Lapiro de Mbanga-Activist

Prisoner of Conscience-Lapiro de Mbanga:

Early in 2008, angered by high living costs and a constitutional change that would allow the president to stay in power indefinitely, people in Cameroon took to the streets. Amid nationwide strikes and mass demonstrations, popular singer Lapiro de Mbanga, who had demanded that the president resign, was arrested and charged with inciting youth unrest. In September he was jailed for three years...Lapiro has become a symbol of peaceful resistance to the erosion of democracy in Cameroon, but has paid a big price: imprisonment, deteriorating health and financial bankruptcy. The song, Constitution Constipée, expresses Lapiro's and many fellow Cameroonians' strong objections to the constitutional amendment which will allow President Biya to stay in power after 2011. Previously the mandate was limited to two seven-year terms-Freedom to Create

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Propeling Regional Integration

This is Africa reporting on efforts to bolster regional integration. A bugbear if there ever was one:

Africa accounts for just 3 percent of world trade today, and just 12 percent of that is internal. Underdeveloped transport and power infrastructure, as well as cumbersome regulatory environments and corruption also make it the world’s most expensive business environment. Dominated by fragmented and small economies, the continent lags well behind the likes of Asia, Europe and North America in terms of competitiveness – and as a consequence – struggles to attract large scale private investment outside of the extractive minerals and oil and gas industries.Addressing these challenges will invariably focus attention on Africa’s regional economic communities. While each geographical part of the continent has its own REC, one has quickly emerged as a model for integration; the East African Community. Having broken up in 1977, the EAC was re-established in 1999, and has since then taken significant strides towards building an effective economic and political framework for integration across its five member states – Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi and Rwanda.

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Kakenya's Dream

Kakenya Ntaiya founder of an Academy for Girls on education:

The Kakenya Center for Excellence is a primary boarding school focused on serving the most vulnerable underprivileged Maasai girls. The first primary girls’ school in the region, the academy focuses on academic excellence, female empowerment, leadership, and community development. Located in Keyian division of the Trans Mara district of Kenya, the Center opened in May 2009 with 32 students. The Center enrolled an additional 31 students in January 2010 in fourth grade. Our goal is eventually to enroll 150 students in grades four to eight-website

Doha and its Ilk are not Important

E Aboyeji writing in The Boar:

...instead of wasting time and resources on trade deals that will always find some loop hole within which to screw developing countries, why don’t we focus on developing infrastructure for regional trade — so that Africans for instance, can trade amongst themselves. Why don’t we focus on increasing the capacity of African farmers to meet the huge demand for food on their continents and supplement their efforts with aid money instead of importing American wheat few of us ever have the heart to eat? Most importantly, why don’t we invest in creating industries that can add value to these products so that if we need export at all, we can export peanut butter instead of peanuts, pasta source instead of tomatoes, banana juice instead of bananas. We want African coffee chains to compete with Starbucks and we don’t have to begin to blackmail you with pictures of malnourished kids just so you can buy “fair trade” coffee at the inconvenience of inflated prices. These are real solutions to development problems that are not as “white elephant” as Doha is.

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Ownership of the MDG's

Pai Obanya on development problems:

On the MDG goals, Professor Obanya says that the problem is that they are not owned by developing countries. People simply sign up to programmes that they don’t fully understand because someone promises to fund the programmes if they sign up to them.

via Loomnie

“Onaedo: the Blacksmith’s Daughter,” by Ngozi Achebe

G. Pascal Zachary writes:

There are many famous names in African literature: names that instantly convey recogniton, that force me to catch my breath. Of these names, the most breath-catching is Achebe, after the seminal writer from Nigeria, Chinua Achebe, author of the most-read novel from Africa written in English, “Things Fall Apart.”Achebe’s masterpiece came 50 years ago, and while he still writes delightful essays, Achebe hasn’t published a novel in decades. And yet the literary world has received a new piece of Achebe fiction, only in this case coming from the pen of a relative, Ngozi Achebe. A physician living in Washington state, Ngozi Achebe is steeped in Nigeria’s past and the traditions of her Igbo ethnic group. Her novel, “Onaedo: the Blacksmith’s Daughter,” tells the story of two women connected through race and ethnicity across 400 years of history. The origins of Achebe’s tale are intriguing, especially for anyone who appreciates (as I do) traditional African art.

A Need to Embrace Design

Adams Namayi Wamukhuma writing in African Executive:

Image via Wikipedia
The initial processes of design involve generating concepts or ideas from imagination, observation or research. The middle stage calls for design solutions that meet user needs, concept development, form exploration, ergonomics, prototyping, materials, and technology. At this stage, production involves craft, creation, fabrication and manufacturing. The final stage involves selling the product. It is either client based (a client buys the design and manufactures it through mass production processes and then sells it to customers) or user based where the product is sold directly to the user by the designer.To achieve designs which meet industrial productions, certain policies need to be established to govern design industry.

