youth. Oil and gas rich countries like Luanda where you see young boys skateboarding, or in Ghana where a women washes her clothes, are all part of the same context where local NGOs operate to bring education and protection to vulnerable communities.”
Sacco documented her understanding of how local and international organizations focus their energy on programs that aim to protect youths and women, by offering them education and social protection. Why not association, for example, was founded in 2000 by a group of young people living in a slum to promote education and fight youth unemployment.
There’s no paradox here. Sub-saharan African countries have an average IQ around 70. Per capita GNP correlates about .7 with average IQ.
In his new book, Vanhanen distinguishes six measures of poverty/wealth and checks how well they correlate with IQ:
Gross National Income per capita;
rate of enrollment in tertiary education;
childhood mortality rate
life expectancy at birth;
sanitation;
Vanhanen’s own “index of democratization,” measuring levels of political participation and competition. This index was developed in his previous book The Limits of Democratization. (See my VDARE.com review). Identifying lack of democracy as a form of poverty, however, seems questionable to me.
Here are the correlations with national IQ from a survey of 178 countries:
National income per capita: .646
Tertiary education: .787
Child mortality: .795
Life expectancy: .815
Sanitation: .725
Index of Democratization: .556
From these six dimensions of poverty, Vanhanen constructs an overall Index of Global Inequality (IGI). This comprehensive figure correlates better with IQ than any of the six dimensions taken singly, at .864.
This means that natural differences in IQ can explain nearly three-quarters of global inequality (=0.864²). All environmental factors taken together do not explain more than one quarter of the difference.
