Dreams of a Better Africa

By Fran Wood
Drew Magazine
Winter 2004

Listen to Jo Butler talk about the problems in Ethiopia, and the Greek myth about Sisyphus comes to mind -- the man who was condemned to spend eternity pushing a boulder up the side of a mountain, only to have the weight of the stone repeatedly cause it to roll back to the bottom.

As secretary and legal adviser to the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA)*, Butler spends her days trying to bring [economic development] to a continent where for many the effort to simply stay alive is compromised by drought, disease and hunger. Confronting problems most people don't even want to think about would not seem to be the logical career goal for a woman who grew up in Ewing Township, was educated at such elite schools as Drew and Columbia Law School, traveled the world and spent years living in the rather comfortable country of Switzerland.

But it's doubtful the 48-year-old Butler ever was your average Jersey suburbanite.

"At 12, I had a sense of something much larger waiting for me," she says. "I knew I could, in a small way, affect change. At 14, I spoke Spanish. By the time I went to Europe and started to learn French and other languages, I was meeting others who felt the same way."

During her studies in Spain and years working on environmental endeavors in The Hague and Switzerland, she frequently visited Ethiopia, where she had friends. So she was more than a little familiar with the country and its problems when she moved there three and a half years ago.

Ethiopia, according to Butler, is one of the world's most beautiful countries with some of the world's most serious problems. With severe cyclical droughts, climatic conditions alone have devastating results -- ruined crops, dead cattle, hunger.

But those problems are compounded by an HIV/AIDS epidemic of crisis proportions. "HIV/AIDS weakens the immune system and, as a result, weakens the response to famine conditions, and exacerbates illness," Butler explains. "When one has cyclical droughts, which are inevitable in this part of world, there is not enough physical stamina to withstand the deleterious effects."

Butler warns that if present conditions continue (already the population has one million AIDS orphans), it "will have apocalyptic results," because it will cause "the decimation of those very people who can help society move forward -- teachers, educators, the military to protect society, nurses, heath care workers. ...The people being affected by the pandemic of HIV/AIDS are the people who help keep societies whole and build society for the next generation."

The gains one can make in such circumstances would seem to be considerably out of proportion to the 15-hour days Butler and her colleagues put in. But Butler, whose husband is Ethiopian, has learned to focus on specific situations where a concerted effort can make a difference -- like a project in one village that involves feeding school children and building a well.

"The children have been so hungry they were no longer able to attend school," she explains. "So we're setting up a program that will feed them every day (in school). So far, we can support it for six months. But it's very hard to see school children eating and their brothers and sisters and parents not able to eat, so we want the children to be able to take food packages home to their families."

As coordinator of the Ethiopian Food Appeal task force, where she is engaged in a pro bono volunteer effort, Butler has reached out to the community at large, with "inspiring" results.

"Students at the international school here -- 13-to-16-year-olds -- were to go on a trip to Paris," she says. "When they heard about our appeal, they chose to cancel their trip and gave the money to us instead."

But, she adds, "we need to go international to raise more money." She and her colleagues have structured a campaign "with no overhead," thanks to the U.N. office in Addis, which has volunteered to supply vehicles for pick-up and delivery so that every dollar donated can be spent on food.

The well will be essential, she explains, "because so many infectious diseases stem from the lack of clean water." Indeed, in a country of 69 million people whose projected population by 2050 is more than 200 million, it is systemic solutions -- like wells -- that ultimately will determine the quality of life in what by then will be "the ninth largest country in the world."

Butler says her greatest frustration is that "people don't understand the interconnectedness of the world. If the problems of Africa are not resolved, those problems are coming America's way. You can't escape political strife, disease, conflict. ... We've seen it in Kosovo, Yugoslavia, Israel, Palestine. We saw it with 9/11. Look at SARS, which has 4 percent to 7 percent death rate, and how it can take down the world."

If we fail to start viewing globalization beyond economic terms, "it will be to our peril," she adds, "because the problems of nations in trouble will become our future problems. ... If we don't stem this epidemic of HIV/AIDS on this continent, particularly in South Africa and Ethiopia, the future of Africa is very bleak."

* Recently, Jo Butler was appointed director of the Intergovernment Support Service Division for the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.

Reprinted with permission of The Star-Ledger; from the issue of May 21, 2003. Fran Wood is a columnist at The Star-Ledger, Newark, N.J. She is married to journalist David Hinckley C'70.

Return to Top