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South-South FDI has emerged

In BeyondBrics:

Last year emerging economies made up 21 per cent of fresh foreign direct investment (FDI) and that was up from 17 per cent in 2000.The idea that the BRICS are redrawing the economic landscape of the world’s poorest continent, as well as the rest of the planet, comes through in a report from economists at Standard Bank.“South-South FDI has emerged,” is how they put it, and that’s helped advance Africa’s integration into the global economy.

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Building Africa’s Moral Capital

Mutumwa Mawere writing in the African Heritage Society:

Africa’s future belongs to builders. Our civilization has evolved and contemporary African civilization is dualistic with one part based on laws and other institutions underpinned by a market system and another that is based on what can be described as African norms, traditions and custom...I have come to the inescapable conclusion that business development is unsustainable without moral capital investment.This view is not only supported by my personal experiences but by the notion that markets and morals evolve together and are, therefore, aspects of the spontaneous order of any society.

More here

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From “Cool” Aid to “Hot” Investment?

In AfricaCommons:

To pick up on an earlier theme about the shift in "climate" for Western involvement in Africa, it is clear that there is a huge upswing in Western investor interest. I’ve been collecting some of the interesting stories and anecdotes and will share as time permits. Bloomberg is providing lots of coverage out of Nairobi now, and the Wall Street Journal has an Africa page that is well worthwhile. Clearly Western investors are playing "catch up" to the Chinese in some markets, but there remains a difference in the nature of Western private investment and Chinese operations. Likewise the Libyans, the Gulf States and and Iranians have moved more quickly than Western funds, but have some different objectives and approaches. See Nick Wadhams blog for some interesting observations on Chinese projects...[continue reading]

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No One Wants to Invest in Basketcases

Simon Anholt writes:

Rich countries, in this way, have exacted a very high price for their support of the needy over the decades: in effect, they take over control of the recipient country's international image as hostage or deposit, and set about degrading it as much as they can. Using their vast credibility, resources and media influence, donors project onto the public imagination an unbroken stream of corrosively negative information, images and emotions about the recipient country and its population, in order to prove that no cause is more heart-rending, more urgent, and more (nearly) hopeless. By the time their programme has moved on to the next deserving cause, the country's image may have been blighted for generations, leaving a powerful psychological and emotional disincentive to trade, investment, tourism and growth.

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Teaching Business Skills-Afghanistan's Tashabos

CIPE reports:

Teaching young people vital business skills is one of the key elements of Afghanistan’s reconstruction. Since 2005, CIPE has been conducting a popular entrepreneurship course called Tashabos in select high schools around the country. The program, featured on Sky News, today reaches more than 33,000 students in 10th, 11th, and 12th grade at 44 schools in Kabul, Bamiyan, Nangahar, and Parwan. CIPE Afghanistan staff interviewed several students who have started their own business after completing the Tashabos course to learn how they have benefited from the program. Here is what they told us...[continue reading] watch related video:

"Where Ghana Went Right"

John Schram in The Walrus:

Image via Wikipedia
Today the maturing democracy in Ghana is the envy of much of the continent. Freedom House, an American think tank, rates it as one of only nine African countries that are truly “free”: twenty-three others, including some with post-colonial histories rather like Ghana’s, such as Nigeria, Tanzania, and Kenya, are only “partly free.” The remaining sixteen are not free at all. Atta Mills, Akufo-Addo, and Afari-Gyan could show them a thing or two about how to run a democracy.

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Africa's Wikileaks-Sahara Reporters

Philip Shenon reports on Omoyele Sowore's investigative media house Sahara Reporters in the Daily Beast:

From a cubicle in midtown Manhattan, a Nigerian publishes staggering examples of his country’s government corruption online—information that would get him killed back home...“This is evidence-based reporting,” said Sowore. “We are here as a check against corruption and bad government. If we have photographs of the corruption, we post them.” He said “a lot of our leaks come from Nigerians who are angry—who want to see a different country.” The site has given Nigerians a journalistic watchdog that local reporters back home in West Africa could not hope to duplicate. In Nigeria, reporters are routinely threatened with violence or bribed into silence.

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Nigeria's art collectors

The latest on the emerging Art Ecosystem in the Economist:

With 250 ethnic groups and around 150m people, Africa’s most populous country has many sources of artistic inspiration. A number of artists from western Nigeria use the bright colours and beadwork of the Yoruba, whereas those from the oil-rich south-east sometimes look to their region’s uli style, with simpler drawings on walls or pots.The collectors say their government cares little about preserving this artistic heritage. They share the cynicism of many Nigerians, who think the politicians are more eager to grab a share of the revenues of sub-Saharan Africa’s biggest oil producer. Instead, the collectors prefer to put their own money into gathering and cataloguing thousands of works of art. “For me, this is a philanthropic act,” says Mr Olagbaju, who notes that Nigeria’s top public galleries struggle with power cuts that leave masterpieces gathering dust in the dark.More recently, these collectors have realised that they have also been canny investors. Their hobby has started to attract foreign attention—and cash.

