When Andrew Meaney '05 accompanied his father on a business trip to Botswana five years ago, he was impressed to learn that the country is one of the most stable in Africa thanks to-and, actually, in spite of-its diamond wealth. Diamonds were discovered in this southern African country soon after it gained independence in 1966, spurring the world's fastest economic growth between then and the 1990s.
"In the beginning, Botswana only had about 10 miles of roads, no schools, and no infrastructure," Meaney points out. "It was obvious where the money should be spent." But while some countries might have experienced chaos and corruption, Botswana-due largely to its prescient first president, Seretse Khama, who set up elaborate procedures and accountability for government spending-"seems to have gotten it right," says the international studies major.
Meaney's Woodrow Wilson project is titled "Evaluation of the Miracle of Botswana in Sub-Saharan Africa and its Emergence as a Successful State." In 2004, he visited the country and stayed with the family of the permanent secretary to the president, whom his father had known through business. Meaney worked as a research fellow at the Botswana Institute for Development Policy Analysis. "People were very accessible," he says. "There are not a lot of foreign students there to study the government.... It wasn't unusual to have the director of the Bank of Botswana sit down and talk with me for a couple of hours."
While his research looks mainly at the country's economic success story, Meaney cannot ignore the devastating effect that HIV/AIDS has had on Botswana. More than 12 percent of its 1.6 million residents are infected with the virus. The huge number of AIDS cases has cut Botswana's life expectancy from 72 years to 39 years, according to the Global Health Council. Meaney says his hosts attended funerals of close friends or colleagues every weekend while he was there. "Everyone knows people who are dying," he says. "It's a problem that affects the entire population."