Leadership Amidst Crisis

S. D. Shibulal co-founder of Infosys:

"...shares his experience and wisdom on this issue with hopes of inspiring the next generation of leaders to not fear crises, but to embrace them and use them to learn and grow. He details three main themes for survival: accept reality, practice learned optimism, and lead by example..."

Mars Group-Kenyan AntiCorruption Organization

The aim of the Mars Group is:

...to create awareness and to generate an effective demand, by Kenyans, for accountability from Kenya's leadership and to encourage Kenyans to hold to account those who have committed improprieties.

via Bankelele

Naira Denominated Bonds

Reuters reports:

The head of Nigeria’s debt management office said he was hopeful of gaining parliamentary approval for its $500 million debut global bond now that conditions in the world economy had improved.Parliamentary approval for the planned naira-denominated bond is one of the last major hurdles for launching the offer, which the government hopes will establish a sovereign benchmark in the international capital market.

via Loomnie

Stiffening the fight against Financial Crime

Abhay Abhay (Advisor to the EFCC of Nigeria) on building local financial crime fighting resources:

“To investigate a case of inexplicable wealth, an investigator needs to know laws, rules and practices, not only when it comes to corruption and crime, but also in a number of other areas – the purchase and sale of property and vehicles, establishing and dissolving companies, dealing on the stock exchange, the code of conduct for public officials, income tax and so on.”...investigators must also learn cultural and social practices that affect consumption, spending, investment and the presentation of gifts.

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Evoting in Africa?

Ghana's Danquah institute calls for examination of e-voting Mac-Jordan writes in Global Voices:

...the Danquah Institute (DI), a policy think tank, research and analysis centre, is urging a national platform for stakeholders to lead the discussion on the possibility of facilitating the adoption of biometric voter registration, and subsequently the e-voting system in Ghana.

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• Ushahidi Ghana Meet up (ushahidi.com)

Liberal orthodoxy and the "helpless" African

Ikhide R. Ikheloa writes in 234Next

Liberal orthodoxy is avuncular and patronising and it bestows upon the "helpless" African a benevolent but malignant label - subhuman. It is malignant because most days these days we spend our waking hours trying to convince the other that well, we are human, just like them. Why do they see us differently from how we see ourselves? Is racism alone the answer to that question?...[continue reading]

via Loomie

Korle-Bu Neuroscience Foundation

The Korle-Bu Neuroscience Foundation intends to establish a:

Neuroscience Centre of Excellence for Ghana and the people of West Africa. This would be the West African education and teaching centre for clinical neuroscience, training nationals on the continent and providing high quality neuroscience care for the region.

Mobile Libraries of the World

Global Voice's Juliana Rincón Parra Mobile Libraries:

The mobile library has become a staple in many library systems, bringing books to those who cannot access the libraries themselves. However, in many places due to bad road conditions or lack of funding, the traditional system of rigging a bus or truck as a library is not possible. Thus, library carts, donkey libraries and motorcycle libraries have appeared as viable options to bring books to the communities. 

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Igbo Informal Enterprise and National Cohesion

In a paper by Kate Meagher:

While the Nigerian Civil War devastated Igbo business activities across Nigeria, and precipitated a mass return of Igbo migrants to their home area, it also laid the foundation for a consolidation and rapid development of Igbo informal enterprise, which has had integrative rather than divisive social and economic consequences for Nigeria as a whole. Operating below the radar of political competition, the demands of informal enterprise development have nurtured strong inter-ethnic and inter-regional links between the Igbo, Hausa, Yoruba and other Nigerian as well as non-Nigerian groups.

via Loomie

Nigeria's Accidental Leader

Adam Nossiter in the NYTimes:

The circumstances of Acting President Goodluck Jonathan’s accession to power are so odd that even he looks bewildered as he takes a self-effacing bow in this boiling, fractious nation.He has not been elected. He has not exactly been appointed. He did not seize power in a coup, unlike many of his predecessors. And as a mild-mannered academic in a black fedora, he seems an unlikely fit in Nigeria’s tough-guy environment.

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African Scholar

African Scholar:

...provides information on scholarships available to African Students, colleges and universities, test preparation, entry level job and internship opportunities, as well as opportunities to interact with admissions specialists, scholarships administrators and other African students around the world. The goal is to help parents and students navigate through the sometimes complicated admissions process and give Africans an opportunity to capitalize on opportunities available to them around the world.

After two leaderless months, a new acting President

Eremipagamo Amabebe of Global Voices reports:

Yar'Adua's absence created a leadership vacuum which  frustrated many Nigerians,  particularly in the wake of crises such as  Umar Abdulmutallab's attempted terror attract and the religious conflict in the central Nigerian city of Jos. Many Nigerians called for Vice-President Goodluck Jonathan to step into Yar'Adua's shoes, but the situation was complex: As a southerner, Jonathan's assumption of the Presidency would threaten to destabilize the delicate power-sharing arrangement between Northern and Southern Nigeria. Further, without written instructions from the President himself, the legal extent of Jonathan's position were unclear.

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Painting African football

From Africa is a Country

The German shoe and sportswear company, Puma, sponsors at least 12 African national football teams–five of which qualified for the 2010 World Cup. To commemorate the World Cup year (and because it is good PR and to sell shirts), Puma commissioned artist Kehinde Wiley to create four new works of art inspired by the football stars Samuel Eto’o of Cameroon, John Mensah of Ghana and Emmanuel Eboué of Ivory Coast

via Bombastic Elements

South Africa's Bling Culture

Conspicous consumption and its corrosive effects arrive in South Africa, William Gumede contends:

It is one of getting rich quickly, using shortcuts. Once one has made it, one feels entitled to live lavishly – the ‘bling’ lifestyle. This ‘bling’ lifestyle has now become the new standard for achievement: A sign that one has made it.
These shortcuts could be attaching oneself to a sugar daddy, or in politics to a political party boss, or attaching oneself to a crime boss....Black economic empowerment has also helped along this ‘bling’ culture. The downside of black economic empowerment as it is practiced now is that one does not need to build a business from scratch – which demands entrepreneurial acumen. One can secure a tender through political connections. This is possible even if one does not have a clue about how to deliver the services promised.

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How to reinvent Ethiopian politics

Alemayehu G. Mariam writes in Pambazuka:

The current state of affairs in Ethiopia calls for the reinvention of politics in the democratic opposition, by disconnecting from the self-destructive politics of the past and overwrought politics of the present, and connecting to a new politics of the future which transcends partisanship, ethnicity, ideology, language, region and so on. This reinvention requires several things: A paradigm shift in political thought and behaviour, a radical change in perspective, a new approach and lexicon for political communication and a redefinition of the issues within a broader national agenda. It calls for politics that is ‘compassion-centred’ and pragmatically oriented to creatively solving the entrenched problems of governance.

More here

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• Alemayehu G. Mariam: Ethiopia: The Future of the Future Country, Part II (huffingtonpost.com)
• The Failings of the Nation-State (africaunchained.blogspot.com)

How to expose the corrupt

Peter Eigen in TEDx Berlin on corruption:

Africa’s Eastern Promise

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Deborah Brautigam writing in Foreign Affairs:

Over the past few decades, China has managed to move hundreds of millions of its people out of poverty by combining state intervention with economic incentives to attract private investment -- the kind of experimentation that the Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping once described as "crossing the river by feeling the stones." Today, China is feeling the stones again but this time in its economic engagement across Africa. Its current experiment in Africa mixes a hard-nosed but clear-eyed self-interest with the lessons of China's own successful development and of decades of its failed aid projects in Africa.

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How "Capone's block anti-graft fight in Africa"

In Reuters:

"If you have an Al Capone as Head of State, an Al Capone as governor of the central bank and Al Capones in every other institution, how can one succeed?" Ribadu said, referring to the American gangster who ran crime syndicates for several decades.
"Unfortunately that is the situation in most African countries today," Ribadu said in a telephone interview from Washington, where he is living in exile and working as a fellow at the Center for Global Development think-tank.

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Environmental Determism

Jason Hickel writes in Pambazuka:

The correlation between environment and development is indeterminate; there are many regions in the world with hostile geological and climactic characteristics that have nonetheless managed to keep from descending into inveterate poverty. Second, the theory focuses on what Africa lacks rather than what Africa has, being – among other things – vast natural resource wealth in the form of unprecedented petroleum reserves and mineral deposits. The question should not be what to do in the absence of resources, but how existing resources get used, how they are distributed, and who pockets the profits.

