Exported Intellectual Resources

In a recent address Thabo Mbeki stated:

As with material goods, Africa is a primary producer of intellectual resources, and also a consumer of finished intellectual products, but makes little contribution to the value that is added in between. Much (perhaps most) African intellectual production occurs under northern (American and European) contracts. Consequently, Africa’s intellectual agenda is set outside the continent, with African scholars are co-opted as consultants and primary researchers, while the ablest of them are provided with careers in western universities, research institutes and policy institutions. The final product is then re-exported, its value having been multiplied many times over, to Africa for consumption by African people, governments and institutions.

More here

Tunde Jegede-African Classical Music Pioneer

"Tunde Jegede is a composer and multi-instrumentalist who is uniquely placed between the worlds of Contemporary Classical, African and Popular music. He is a prolific Producer/Song writer and has worked across several genres both as a performer (Cello, Kora, Piano and Percussion) and producer."-website

For further coverage read related African Loft post

Building and Art Ecosystem contd

In conversations with Art-World acquaintances I had asserted: "Till we develop economically and build thriving economies a vibrant indigenous Art Market is dead on arrival". a post by Bunmi Oloruntoba echoes those thoughts of mine:

The dream of sustainable development, i guess, is for African economies to grow to empower and expand an Africa bourgeoisie, and to see, in terms of art, Africa's institutions and exhibition spaces grow in response to this growing bourgeoisie, their increased buying power and thirst for new affirmations and identities. Until then, Africa's artists will forecast the weather of their societies in response to and as an extension of the exhibition spaces and appreciative centers of West

More here
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The Worlds Worst Dictators

George Ayittey writes:

Although all dictators are bad in their own way, there's one insidious aspect of despotism that is most infuriating and galling to me: the disturbing frequency with which many despots, as in Kyrgyzstan, began their careers as erstwhile "freedom fighters" who were supposed to have liberated their people. Back in 2005, Bakiyev rode the crest of the so-called Tulip Revolution to oust the previous dictator. So familiar are Africans with this phenomenon that we have another saying: "We struggle very hard to remove one cockroach from power, and the next rat comes to do the same thing. Haba!" Darn!

More here
Photo courtesy of FP

Lessons for Africa- How Turkey tamed its Army

FP reports on the evolutionary strengthening of Turkey's democracy:

Contrary to the views of some Turkish and Western analysts, the primary struggle within Turkey is not between Islam and secularism, but rather between a militaristic pseudo-autocracy and liberal democracy...What we see occurring in Turkey today is a process of democratization, spurred by growing civilian control over the military. However, due to problems deriving from the country's illiberal constitution, which is a product of a 1980 military coup, progress has not always been smooth...The solution is a comprehensive constitutional reform that includes the judiciary. Such a step would not only improve the role of law, but strengthen Turkey's case for European Union accession by harmonizing the country's judicial process with European standards.

More here

Vietnam: The new China?

While Africa fiddles and complains about China rather than grasp the opportunity. Vietnam goes about getting it done.

Aid Squeeze is a Good thing

Reuters reports on some very welcome news:

The dire state of rich countries' public finances is likely to squeeze aid to Africa in the next few years, although it may be the bitter pill the fast-growing continent needs to wean itself off handouts..."

On greater skepticism from the tax-paying western public:

After the financial crisis, Western publics are understandably a bit skeptical about forking out for what they see as an open-ended commitment," said Tom Cargill, an Africa analyst at London's Chatham House think-tank..."

Aid is largely welfare:

African governments don't like talking about aid. It's like welfare," said Chatham House's Cargill. "But there should be the beginnings of a conversation about how we help African countries move to a situation where they do not need aid."

Nollywood - Part of a Maker Ethos

Emily Witt writing in The Nation:

Nollywood is an industry whose defining characteristic is the absence of any centralized infrastructure. Just as many Africans have spurned the electricity grid, the land line and the corporation for the solar panel, the cellphone and the individual entrepreneur, Nollywood has eschewed the studio system and formal distribution networks for a DIY ethos....