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Indonesia Emerges

Great example of a country turnaround from dictatorship and corruption, Aubrey Belford reports in the NYTimes:

After years of being known for inefficiency, corruption and instability, Indonesia is emerging from the global financial crisis with a surprising new reputation — economic golden child.The country’s economy, the largest in Southeast Asia, grew at an annual rate of 6.2 percent in the second quarter of this year, data released Thursday showed. That is an acceleration from 2009, when gross domestic product expanded 4.5 percent.The stock market hit a record high last week and has been among the best-performing equities markets in Asia this year, rising more than 20 percent since Jan. 1...[continue reading]

Informal Bootstrappers-Nairobi's motorbike boys

One more example of resourcefulness amongst the informal, the BBC reports:

Courtesy of the BBC

Mucina, Boniface and Kama are among the motorbike boys of Dirt Island in Nairobi, Kenya - young men who have discovered a new way to improve slum life - a two-wheeled taxi service..."I bought a bike, an old motorbike," he says, "and set up at the (taxi) stage. At first people weren't comfortable with riding the motorcycles but after we became many, people got used to it."

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Entrepreneurialism is a Mindset, a way of Thinking

Jonathan H. Apikian writing in CIPE:

Carl Schramm, president and CEO of the Kauffman Foundation and co-author, with William J. Baumol and Robert E. Litan, of the book Good Capitalism, Bad Capitalism, explained in a recent article for Foreign Affairs that just supporting democracy around the world is no longer sufficient—the economic policies necessary to sustain it must also be taught. Schramm notes that economic growth achieved through an entrepreneurial-driven policy is “critical to establishing social stability, which is the ultimate objective of the counterinsurgency campaigns and disaster-relief” that are a part of most reconstruction efforts. Research shows that a healthy middle class based on a thriving entrepreneurial society is essential to maintaining democratic stability.

Kelechi Amadi Obi shoots Keziah Jones

A creative dance between two Artists Kelechi Amadi Obi and Keziah Jones:

Kelechi Amadi Obi vs Keziah Jones from Joel Benson on Vimeo.
via Black Nerds Network

Africa-The Final Frontier

In Barron's:

To many Western investors who don't look past the stereotypes, Africa is terra incognita. Their ignorance could cost them plenty in lost opportunity.Take the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which in a survey last summer revealed that "over all, U.S. businesses do not view Africa as an attractive place to invest. The image of lawlessness, corruption, unstable governments, an inadequate infrastructure, uneducated or untrained people and an unwelcoming government attitude toward business serve as major deterrents."That depiction is increasingly mistaken...after a big drop from boom highs in early 2008, African stock markets—despite their problems—now offer the long-term investor a number of fast-growing companies with stocks that sell for about 11 to 12 times trailing 12-month earnings per share as of June 30, according to S&P Indices. They look inexpensive compared with price/earnings ratios in most developed markets or even in the broad world of emerging markets, where the average stock fetches 15 times trailing profits.

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Quick Hits

Kaberuka’s revolution at the AFDB
The Folly of African Entrepreneurship-Rejoice Ngwenya
Congo’s New Mobutu-FP
A renaissance in African development?-Africa Report

Ethiopia's Promise and the Succession Problem

Chris Blattman highlights a report which stated that:

Without much notice,agriculture recently ceased to be the largest sector in the economy for the first time in Ethiopia’s history. This heralds a major structural transformation of the economy and we forecast that the services sector—which covers real estate, hotels, transportation, communication, banking, health and education—will make up more than half of Ethiopia’s GDP in just two years time, a development with many implications and opportunities for Ethiopian business.

countering that rosy picture he asserts:

...the big risk, for me, is succession. The Prime Minister claims he’s going to step down in five years, but we’ve heard that from him before. Like Kagame and Museveni, I doubt he is leaving anytime soon. While the drug trade worries me most in West Africa, in East Africa I worry about the leaders with endless terms and no plan for succession...To hang onto power, the leader must undermine institutions, even his own party, and personalize power. His fear that he is the only man to run the country becomes self-fulfilling, for the cabal and not the greater institution is what holds the state together.

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South-South contd., Partnering with Brazil

This is Africa reports on the drivers behind Brazilian-African agriculture cooperation:

“We have domesticated tropical agriculture. So we can now really partner with African countries… research and development is no panacea, but is very important for development, and Embrapa has a lot of knowledge on tropical agriculture. There are many similarities between Brazil and Africa in terms of ecosystems and challenges,” he adds(Pedro Arraes, the president of Embrapa).Embrapa is today considered to be a global leader in tropical agricultural research, and Brazil has developed technologies and machinery specifically suited to a tropical climate. All of this, