As someone who got a lot of grief for arguing we should consider invading Africa in order to save it (see here and here ), I suppose I’ll chime in too. Although I think Ramesh makes the most salient point. The right — loosely defined here as the people the left dislike — has been very interested in coming up with new ideas about how to save Africa. The left, it seems to me, has been mostly interested in the same old remedies — debt relief, direct aid, increasing budgets for NGOs etc. I do think there are a lot of very sincere liberals and lefty types who work very hard and do great work in Africa. But if the issue is “new ideas” I don’t think Zakaria’s swipe holds much water. Poke around Tech Central Station if you want to find an endless series of innovative ideas about Third World development, particularly in Africa to see what I mean. Zakaria is more than smart enough to know better than to engage in this sort of strawmanism.