Democracy and its Discontents

G. Pascal Zachary writes in The East African:

“If autocrats do not deliver prosperity any more reliably than democrats, then the romance with benign authoritarianism is probably misguided. Democratisation must be pursued wholeheartedly in Africa — but pursued without illusions. Elections inevitably heighten ethnic tensions, but these tensions can be managed. If democrats are to triumph over authoritarian populists, they must take more seriously the importance of balancing ethnic differences along with promoting economic growth. One without the other is unsustainable.”-[continue reading]

via Africa Works

Images of Africa

From Africa Rising:

When a Western charity makes an appeal for funds with the photo of a seemingly helpless African child, the Western donor is cast in the role of the strong, generous, and righteous person helping the lowly and needy. Strength, generosity, and righteousness are all good things, but I fear that an unrighteous pattern has developed. The West and Africa have become type-cast into strong and weak, resourceful and helpless, giver and receiver, parent and child.
To cast whole continents and cultures in such starkly contrasting and fixed roles is an untruth and an injustice. There is strength in Africa, and there is resourcefulness, generosity, and righteousness...[continue reading]

Related articles by Zemanta

• "Don't listen to CNN" (africaunchained.blogspot.com)

Something Torn and New: An African Renaissance by Ngugi wa Thiongo

From Powell's:

In Something Torn and New, Ngugi explores Africas historical, economic, and cultural fragmentation by slavery, colonialism, and globalization. Throughout this tragic history, a constant and irrepressible force was Europhonism: the replacement of native names, languages, and identities with European ones. The result was the dismemberment of African memory.
Seeking to remember language in order to revitalize it, Ngugis quest is for wholeness. Wide-ranging, erudite, and hopeful, Something Torn and New is a cri de coeur to save Africas cultural future...[continue reading]

via Africa's Turn

Educating Africa

EducatingAfrica is a Foundation that was formed to support cost effective, relevant and sensible education initiatives and assist them to become self sustainable wherever possible...they are committed to supporting cost effective and financially self sufficient education initiatives across all levels of education in each country in Africa.

Related articles by Zemanta

• "Solving Africa" (africaunchained.blogspot.com)

"Remapping Africanness"

Laila Lalami writes in Farafina:

I have often noticed that whenever one hears about “Africa,” whether on the news, or in music, or in arts, or in literature, the inevitable focus is always the portion of the continent that is geographically south of the Sahara desert. For instance, the “plight of Africa,” that favourite headline of European and American newspapers, usually refers to AIDS or child soldiers or foreign debt or whatever new cause hipsters find fit to embrace at the moment...I want to reclaim North Africa for Africa. In his article “Remapping Africanness”, the novelist and academic Anouar Majid shows how North African and sub-Saharan novels in fact share many common themes and concerns...[continue reading]

What is the Role of African Governments?-Dambisa Moyo

Damibisa Moyo on Charlie Rose, echoing Andrew Mwenda and others:

ICYIZERE: hope

Patrick Mureithi is the director of ICYIZERE: hope A documentary about trauma, reconciliation and forgiveness in Rwanda after the genocide.

A Deficit of Original Thought

Bryan Mukandi writes in the Mail & Guardian:

...the continent is notable for its underdevelopment. It is the focus of the bulk of the workings of the “development industry”. No other continent has as many development NGOs giving aid, conducting research, formulating policy and so forth. Africa also has a good number of solid universities, as well as some very good ones, many of which are staffed by people who could hold their own anywhere in the world. These thinking communities are meant to dwell on society’s problems and offer solutions. A huge problem in their immediate environment is underdevelopment. Why then doesn’t more original thought on development and economics (as well as other social sciences) come from Africa?

Asserting that solutions must be largely self-generated:

The sad thing about the bulk of sub-Saharan Africa is that very few of the ideas that are lying around at any given time come from within the region. Perhaps it is time that African institutions of learning stopped seeing themselves as being in the business of “training” people so they can find work in some company or another. Maybe their basic function should be to inspire thinking and alternative solutions to local and regional problems...[continue reading]

Related articles by Zemanta

• Africa next (news.bbc.co.uk)
• IMF warns of slow African growth (news.bbc.co.uk)

Africa's Backward Educational Leap?

