Africa Unchained

Redefining Development-James Shikwati

2009-11-20T11:11:00.001-05:00

James Shikwati writes in African Executive:

A redefinition of development to put Africans at the center of determining what they need (and not what they have been taught to need) is crucial. In an East African Community forum in Arusha recently, delegates sought to know how the "One Laptop Per Child" initiative leads to development. One delegate quipped: "Why not one tractor per farmer?" Psychologists remind us that when every other moment it is someone else fixing us, we cannot mature.

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France and its continued support for Dictators

2009-11-19T07:42:00.002-05:00

Adam Nossiter writes in the NYTimes:

It is not a good time to be French in Francophone Africa, except if you are a high official from Paris privately visiting a strongman’s palace. As democracy slips in country after country in the region, France often quietly sides, once again, with the once-and-future autocrats.All summer long, while African opposition figures were protesting, demonstrating and fleeing, men in power were coolly visiting Paris, or receiving visits in return.

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See related article on America's blind eye to looters from Africa

Quick Hits

2009-11-18T09:46:00.005-05:00

'Africa must think big to thrive'-Mo Ibrahim
The Ethiopian Children's Fund
The weakest link for Africa-commodities
An interview with the award winning writer, Sade Adeniran

Rent-Seeking

2009-11-17T09:55:00.002-05:00

The FT on rent-seeking:

Rent-seeking takes many forms. On Europe's oldest highway, the Rhine river, the castles on rocky outcrops date from the time when bandits with aristocratic titles extracted tolls from passing traffic. In poor countries the focus of political and business life is often rent-seeking rather than wealth creation. That helps explain why some countries are rich and others poor.

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Manufacturing is key to Prosperity

2009-11-16T11:07:00.008-05:00

In The Banker Africa Export Import Bank's Jean-Louis Ekra states:

Creating more wealth through local entrepreneurs producing goods that are value added will produce local wealth.
Once you diversify away from commodities you are less subject to volatility. If more and more African countries produce finished goods then we can trade among ourselves and new markets would open up.
China has become a market today but 20 years ago people were saying it would never have any [internal] purchasing power. What has happened in-between is that China created wealth and that is what Africa needs to do.

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Related article: "Medvedev blasts Russia's resource based economy"-WSJ

Leveraging Remittances

2009-11-15T11:46:00.001-05:00

A Bombastic Element points us to Dilip Ratha's ponderings on the subject of remittances:

A standard remittance is a simple financial transaction that -- if lightly regulated and processed using modern technology -- can cost as little as one percent. If funds were transferred through banks and other financial intermediaries, migrants and their beneficiaries would be encouraged to save and invest. Intermediary banks could also use remittance inflows as collateral to borrow larger sums in international credit markets for local investments.

To best leverage these flows for development, it is time to create an international body -- an "International Remittances Institute" -- that would monitor the flows of labor and remittances and oversee policies to make them easier, cheaper, safer, and more productive. The proposed African Remittances Institute, supported by the African Union and the European Union, is a small but important step in this direction.

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Art Moves Africa

2009-11-14T07:01:00.001-05:00

Art Moves Africa's objectives include to:

Facilitate regional and transregional cultural exchanges in Africa for individual artists/cultural operators and cultural organisations and encourage the mobility of artists and cultural professionals to exchange experiences, information and ideas

Encouraging artists and cultural operators to work towards shared projects and artistic collaborations across the continent

Andrew Esiebo

2009-11-13T08:36:00.002-05:00

Andrew Esiebo's project

...'Eyes from South to West' , which explores the experiences of individuals and families who have migrated from Nigeria to Europe. Through photography and audio interviews, he investigates the contradictions of the migratory experience and exposes the tensions between the dreams and realities of starting a new life.

More here
photo courtesy of Light Stalkers

Break your “Berlin Wall” and allow Africans to trade freely

2009-11-12T08:16:00.000-05:00

Franklin Cudjoe discusses the significance of Africa's self imposed "Berlin Wall":

Privatizing Nigeria's Government

2009-11-11T07:44:00.000-05:00

In a 2003 piece that is just as relevant today Xavier Sala-i-Martin contended that for the Nigeria:

Paradoxically, the boldest course would be for the government to stop managing these revenues and turn over a large fraction of these funds directly to the people, as is done in the US state of Alaska and the Canadian province of Alberta. At the earliest opportunity, Nigeria's government should convene a conference of all national and regional leaders and secure agreement on a constitutional provision whereby each household would be guaranteed a share of oil revenues, with the amount determined by prevailing prices and quotas

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Why Francophone Africa is less dynamic than Anglophone...

2009-11-10T06:53:00.002-05:00

Subsaharska points us to an incisive post on Neo's blog regarding the Franco-Anglo divide:

I think it's the fact that the English were better integrated, along with colonization, and a culture of economic neo-liberalism... This economic culture is based entirely on concepts and Anglo-Saxon ideology (English 18th and 19th century and American 20th) of the Protestant...France, like other Latin countries as part of a Catholic Christian tradition has always encouraged people to focus on poverty and humility (for easier entry into the kingdom of God), the Middle Ages until the nineteenth century, when capitalism was strongly criticized...

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For further context see Underdevelopment is a State of Mind & Culture Matters
HT Hash!

Why do our leaders hate us?

2009-11-09T06:23:00.002-05:00

In an interview Chidi Anselm Odinkalu contends that:

If African leaders cannot see that there is something fundamentally wrong with an African man, an African woman, an African child being treated worse on their own continent than foreigners from Europe and North America are being treated, then we are in sad and serious trouble...

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Kleptomania

2009-11-08T08:03:00.002-05:00

In Bombastic Element:

Sola Odunfa's elaboration on Economic and Financial Crimes Commission czar Farida Waziri's comments that the "extent of aggrandisement and gluttonous accumulation of wealth" has led her to believe some Nigerians might be "psychologically unsuitable for public office," is even more danming when read out loud:

Nuhu Ribadu & the Corruption Hunters

2009-11-07T08:18:00.000-05:00

Nuhu Ribadu and others at a 'Symposium on Investigative Reporting on bribery and corruption', in Bombastic Element:

A high profile panel aptly titled "Corruption Hunters," answered questions about international corruption and the role of the media during the 3rd Annual Logan Symposium on Investigative Reporting back in April.

"...In Lagos, everything is informal..."

2009-11-06T08:10:00.001-05:00

An excerpt from Robert Neuwirth's Lecture 'The Extroverted City of System D' a contribution to the book Open City:

In Lagos, everything is informal. The bus system is informal—the government got out of mass transit business decades ago (though it has recently stepped back into public transport with a bus rapid transit line) and the system that includes more than 75,000 danfos was held together informally by the National Union of Road Transport Workers as one-part mass transit and one-part Ponzi scheme. One of the largest formal supermarkets in Lagos buys most of its product from informal wholesalers. Some major multinationals here distribute their products through informal networks. And informal merchants invest in the formal world.

Authorities in the city acknowledge that as much as 80 percent of the work force—and Lagos has between nine and 17 million inhabitants, depending on where you draw the boundaries and who’s doing the counting—is involved in the informal sector. The federal government also suggests that somewhere around 60 to 70 percent of the country’s economic activity derives in some way from the informal sector—and this means that, in aggregate, merchants like Prince Chidi Onyeyirim and Fatai Agbalaya are more important to Nigeria’s future than Shell, Mobil, and Chevron, the multinational oil giants that pump sweet crude from the Niger River Delta.

Quick Hits

2009-11-05T07:32:00.004-05:00

'Publishing in Africa' via NaijaBlog
Author of children's books Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo via IP
Niger Delta is a 'Human Rights Tragedy'-VOA
DAAD prizewinner and aerospace student, Erick Mule Kitili
Kufunda Learning Village asks the question "...what it means to be a self-reliant and sustainable..."

Mama Lucy's Shepherds Junior School

2009-11-04T08:36:00.003-05:00

From the Epic Change website:

Mama Lucy Kampton is the founder and headmistress of Shepherds Junior School. Mama Lucy used to sell chickens. She saved her income and, in 2003, used it to start a primary school near her home in Tanzania, believing that education is the key to transforming a country gripped by poverty. Her spirit, determination and skill has enabled the school to grow over the last six years from one classroom with fewer than ten students, to a school that now serves more than 300 children at eight grade levels.

The Saudi-isation of Pakistan and warning's for Africa

2009-11-03T08:26:00.001-05:00

Pervez Hoodbhoy writes:

For three decades, deep tectonic forces have been silently tearing Pakistan away from the Indian subcontinent and driving it towards the Arabian peninsula. This continental drift is not physical but cultural, driven by a belief that Pakistan must exchange its South Asian identity for an Arab-Muslim one. Grain by grain, the desert sands of Saudi Arabia are replacing the rich soil that had nurtured a magnificent Muslim culture in India for a thousand years. This culture produced Mughul architecture, the Taj Mahal, the poetry of Asadullah Khan Ghalib, and much more. Now a stern, unyielding version of Islam (Wahhabism) is replacing the kinder, gentler Islam of the Sufis and saints who had walked on this land for hundreds of years.

via 3quarksDaily
Perve's piece is almost a corollary to Philip Smucker's 2004 article which reported on efforts being taken via dissemination of historical texts to reaffirm a liberal African version of Islam.A cause all the more pertinent as the region confronts a most intolerant version of the faith:

Particularly relevant, black African and Arab scholars say, are accounts of how the African interpretation of Islam helped regulate the affairs of men, resolve disputes and provide a model of tolerance. Buried in the crumbling manuscripts of Timbuktu and neighboring cities, scholars are finding evidence of wars averted, sieges ended and lawlessness put to rest.
The information is all the more valuable for moderate Muslim leaders because of the rise of less tolerant forms of Islam, like Saudi Arabia's Wahhabism or the Salafist movement in Algeria, that are expanding their foothold.