On its authentic nature;

Fifty years after the first wave of independence, Nollywood might end up killing off a lingering overestimation of independence's potential to effect lasting social change. Without being nihilistic, Nollywood videos address the experience of globalized, urbanized Africa as it actually exists

More here

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Football Imperialism & the World Cup

G. Pascal Zachary writes:

To a greater extent than any of the other regional powers in global “football,” African star players leave their countries and sub-regions to play for higher-paying clubs elsewhere in the world, usually in Europe, which has the best and highest-paying club teams on the planet, and increasingly in Asia and the Middle East. The exodus of football talent from Africa mirrors the general “brain drain” from the world’s poorest continent. The outflow of footballing talent from Africa is singular; it impoverishes African sporting life – and civil life generally — in a more profound way than when Brazilian joins the Italian league, a German plays for Chelsea or a Japanese suits up for a Spanish club.

Continuing he asks:

what’s the damage from “football imperialism.?” I’d argue that even elite Africans in Africa still suffer from an inferiority complex, around race and place, which fuels brain drain and a lack of a “stake” in their own countries, where many talented people – from doctors to goal keepers to university professors – feel under-appreciated because they are under-appreciated. So club football is a kind of proxy for a dysfunctional modernization process in Africa, and in African cities especially.

More here

Interviewing Chimamanda

Ramona Koval interviews Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie at the Sydney Writer’s Festival.

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Restructure Nigeria-Soludo

Via Coder at a lecture titled “Who Will Reform Politics in Nigeria” Charles Soludo:

...called for the pruning of Nigeria to six regions with Lagos, Port Harcourt and Abuja as special centres. He said 774 local governments, were merely conduits for profligacy and waste, as well as the adoption of a unicameral legislature that would reduce the number of law- makers from 459-150.

More here
Well said! We have previously discussed Nigeria's synthetic states and largely pirate governors. Its unlikely that Nigeria's political turkeys will vote for this kind of thanksgiving.

A Continued Dependence on Commodities

In FT:

...the direction of trade may be changing but its character, involving raw material exports and manufactured imports, has not. Yet over the long-term demand for African commodities, land and manpower is unlikely to diminish. This time optimism about the outlook has less to do with visionary autocrats and more with the macro-economic climate.

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Fulfilling our lost promise-Chika Unigwe

Chika Unigwe writing in the Guardian:

Image by dan mogford via Flickr

In a society where the pursuit of money takes precedence over everything, one can expect a decline in culture and in the quality of cultural production.Regrettably, this is going on. People are reading, but it's a different sort of literature: self-help books published mainly by evangelical pastors eager to win souls over to the gospel of prosperity. There is art on the street, but it is splashes of paint on trucks and buses, outsized drawings (usually religious, with a blonde Jesus). There is nothing of the grandeur and quality of Ife art in it...Perhaps this is too pessimistic. I was witness in Nigeria to the collective sense of hope in a people who, like the phoenix, keep rising from the ashes. There is a renaissance in Nigerian literature...

More here

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Are the problems of Islam simply the peril of modernization?

Pankaj Mishra reviews Ayaan Hirsi Ali's latest book:

“Nomad” reveals that her life experiences have yet to ripen into a sense of history.
The sad truth is that the problems she blames on Islam—fear of sexuality, oppression of women, militant millenarianism—are to be found wherever traditionalist peoples confront the transition to an individualistic urban culture of modernity. Many more young women are killed in India for failing to bring sufficient dowry than perish in “honor killings” across the Muslim world.
Such social pathologies no more reveal the barbaric core of Hinduism or Islam than domestic violence in Europe and America defines the moral essence of Christianity or the Enlightenment.

via Chris Blattman

Chez Gangoueus a compendium of Francophone Literature

Global Voices reviews Chez Gangoueus (fr) A blog about French African literature by Réassi Ouabonzi. Answering a question about literary trends he declared :

...in Congo, a new generation of writers is budding, inspired by award-wining writer and intellectual Alain Mabanckou. In Sénégal, I'm struck by the current emergence (empowering) of women writers, in the wake of  best selling author Marie Ndiaye. I notice writers from Cameroon write with the same “in your face” directness and energy that they are are famous for. I must confess that I am in awe of Nigerian writers,  like the great Chinua Achebe. Among francophone writers, I could mention so many: Abdourahman A.Waberi from Djibouti,  Jimi Yuma from Congo, Patrice Nganang and Leonora Miano from Cameroon…

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Congo in Color

Pete Mosse's luminous imagery of the Congo reviewed in Exodus:

Mosse used an obscure film called Aerocrome to cast the country in a dazzling red-hued array of colors. The photo technique puts the militarized region in an unexpected light. The result is a softer, almost fantastical touch to a place that has been characterized by violence for years.

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Is Aid central to development?

Lyinoluwa “E” Aboyeji writes in Project Diaspora:

If aid must remain relevant to development, it must stop being so self-absorbed in all its imagined importance and listen more. More importantly, it should increase the capacity of their African counterparts to identify and solve their own problems. The current system where African higher education receives little or no support while universities in the west launch multi-million dollar “Development Research Centres” they don’t need is not only clearly unsustainable, but highly self serving. It pushes an imperialistic mindset that allows western institutions to serve as command centres for Africa’s economic and political systems without the proper context and it leaches Africa’s best academic minds, leaving young Africans not fortunate enough to afford an expensive international education largely clueless and underesourced with respect to international development issues in their own countries.

More here

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Chatham House Attacks West as 'Out of Touch' on Africa

A Chatam House report stated that:

African countries are playing a more strategic role in inter-national affairs. Global players that understand this and develop greater diplomatic and trade relations with African states will be greatly advantaged.For many countries, particularly those that have framed their relations with Africa largely in humanitarian terms, this will require an uncomfortable shift in public and policy perceptions. Without this shift, many of Africa’s traditional partners, especially in Europe and North America, will lose global influence and trade advantages to the emerging powers.Watch related video

Read and download paper here

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This is What Development Looks Like

In Aid Thoughts:

We take for granted that there is a vision of ‘development’ or ‘developedness’ that poor countries are striving to, but how accurate is this? There are many different paths that can be taken to the same aims of better incomes, life expectancy, health and education. These paths will lead to a different kind of economy and society, with different advantages and drawbacks. Yet, it doesn’t appear that development policy, certainly not from the donor side, takes into account the myriad approaches to development. From the developing country side, the mania for strategies, visions and plans, while well intentioned, seeks to hit specific targets rather than laying out a conception of what kind of society and economy is desired.

If we accept that developed countries have used different methods to get where they are, and that they have created economies, state structures and societies that have different sets of advantages and disadvantages, there is a case to be made that development policy should focus on individual countries. Specifically, perhaps we should be looking at how the population, state, geography etc. might best develop as a functioning economic and social structure, rather than focusing on the outcomes and outputs that these structures are supposed to achieve to merit the tag ‘developed’.

Image of Hongkong courtesy of Aid Thoughts
More here

Pilgrimages: 14 Writers, 14 Cities, During the World Cup

"...For one month in 2010, nearly a billion eyes will follow the wayward movement of one small ball, bouncing about haphazardly on a lawn—controlled by the feet of 22 men speaking a language billions understand very well...At a moment in time when the whole continent is more visible to its inhabitants and to the rest of the world than at any other since independence, PILGRIMAGES will reintroduce Africans to the literary world in the same form that so many outside writers have employed to create a distorted idea of us to the world..."-website

Charity vs Investment

In a WSJ report:

Ms. Clarke (founder of Africa.com) sees investors as an important long-term audience for Africa.com, and the site recently partnered with London investment boutique firm Liquid Africa to provide financial data. “The U.S. sees Africa through a charitable lens, but Europe and now the Chinese see Africa through an investment lens,” she said.

