The Resource Curse and Democracy

In a paper Leonard Wantchekon & Nathan Jensen

...present empirical evidence suggesting a robust and negative correlation between the presence of a sizeable natural resource sector and the level of democracy in Africa. We argue that not only is resource abundance is an important determinant of democratic transition, but also partially determines the success of democratic consolidation in Africa. The results illuminate the fact that post-cold war democratic reforms have been successful only in resource poor countries such as Benin, Mali, and Madagascar. We argue that resource-rich countries such as Nigeria and Gabon can become democratic only if they introduce strong mechanisms of vertical and horizontal accountability within the state.

More here(pdf)

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• The Trust Deficit (africaunchained.blogspot.com)

Quick Hits

Sierra Leone's tourism promise and more-Tony Blair
Barclays Bank up to more fishy stuff?
A bid to strengthen Think Tanks.
Is corruption in Nigeria's DNA?
A tour of Nairobi.
Writing off sovereign debt and hampering growth-Thompson Ayodele in the Telegraph
Can we rein in the destabilizing effects of Natural Resources? Perhaps with the Natural Resource Charter contends Paul Collier.
Taju Tijani asks, where are the Black British Millonaires?
How Corporate America Really Views Africa.
The Guardian compares their Katine village project with MVP's. They should take a look at the Working Villages and learn from the successes of Songhai Centre.

Paul Polak contd

Paul Polak on Practical Poverty Solving Solutions:

Making a case for Makers

Applauding makers, tradespeople and others like them, Matthew B. Crawford in the NYTimes:

There is good reason to suppose that responsibility has to be installed in the foundation of your mental equipment — at the level of perception and habit. There is an ethic of paying attention that develops in the trades through hard experience. It inflects your perception of the world and your habitual responses to it. This is due to the immediate feedback you get from material objects and to the fact that the work is typically situated in face-to-face interactions between tradesman and customer.

An economy that is more entrepreneurial, less managerial, would be less subject to the kind of distortions that occur when corporate managers’ compensation is tied to the short-term profit of distant shareholders. For most entrepreneurs, profit is at once a more capacious and a more concrete thing than this. It is a calculation in which the intrinsic satisfactions of work count — not least, the exercise of your own powers of reason.

more Here

Nuhu Indicts Nigeria's Ruling Elite

Nuhu Ribadu's testimony to the US Congress:

Next year, Nigeria will be half a century old. In 1960, the year I was born, my country attained Independence from Britain. The promise of independence was boundless and the famous Nigerian energy was all too evident. We were sure we would make it. Home to about 140 million of the West African region’s 220 million inhabitants, Nigeria’s demography alone elects it as a regional power.
Today, after one civil war, seven military regimes, and three botched attempts at building real democracy, there is one connecting factor in the failure of all attempts to govern Nigeria: corruption...[continue reading]

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• The latest joke-"Rebranding Nigeria" (africaunchained.blogspot.com)

Aid Addict-Tanzania

In the Economist:

The country already gets 40% of its government budget in aid, but now it wants even more foreign cash to help it through the economic downturn. How much is enough? Tanzania’s president, Jakaya Kikwete, smiles grimly. “We’re trying to bring down our dependency, but we’re grateful for what we receive.”...[continue reading]

Time Up for Rhetoric on Science

Paul Baloyi of Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) stated recently:

...There seems to be no shortage of funds for conferences and international dialogues," he said. "But there are billions of dollars that have been earmarked for projects that Africa needs, and [we] are still waiting [for them] to be made available...[continue reading]

Bridge Building with Sports

Madeleine Bunting in the Guardian writing about sports and its trust building potential:

...this is where football comes in. It brings people together; it builds relationships, sometimes between groups who have had reason to be suspicious of each other. It is the same principle as corporate team-building exercises. The best way for people to get to know and get on with each other is to play a game...[continue reading]

Image of Katine Actors football Photograph courtesy of Dan Chung

Africa has to find its own Road to Prosperity

Paul Kagame in the FT:

We appreciate support from the outside, but it should be support for what we intend to achieve ourselves. No one should pretend that they care about our nations more than we do; or assume that they know what is good for us better than we do ourselves. They should, in fact, respect us for wanting to decide our own fate...[continue reading]

Depth of Field

Kelechi Amadi-Obi, Uchechukwa James-Iroha, Toyosi Odunsi, Amaize Ojeikere, Emeka Okereke & Toyin Sokefun the photographers behind the :

Artists' collective, Depth of Field (DOF), live and work in Lagos, Nigeria. They have developed a remarkable track record of collaborative practice. The six artists who make up DOF assign themselves a weekly theme and meet a week later to hold a critical session on the resulting images. Their work largely centres on the vibrant street life of Lagos-SLG

photo courtesy of Kelechi Amadi-Obi

K'Naan

K'naan (via last.fm)

NPR on K'Naan

News from Somalia usually involves violent warlords, or pirates hijacking ships off the coast. Other than that, average Somalis don't have much of a voice. But a rapper from Somalia named K'Naan is trying to change that, and in the world of hip-hop, he's become an artist to watch.
K'Naan grew up in Mogadishu, on what he calls "the meanest streets in the universe." In one song on his new album, he calls his hometown the "risky zone," full of pistols and Russian revolvers.

K'NAAN "T.I.A" music video directed by: NABIL from nabil elderkin on Vimeo.

Romuald Hazoumé

Xeni Jardin of Boing Boing profiles the work of artist Romuald Hazoumé:

Romuald Hazoumé...transforms salvaged materials into symbols of spiritual power...Starting in the mid-1980s, Hazoumé began creating works made from a locally ubiquitous type of plastic container -- I've heard them referred to as "jerry cans?" Basically, you see them everywhere in Benin, used and reused and reused to store everything from palm oil to water to gasoline...[continue reading]

ALA contd.

A snapshot of the African Leadership Academy covered earlier:

Patronage Machines & What Africans Owe Themselves

In reviewing Wangari Maathai's The Challenge for Africa and Zambian Dambisa Moyo's Dead Aid Francis Fukuyama argues that:

Both women see sub-Saharan Africa's fundamental problem not as one of resources, human or natural, or as a matter of geography, but, rather, as one of bad government. Far too many regimes in Africa have become patronage machines in which political power is sought by "big men" for the sole purpose of acquiring resources—resources that are funneled either back to the networks of supporters who helped a particular leader come to power or else into the proverbial Swiss bank account. There is no concept of public good; politics has devolved instead into a zero-sum struggle to appropriate the state and whatever assets it can control.

He concludes:

...both at least focus on the real core of the problem, which is the region's level of political development. In this realm, solutions are going to have to come from within the region itself. It is a positive first step for the discussion to shift away from what the outside world owes Africa and toward what Africans owe themselves.

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Private Enterprise Foundation

Ghana's "...Private Enterprise Foundation is a member-based organization and national center for advocacy and promotion of private enterprise. It undertakes policy based research for making effective representation to government in order to influence policies and regulations towards the creation of an enabling environment for a private sector led economic growth..."

Ribadu speaks

Nuhu Ribadu on PBS discusses being bribed and more:

via African Loft
For related information visit Nuhu Ribadu Trust

Farming First

From Lindiwe Majele Sibanda in the Guardian:

Farming First calls on world leaders to take action by developing a locally sustainable value chain for global agriculture. It emphasizes the need for knowledge networks and policies centred on helping subsistence farmers to become small-scale entrepreneurs, and it proposes six interlinked imperatives for sustainable agriculture: safeguarding natural resources, sharing knowledge, building local access, protecting harvests, enabling access to markets and prioritising research imperatives...[continue reading]Watch related videos here

The 'Nigerian Disease'

In PSD Blog:

Recent work suggests another explanation of the resource curse – the Nigerian Disease. That is, an abundance of natural resources leads to poorer governance and conflicts. It gives rise to governments that are less accountable to the people, have little incentive for institution-building, and fail to implement growth enhancing reforms. Higher corruption, more rent-seeking activity, greater civil conflict, and erosion of social capital are some of the outcomes associated with the Nigerian Disease (see, for example, Rosser 2006). While it too early to draw any definitive conclusion on the relevance of the Nigerian Disease, the early results do suggest a possible way out of the resource curse - greater emphasis on institution-building and government accountability...[continue reading]

Hat Tip Pragnya!

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TED's Open Translation Project

From the TED Blog:

"TED’s mission is to spread good thinking globally, and so it’s high time we began reaching out to the 4.5 billion people on the planet who don't speak English," says TED Curator Chris Anderson. “We’re excited to be using a bottom-up, open-source approach that will in time allow all our talks to be translated into all the world’s languages. A web-empowered revolution in global education is under way. We’re not far from the day when anyone on Earth can directly access the world’s great teachers speaking to them in their own language. How cool is that?"...[continue reading]

The Trust Deficit

Via Boing Boing

Leonard Wantchekon talks about the lack of interpersonal trust within a community as a major challenge to economic development.Communities in Benin where he has seen this phenomenon manifest most, he says, are the same communities where the highest amount of slave exportation took place from the 1600s to the 1900s -- villages and towns in the southern part of the country, where the huge slave ports once stood, and where massive numbers of (basically) war captives were sold into bondage. Wantchekon documents all of this in a research paper he co-authored with Nathan Nunn...[continue reading]

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In Praise of Atheism

Leo Igwe writes:

As an atheist, sometimes, I wonder why it has taken human beings so long to realize that there is no god and that the so-called creator, almighty, all merciful, all knowing, and all-what-again god that humans have worshiped for ages is a fantasy, a figment of human mind and imagination, without any real instance, essence, existence or significance...[continue reading]

Batonga

Batonga is giving girls a secondary school and higher education so they can take the lead in changing Africa. We are doing this by granting scholarships, building secondary schools, increasing enrollment, improving teaching standards, providing school supplies, supporting mentor programs, exploring alternative education models and advocating for community awareness of the value of education for girls-website
via Self-Help Bazaar

Banat wa Bas-Girls Only Radio

ITNsource reports on a community radio initiative:

Amani al-Tunisy, who founded Binat Ou Bas in July 2008, says she was initially inspired by a conversation she overheard in a coffee shop in which three young Egyptian women were discussing the issue of marriage. Al-Tunisy says she was shocked at how much society's expectations seemed to govern their lives, and saw radio as one way to get people talking about issues like marriage, harassment of women, inequality and the need for change.

via Mnet

Rethinking the Innovation infrastructure

From Arnoldo Ventura in SciDev:

Helping higher education confront development goals means fully appreciating the process of innovation, which in turn hinges on interlocking visions, collaboration, exchange, reciprocity, and cooperation. Progress will need a greater willingness to assess and take risks. And that requires a change in attitudes, particularly more tolerance of failure...[continue reading]

Paul Sika-Photographer

Looking at Paul Sikas's photography. "...The simplicity and complexity,the proximity and remote-city shaping the messages emanate through the strangeness of the scenes such as that of the Asana and Asita Diallo, the ladies with very long bodies ,or that of young people putting out fire flames with drops of water from small plastic pockets...",Paul Fieux Nkoumo,

YKProjects

Founded by Qudus Onikeku (see related interview here)The YK Projects seeks to "...create an alternative landscape for the local audience to be aware of the art by projecting contemporary arts (Dance, New Circus and Street arts) through media and publications, thereby creating a conducive environment for their existence at home..."

Quick Hits

See Africa Differently via MootBox
2009 ION Film Festival Lagos, Nigeria.
Chike Nwoffiah Co-founder of Oriki Theatre
Building up media capacity-The Africa Elections Project
Gambian regime continues its reign of terror.
Marginalization may actually be good for Africa-G Pascal Zachary
Discussing the obvious about Africa's minimal influence.
A call for investment in road infrastructure,but the Africans must do it themselves!
Pursuit of Kleptocrats "Three Africa leaders to account for wealth" in France. I hope this becomes a trend.

Wars, Guns, and Votes

Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution discusses Paul Collier's book,Wars, Guns, and Votes: Democracy in Dangerous Places:

The key point of the book is how and why democracy doesn't work so well for the bottom billion. The early discussion of the incentives facing quasi-democratic governments is dysfunctional societies is brilliant. It's the best discussion I've seen of why "produce better government" is not the prevailing incentive in such societies. You can learn why ethnic diversity lowers the value of public sector activity but raises private sector productivity, why skills for construction are often a binding constraint in very poor societies, why the social returns to peacekeeping are so high, why Kalashnikovs are cheaper in Africa, why there are fewer civil wars in larger countries, and how the Ivory Coast went from development model to disaster...[continue reading]

The latest joke-"Rebranding Nigeria"

In the Economist:

A NEW joke is doing the rounds in Nigeria. Got a problem with your car, or your generator’s stopped working? Don’t fix it! Rebrand it!...Many Nigerians say their government should tackle the country’s fundamental problems—power shortages, crime and corruption—before worrying about its image. “They [the government] have been sending texts to my phone, telling us about how to reorganise Nigeria, how to reorganise our minds, our heads,” says Olufemi Oyegun, an oil-and-gas man in Lagos, the commercial capital. “But it’s our leaders that are our main problem, not the people.”

Unsustainable FESPACO Movies vs Nollywood

In a Reuters report Katrina Manson contrasts the viability of rough and ready Nollywood fare with the art house but utterly dependent-on-subsidies 'FESPACO movies':

In the time it takes for a lovingly crafted art house movie to emerge as winner of the top prize at Burkina Faso's pan-African FESPACO cinema festival, Nigeria's prolific producers will already have churned out another 50 films.
They might be tales of cannibalism, sorcery and jealous girlfriends who shrink their errant boyfriends into bottles, but Nigeria's $450 million home video industry is the third biggest in the world, after America's Hollywood and India's Bollywood.
By contrast, FESPACO's filmmakers -- considered the best on the continent -- rely on dwindling donations, and scrabble for private financing and poor distribution deals amid a spate of cinema closures...[continue reading]

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Africa's Mega City

Will Connor in a 5 part Slate series reports on Africa's most vibrant chaotic,entrepreneurial urban megalopolis:

Lagos...Endlessly frenzied but somehow functional. Massively rich but poor beyond belief. Bursting with 15 million people but resolutely familial.
Lagos is the commercial hub of Africa's most populous nation and its second-biggest economy, trailing only South Africa. Depending on how you see the world or what kind of mood you're in on a particular day, you can look out of your window and see the unstructured chaos of a Third World city on speed or the vibrancy and sense of hope that continues to attract thousands of newcomers every day.

photo courtesy of Slate Magazine

Educate a Child

Norman Madawo at Project Diaspora writes about his library building challenges:

If you educate a child in an African village you have educated the whole village. This was very true for me and I am sure many others as we were growing up and had to write or read mail for our parents or the neighbors. I would sit by the paraffin lamp at night and, like a trained secretary, pen a letter to my father as my mother dictated...[continue reading]