James Stanfield writes in Economic Affairs:

Although education may be important for economic growth, this does not mean that nationalising and centrally planning the whole sector is the best way forward, as this will restrict total investment in education (public and private) and will often result in education being provided which is of a low quality and of the wrong type. Increasing government investment in this type of education is likely to restrict growth by diverting scarce resources away from more productive uses...[continue reading(PDF)]

Corruption Contd. 'It’s Our Turn to Eat'-Kenya's Watergate

Patrick Smith at the FT reviews Michela Wrong's It’s Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistleblower:

These are hard times for anti-corruption campaigners, and harder still in Africa where activists face harassment and sometimes death. According to United Nations and World Bank estimates, corruption and transfer pricing cost Africa more than $150bn a year.Michela Wrong’s compelling book, It’s Our Turn to Eat, charts the career of a doughty opponent of this corruption: Kenyan anti-graft campaigner, John Githongo. By describing Githongo’s efforts, Wrong explains the mechanics of corruption within government and business circles and why so much western development policy in Kenya fails.

Electoral systems and institutions; Political asset or liabilities?

From Pambazuka, The Kenyan Section of the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ Kenya) and the Konrad Adenaur Foundation invite contributions to be published in a Special Issue on Electoral Systems Reform in Sub Saharan Africa:

It is increasingly becoming a trend in Africa, that, whilst elections are supposed to anchor and ensure sustainable growth in democracies, in countries such as Kenya and Zimbabwe, elections have become a liability. Instead of institutionalising democracy, they have fueled political instability. Consequently, the essential question is: to what extend do electoral systems and institutions in Sub Saharan Africa turn into political assets and / or liabilities?

A role for Academies

In an Africa Science Development Initiative conference presentation Patrick Amuriat Oboi stated:

African Science Academies and other organizations offering independent advice have an evident role to play in advancing national socioeconomic aspirations. To fully apply their potential, the Academies should be effectively linked into government policy implementation framework both at macro and micro levels. Their programs and activities should be designed more and more to complement rather than compete with those of government ministries and institutions.

Cringeworthy Representatives

From the Moor Next Door:

The Africans are increasingly disappointed with Qadhafi’s performance as AU President. He antics and rhetoric in Mauritania, Niger, Guinea-Bissau and elsewhere have caused embarrassment to many AU statesmen...[continue reading]

Do not tell me they are not surprised, meanwhile we have Meles Zenawi representing Africa at the G20. How can we expect to be taken seriously?
More Qadhafi eccentricity

Related articles by Zemanta

• Madagascar President Cedes Power (nytimes.com)

Celebrate Africa

More on the travelogue space. The mission of Chioma and Oluchi Ogwuegbu's Celebrate Africa is to:

Celebrate all that is beautiful on the continent from her peoples to her cultures, languages and religions. Contribute to changing the negative image of Africa and encourage Africans and the world to begin to see the beauty in the continent. Promote a sense of identity and unity for Africa’s people.

photo courtesy of Celebrate Africa
via Mootbox

Related articles by Zemanta

• "Don't listen to CNN" (africaunchained.blogspot.com)

Youth Conservatism

Jeremy at NaijaBlog rails against the conservatism of Nigerian Youth:

The assumption in the West is that youth culture is all about rebellion, resistance and challenging the status quo set by the previous generation. Henceforth, irruptions of angst, malcontent, anger, extreme fun and quirkiness are expected in the music, art and words of the 18-30's. In Nigeria, things are quite different. Young people are often more conservative and prudish than their parents, avoiding any kind of experiment with life, whether it be sexual, hallucinogenic, expressive or otherwise, spending their free time in the church or the mosque or 'gisting'. How is a society expected to challenge its own assumptions without a Rocknrolla spirit amongst the yoof?...[continue reading]

Quick Hits

Open Access papers a boon for developing world scientists-SciDev
Supporting Nollywood the Directors Guild of Nigeria
Challenges for Craftspeople-BBC
Is Kenya teetering?-NYTimes
Challenges for the book industry-George Ngwane
Questioning the Nigerian Stock Exchange-Basil Enwegbara
The real Water Board-WashAfrica
South-South ties contd. Asian footsteps in the continent.
Power-sharing government is a recipe for “disaster”-FT
Leadership starts with you not him!-Joachim Ezeji
The Ghadafi virus-The Moor Next Door
Public-private investment partnerships in health systems-Output Based Healthcare
Examining Charles Soludo Nigeria's Central Bank Governor-234Next

The Rise (or acknowledgment) of the Informal

Patrick Barta writes in the WSJ:

Economists have long thought the underground economy -- the vast, unregulated market encompassing everything from street vendors to unlicensed cab drivers -- was bad news for the world economy. Now it's taking on a new role as one of the last safe havens in a darkening financial climate, forcing analysts to rethink their views...the "informal," or underground, economy, an enormous, vital and poorly understood segment of world commerce. It is becoming a lot more important now, as the global financial meltdown casts millions of people out of steady-paying jobs. Especially in developing economies, many of those people are landing in the informal sector, which has become a critical safety net as the economic crisis spreads...[continue reading]

photo courtesy of 234Next media

One Childhood

The One Childhood documentary tells the extraordinary story of how the nation of Eritrea supports the development of its children throughout their childhood - seamlessly linking early child development and school health programs, delivered in even the most inaccessible communities by a strong partnership between the education and health teams-World Bank

Tolerating Dictatorship in Ethiopia

Ethiopundit writes about the farcical nature of Ethiopia's democracy and Western complicity in propping up the regime.:

Here we have a government with no basic institutions of civil society, not to mention democratic society, being so tolerated? There is a parliament, courts, elections, election board, etc. that only exist to give a patina of respectability to a government of thugs. None of those institutions matter - Meles makes decisions in concert with his slavish revolutionary nobility. Yet Meles's words are heard as though they originated from any civilized process recognizable to any democrat - and Western governments eat it up...[continue reading]

Learning From Shadow Cities

Image via Wikipedia

Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow writes in the Boston Globe:

...Slums have assets along with their obvious shortcomings. Their humming economic activity and proximity to city centers represent big advantages over the subsistence farming that many slum dwellers have fled. Numerous observers have noted the enterprising spirit of these places, evident not only in their countless tiny businesses, but also in the constant upgrading and expansion of homes. Longstanding slum communities tend to be much more tightknit than many prosperous parts of the developed world, where neighbors hardly know one another. Indeed, slums embody many of the principles frequently invoked by urban planners: They are walkable, high-density, and mixed-use, meaning that housing and commerce mingle...[continue reading]

Blackboard Blogger of Monrovia

Hash reports:

Alfred Sirleaf is an analog blogger. He take runs the “Daily News”, a news hut by the side of a major road in the middle of Monrovia. He started it a number of years ago, stating that he wanted to get news into the hands of those who couldn’t afford newspapers, in the language that they could understand...[continue reading]

Festival au Desert

Time Magazine provides a photographic profile of Festival au Desert. "The Festival in the Desert’s origins lie in the traditional annual gatherings of the nomadic Tuareg tribes of the Sahara, who gather at the end of the nomadic season to trade, settle disputes and share their music and dance"-Mail & Guardian:

Hat Tip Pragnya!

The perils of relying largely on Diamonds-Botswana

Image via Wikipedia

Despite its status as the best governed SSA economy Botswana's reliance on a singular source of income-Diamonds-is proving to be an achilles heel.The FT reports:

Even for Botswana, for long the model of how a poor country can use its minerals to build a path from poverty, there is no escape from the the financial crisis.
“There is no doubt we are facing a huge challenge,” said Ian Khama, Botswana’s president in his first wide-ranging interview with a foreign newspaper since taking office in April. “The main reason is because we have been very dependent on revenues from minerals, especially diamonds, ever since they were found in the seventies.”
Diamonds bring in four of every five of Botswana’s foreign exchange dollars and generate about a third of annual gross domestic product. But the US, which accounts for up to half of diamond demand, is in recession. Debswana, the joint venture between De Beers and Botswana that normally supplies almost a quarter of the world’s rough diamonds , sold no stones in November and few in the months since...[continue reading]

In other words the importance of an industrial value-added economy cannot be under emphasized enough.Botswana wannabees take note.