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• Africa Rising (loomnie.com)
• Dictatorship more dangerous than climate change (africaunchained.blogspot.com)

Reframing our Approach to Development

Esther Duflo speaking at Poptech:
 

Leaderless Nigeria could spin out of control

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In the FT:

Nigerians have not seen their president for more than two months and tensions are mounting, with huge security implications for the oil-producing giant and the wider region. If Abuja does not resolve the impasse over its leadership and return governance to a clear constitutional track very soon, it will spell disaster.

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• Over 300 Died in Nigerian Clashes (online.wsj.com)

France retreats from Africa?

In LRB Stephen Smith writes about France's slow withdrawal from its erstwhile colonies:

It’s hard to date the death of Françafrique precisely: the exquisite corpse still haunts many minds, and ghost stories are a lucrative business. Even so, three events in 1994 adumbrated the end: the (unprecedented) devaluation of the CFA franc and with it the crumbling of the monetary wall around the Franco-African enclave economy; the genocide in Rwanda, which left blood on the hands of Africa’s gendarme (having failed to understand a country outside its historical zone of influence, France had thrown its weight behind ‘Hutu power’); and finally, the state funeral of the Ivorian president, Félix Houphouët-Boigny, the sub-Saharan godfather of Françafrique and an enthusiast of the ‘Franco-African state’ – indeed, it was Houphouët who coined the term at a party congress in 1973.

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The Failings of the Nation-State

In Pambazuka Amira Kheir writes:

Perhaps it is time we re-examine the dilemma of African statehood through a different prism – as a crisis of inheritance rather than a crisis of capability. And by inheritance I am not predictably alluding to colonial legacy, rather to a very specific transition that occurred in the decolonisation era. While one is not independent of the other, pursuing a deterministic approach to the current status quo – one governed by cause and consequence, and not by simplistic notions of ‘nature’ – is perhaps where our answer lies.
More precisely, what I am attempting to present is an alternative paradigm – that the reason the state of affairs is as it is could be a direct result of the subtle inheritance of a system that did not match African needs and potential. This is an inheritance that is often overlooked as a norm and that is taken for granted as the natural and certain structure of governance: The nation-state.

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Confronting the Legacy of Torture

At Poptech Paul Van Zyl, contends that America must "openly and publicly” confront human rights abuses:

JK Rowling: The fringe benefits of failure

JK Rowling's 2008 Harvard commencement address:

J.K. Rowling Speaks at Harvard Commencement from Harvard Magazine on Vimeo.

Benin Moat Foundation

The Benin Moats (Iya) have been described as "a complex system of moats and ramparts spread over some 6,500 square kilometers". The aims of the Benin Moat Foundation are to:

Restore the integrity of the moats integrate them into park systems for tourism. Find the sites of the Nine Gateways into old Benin and in each, acquire land large enough for buildings for the needs of history, relaxation, transportation and tourism.Do the utmost to realize the moats’ tourism potential for Benin City, Edo State, Nigeria and the World.Work to find the moats their respected, permanent and revered places, and eventually as a World Heritage Site .

Image courtesy of Benin Moat Foundation

Religion and the march of Unelightenment

Konye Obaji Ori continues on the theme of religion and unelightenment he writes in Afrik:

Economically, the majority of 130 million Nigerians impoverished by unemployment, unresponsive and repressive governments, lack of basic social infrastructure and amenities, marginalization and rising inflation, have clung to the church as the last refuge, while basically throwing their energies behind the precepts of tithes and offerings for manner to fall from heaven. Religion’s promise of prosperity has greatly influenced the mental psychology of the masses. The quest for a divine intervention in the dire situation of most Nigerians has also led to the increasing influence of an array of spiritual advisers who have become part and parcel of official structures of power across the country, creating a select theocratic class with direct phone lines to the corridors of state power.

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Coalition of Democrats for Electoral Reforms (CODER) -Nigeria

"...CODER’s main objective is to devise appropriate institutional, legitimate, lawful and democratic means including media campaigns, town hall meetings and rallies, etc… to sensitise, mobilise and educate Nigerians on the desirability of an acceptable electoral system that will guarantee the sanctity of the voters’ choice at all elections; and to produce a draft member bill based on the Justice Mohammed Uwais report on electoral reform which will be presented by CODER to the national assembly..."-website

Cognitive Reorientation - The Secret to Development

Matthew A. Loh writes:

Critical thinking plays a significant role in human achievement and problem solving, however, some societies, due to several conscious and subliminal factors may discourage critical thinking. This leads to under-development and under-achievement in the society. The solution to this problem will involve awareness and cognitive reorientation at an individual level and at society level...[continue reading]

via Myweku