Photo courtesy of Getty Images

The Musical or the Lack Thereof

2009-11-02T07:44:00.001-05:00

Michel Amarger writes:

The musicals made in Egypt and Asia form a genre that is always highly popular with audiences in Africa. Yet the continent's filmmakers seem practically to ignore this art form, which has fed their own imaginations. What with the Egyptian musicals, Asian adventure films, and American productions, little place is left on Africa's screens for its local tales. However, even if African productions still face the same distribution difficulties on the continent, their singularity has developed and become more polished since Independence. It a priori seems paradoxical, therefore, that Africa's directors only rarely go down the musical route in cultures that are impregnated with music, song, dance, humour

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Nontsikelelo Veleko-Photographer

2009-11-01T08:06:00.002-05:00

Nontsikelelo Veleko lives and works in Johannesburg. She is a highly original photographer and project manager/co-coordinator at the Market Photo Workshop, where she previously trained in the art of photography.

via FlyGirls

Keeping Africa Small

2009-10-31T09:35:00.001-04:00

"...NGO's mean well, but are they really welcome by the recipients of their charity?..."-Current TV

Confronting Arab Prejuduce

2009-10-30T07:14:00.003-04:00

In Africa Council:

Libyan Leader Ghadaffi's "king of kings" title is an insult to our African traditions. Before shouting about African unity let Gaddaffi first address the perpetual Arab discrimination of blacks in Libya and other member states of the Arab League...Until then, he remains "king of clowns."...It is time to address the Arab crimes against blacks starting with the story of the biblical Hagar, the trans-Saharan slave trade, the Egyptian exploitation of Nubia, the rape of black women and the imposition of their light-skinned bastard children as religious and community leaders of black Africans, the conflict in Darfur and South Sudan, the maltreatment of the so-called illegal immigrants in Arab states, the marginalized black populace of Arabia, to all the injustices you can think of.

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Africa Film Library

2009-10-29T07:04:00.000-04:00

In Bizcommunity

The African Film Library, launched on Wednesday, 23 September 2009, consists of award-winning works from more than 80 filmmakers including Senegalese Ousmane Sembene and Djibril Mambety, Yousef Chahine from Egypt, Kwaw Ansah from Ghana and Haile Gerima from Ethiopia...The online library aims to create a new audience for existing and emerging African filmmakers through the digital archive of the continent's cultural cinematic heritage, and making African artists' works easily accessible via the internet to a wide viewership around the worldwide.

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Nigeria's Military Never Left

2009-10-28T07:18:00.001-04:00

Salisu Suleiman writes:

The crux of this piece is this: though the military claim to have relinquished power to democratically elected leaders in Nigeria, the fact is that they have remained firmly in control. They may not hold the horns of the political cow any longer, but they sure are milking it. In every key office in Nigeria today, you are likely to find a serving or ex military person. On the chairs and boards of major companies are former soldiers. On the thrones of powerful institutions are retired military officers.
It was said that the world domination that Japan failed to achieve militarily, it achieved by economic means. In the same way, the continued domination of Nigeria that the military could not sustain with their guns, they have succeeded in executing, sublimely, through the subtle pseudo-democracy they have installed in Nigeria. This has given them control of the key indices of political and economic power in the country.

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Changing directions for the Mo Ibrahim Prize

2009-10-27T09:22:00.000-04:00

KenyanPundit dissects the Mo Ibrahim Prize covered earlier and offers alternative methodologies:

...any organization that is trying to do any serious work around leadership in Africa has make young people the core of any programming. Otherwise you haven’t looked the demographics of Africa yet and seriously thought about the implications. Convincing the Mugabe’s of the world to step down, is only part of the problem – you have to ask who is replacing the old guard? Is there a pipeline? Are the replacements different? Or are they just a younger, hungrier, more cynical version of the same (see Kenya’s parliament today).
I see that your foundation does offer scholarships to rising leaders, that’s a good start. But if the intention is to grow leaders at home, I would offer scholarships to enable students to attend local institutions as well.

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