Related articles by Zemanta

• De Beers to suspend work at Botswana diamond mines as sales slide (telegraph.co.uk)
• Botswana diamond firm shuts mines (news.bbc.co.uk)

EKO Atlantic-The New Lagos

A view of a proposed new Lagos "Eko Atlantic"

via vc4Africa

Western attitudes towards business in Africa-June Arunga

TED Fellow 2007 June Arunga recounts her experiences while raising money for the startup BSL:
June Arunga on Western Attitudes Towards Business in Africa from DRI on Vimeo.
via MootBox

Viewing Congo

A series of images of the Congo from Finbarr O'Reilly at Boston.com:

How Barclays Enables Looters

The BBC reports:

Barclays Bank has had dealings with one of the world's most corrupt regimes, according to a report by the the anti-corruption campaigners Global Witness.It says Barclays held an account for the son of the president of Equatorial Guinea long after evidence emerged that his family looted state oil revenues...[continue reading]

For background read Global Witness's 'Undue Diligence' report.

Strengthening the Nigerian Judiciary

The UNODC's Strengthening and Judicial Integrity and Capacity project intends to:

...assist the Nigerian authorities in the development of sustainable capacities within the Nigerian judiciary and to strengthen judicial integrity. Its aim is to contribute to the re-establishment of the rule of law in the country and to create the necessary preconditions for handling complex court cases in the area of financial crimes...[continue reading]

In the words of the National Democratic Institute the country has witnessed:

...an increasingly independent judiciary that has responded in a timely manner to electoral complaints following the 2007 polls and increasingly acts as an important check on executive power...[continue reading]

And despite expected growing pains the leading anti-corruption organization-The EFCC- continues to make demonstrable progress:

...despite the young age of this agency, and the fact that its human and operational capacity has been boosted up from a few dozen staff in 2004 to currently more than 1,200. EFCC achievement reports include more than 400 prosecuted cases, recovery of more than US$ 5 billion for the state budget, and the ongoing investigations into several previous governors and other high-rankings. Importantly, EFCC results are contributing to changing perception and action at national and international levels...[continue reading]

Related articles by Zemanta

• International Anti-Corruption Academy Established in Austria (twidox.com)

Cont Mhlanga wins "Freedom to Create" Award

From the Freedom to Create website:

A controversial playwright from Zimbabwe who has risked his life challenging the Mugabe dictatorship for over 25 years has been awarded the inaugural Orient Global Freedom to Create Prize.
Cont Mhlanga, whose political satire has been banned by the state, took out the award created to highlight a forgotten frontline of artists defending their freedom of expression at great personal sacrifice.

Les Ballets Bagata

Youssouf Koumbassa founder of Les Ballets Bagata:

...attempts to bring the energy, excitement and history of African dance to a wide audience,Youssouf is meticulous in acknowledging the source of this material and insists on a high level of understanding and respect for the form among his students. He travels to Guinea regularly, taking students on dance trips and returns to the United States with the latest developments in contemporary dance so that his teaching is always a mixture of traditional work and the dances that infuse popular culture...West Africa Dance

photo courtesy of slowdancing

Halting Graft

Aikins Adusei writes in African Executive:

Africa is poor today because Swiss and other western banks collude with African kleptocrats to loot the continent. Corruption is rife on the continent because those who steal the money never lack a place to hide it.
Fighting corruption should not be left to the poor countries alone. Western countries have a duty to stop their nations being used as save havens for stolen monies from the African continent. They should return all looted money put there by corrupt African leaders to the African people. There must be an international coalition dedicated to tracking all stolen monies on the face of the earth with Africa given to priority...[continue reading]

Nuhu Ribadu on Corruption

Reuben Abati interviews Nuhu Ribadu, in a response to a question on corruption he asserts that:

...corruption is the biggest problem we have in Africa. It is so central to the problems we have. But to fight corruption, the biggest man in government, the President or the Prime Minister must be honest about it. That is where it starts. Americans talk about Obama. We need change in Nigeria more than America does. What I discovered is that we have a challenge to give power to ordinary Nigerians, to ordinary people, to take it from the politicians. And we don’t have time. Change is important...[continue reading]

Related articles by Zemanta

• 'Threat' to Nigeria ex-graft Czar (news.bbc.co.uk)

Special Envoy for Africa?

