There's more to life than Coca-Cola

At the risk of courting more accusations of naivety, here is a little more about ColaLife, the campaign launched by Simon Berry (see comments on Tuesday's post) to persuade the fizzy drinks giant Coca-Cola (aka the evil empire) to use its unparalled distribution system to get something a lot more beneficial than Coke to remote areas of Africa. The comments on the blog, incidentally, Simon says are "like a microcosm of my life" - in two opposing camps, which he defines as "the positive engagers and the ones who wouldn't touch Coca-Cola with a barge pole". Simon spent years working on development in Zambia, appalled at the deaths of small children from diarrhoea and the absence of oral rehydration salts from pharmacy shelves. It's a familiar story to anybody who has looked at healthcare in remote, rural areas of Africa and I came across it on every visit to the Guardian's Katine project . In the 22 years since he first went out there, "the figures for child mortality are still the same and Coca-Cola is getting its stuff out and the aid agencies can't do it." So the big idea is to design and incorporate a distribution "pod" in the unused spaces of crates of Coke, which can be filled with whatever local people decide they need – be it rehydration salts or malaria tablets or something else. This is where Simon writes about it. Unless you think any dealings with Coca-Cola are dancing with the devil, you might think this is a no-brainer. ColaLife now has a lot of support. I'd have thought Coca-Cola would feel obliged to shell out whatever it costs out of its gigantic profits to make this happen. But apparently, it's more complicated. Coca-Cola, which ran into huge trouble in India, accused of depleting the water table, seems to feel it cannot take unilateral action but must work through a partner aid organisation. "They said they'd be accused of taking over the public health services," said Simon. There is now one in place – a US organisation called AED, the academy for educational development . Some field research has been done in Tanzania. Now, I'd have thought, is the time for Coca-Cola to take out its corporate wallet. It seems that people either think philanthrocapitalism has potential to do good – or that it stinks to high heaven. I'm somewhere in the middle. Get the corporates to hand over money and expertise, I'd say – and dig all the deeper to expose their dodgy practices.