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Emerging 'Africa Lions'

In the FT:

Africa’s top 40 companies are emerging as competitors on the global stage, propelled by economies whose performance now rivals the Bric nations, according to new research by the Boston Consulting Group.
According to the study, to be published on Tuesday, 500 African companies have been growing at more than 8 per cent a year since 1998. The report selects the top 40 among them, ranging in size from $350m (€285m, £240m) to $80bn, and argues that these companies, already regional players in mining, consumer industries and services, are now well positioned to “spread their wings and look beyond the continent”...[continue reading]

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Masquerade Ball

The Tang Museum on Phyllis Galembo's series of masquerade images:

Large-scale color photographs from 2005 to 2006 reflect the ritual adornment and spirituality of masquerade in Nigeria, Benin and Burkina Faso in West Africa. These portraits of masqueraders build on Galembo's work of the past twenty years photographing the rituals and religious culture in Nigeria, Brazil, Cuba, Jamaica and Haiti, as well as the homegrown custom of Halloween in the United States.

via Shadow and Act

Bayimba Cultural Foundation-Building the Creative Arts

Bayimba's vision is to foster a "...vibrant creative arts industry in Uganda that is professional, creative and viable and contributes to social and economic development in Uganda and East Africa..."The intend to "...Stimulate and promote a sustainable creative arts industry in Uganda, thus contributing to making East Africa a significant hub of music and arts on the African continent..."

The Overhang of Import Substitution

In Africa Report, Donald Kaberuka on a failed industrial policy:

The kind of industrialisation that we were embarking upon (post-independence) was called import substitution. And that was a dead end, going nowhere. While the rest of the world was doing export-led industrialising, making shoes, clothes and so on, we were closing off our markets with high tariffs and it was not working. So the idea of stopping this kind of industrialisation, I agree with.

More here

An Argument for Private Mineral Rights

Robert Bryce writes:

When it comes to mineral rights, America is an anomaly. It is the only country on the planet that allows individuals to own mineral rights. And that ownership is one of the key but overlooked reasons the U.S. has become so prosperous, and why the American oil industry has led the world for decades when it comes to developing new technologies for exploiting oil and gas...[continue reading]

Food for thought in Africa. Governments have generally been a disaster.

"Ruined" -The Congo conflict in three dimensions

In 234Next:

Ruined is a play about the women and girls who have been victims of some of the worst atrocities committed by armed groups fighting over Congo’s mineral resources - women who have been raped, mutilated and left with injuries so horrific that they are no longer able to bear children. Many of them are abandoned by their husbands and ostracised by their communities, their lives as well as their bodies ‘ruined.’

More here
Photo courtesy of Tristam Kenton

A new Dawn in Africa

In the Telegraph, Jonathan Dimbleby on the continent's brain gain:

Again and again, at every level, people told me: “Don’t give us aid – trade with us fairly. Stop ripping us off.” Of course, most of them don’t mean that literally; they simply want a relationship with the rest of the world that is grounded in greater respect and understanding. Well-meaning sound bites like Tony Blair’s “Africa is a scar on the conscience of the world” inadvertently label as “victims” hundreds of millions of energetic and hard-working individuals who are resilient, inventive and enterprising – and who live in vibrant and peaceable communities that have much to teach our own dysfunctional societies...[continue reading]

Update: An African Journey



Image courtesy of the Telegraph

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Literary Clusters-Lagos,Nigeria

In 3QuarksDaily Tolu Ogunlesi on a re-energized literary scene in Nigeria:

Image via Wikipedia

Lagos is suddenly a hot new destination for writers from all over the world – courtesy of the exploits and efforts of writers like Adichie. Her four-year-old annual Creative Writing workshop, sponsored by Nigeria’s oldest and biggest beer company (which before now appeared to be more at home with sponsoring music festivals and talent hunts) has brought Jason Cowley, Nathan Englander, Binyavanga Wainaina, Jackie Kay, Doreen Baingana and Dave Eggers to Lagos, to facilitate writing sessions. This year Ama Ata Aidoo, Niq Mhlongo...

More here

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Rogue Force-Nigeria's Police

Image via Wikipedia

In the Guardian:

Many members of the Nigerian police are more likely to commit crimes than prevent them, a report claimed...Police personnel routinely kill suspects, use torture as a principal means of investigation, commit rapes of both sexes and engage in extortion at nearly every opportunity, according to joint findings by watchdogs in Nigeria and the US...[continue reading]

via Naija Blog

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