Mona Gable writes at Huffington Post:

Why doesn't Obama appoint a special envoy to Africa, not just Darfur, considering his family ties and the continent's unrealized promise? I know we're in debt to Asia, as evidenced by Hillary Clinton's tour where she met with virtually everyone except rapper M.I.A. But Africa deserves our attention too. And not just from George Clooney's occasional outings along the border of Darfur...[continue reading]

Risks of External Dependencies

The vulnerability inherent in external dependencies is highlighted once again.Linda Nordling writes at SciDev:

Foreign funding is important for African science. It pays for much of the best of it — for example, testing the PRO 2000 gel which recently gave hope to women wanting to protect themselves against HIV infection (see Microbicide hope at last, say researchers).It is also important in re-building universities and research communities on the continent — although the ensuing dependence on overseas donors remains controversial.
A decline in external funding would have seemed far-fetched a few years ago when donors were falling over one another to pledge support for African science. But with the global financial crisis, things are looking less rosy...[continue reading]

Astronomy for Africa

Astronomy for Africa's purpose "...is to inform school kids in South Africa as well as the general public and tourists on what is happening above our heads in the awe inspiring field of ASTRONOMY in a relaxed and friendly manner..."

Cosmos Education

Cosmos Education aims to inspire, empower, and engage young Kenyans in science education and to foster critical thinking that will serve as a life skill...We focus on science and technology education and the role of science and technology in health, the environment, and sustainable development. Our model is grassroots development from within; we want the youth in developing regions of the world to decide how their nations develop-organisation website

"Happy Peasant Syndrome"

From Reuters:

Struggling countries must manufacture more and be given better access to global markets to expand their economies, the U.N. Industrial Development Organization said in a report...The discovery of oil or gold can suck labour out of manufacturing, raise the price of goods and push the economy away from exports and into domestic sectors, the report warns.
African countries should learn from Asian states such as Malaysia that developed their economies through wealth creation, rather than focusing solely on cutting poverty, the report says.
Africa has been dogged for decades by the "happy peasant syndrome", where donors give money to alleviate poverty instead of targeting the aid for economic growth,says Kandeh Yumkella(UNIDO DG)

Related articles by Zemanta

• Representing African Technology to the World (whiteafrican.com)

The 3 Guineas...Failing or Failed States?

From the assassination of Guinea-Bissau's president:

Guinea-Bissau President Joao Bernardo Vieira was assassinated in the first hours of this morning, allegedly in an attack by renegade soldiers as he fled his home. The crime happened a few hours after his long term rival, the country's army chief General Batista Tagme, was killed by a bomb blast, late on Sunday. Although the reasons are still unknnon, the crimes have sparked alarm at instability in the young West African republic...Global Voices

To this past December's coup d etat in Guinea-Conakry:

Guinea's prime minister and some 30 other ministers have submitted to the leaders of a military coup.The government officials met Capt Moussa Dadis Camara, who has declared himself Guinea's new president, at a military base in the capital, Conakry.
The rebels staged the coup on Tuesday, just hours after the death of veteran strongman President Lansana Conte...BBC

...plus in February when MEND guerrillas attacked Equatorial Guinea adding a new twist to African based non-state actors:

Men in speedboats attacked the capital, Malabo, which sits on an island off the West African coastline in the Gulf of Guinea. They struck before dawn on Tuesday and were heavily armed, the government said in a statement, but the army, using boats and a helicopter, quickly repelled the attack.-NYTimes

The common thread is that these actions all occurred in countries on the verge of becoming failing and or failed states. With largely non-existent institutions and an attendant parasitic ruling class.What are the options? Don't expect much from the largely ineffectual African Union. Should we look to a Paul Collier inspired solution of more unilateral military intervention by neighbors or something else?

El Anatsui

Alexi Worth profiles El Anatsui in the NYTimes:

ONE DAY 10 YEARS AGO in the countryside of southern Nigeria,a slim middle-aged man drove past a bag of garbage. Garbage is not an unusual sight in West Africa; village roads are often lined with a parallel hillock of trash — dusty bottles, spoiled food, tin cans, car parts — out of which small trees sometimes grow. But this solitary bag looked promising. It was a quiet, sunny late afternoon in the dry season. The man stopped the car and walked over to look inside. A decade later, the contents of that bag have toured the world from Wales to Arizona...[continue reading]

photo courtesy of Artthrob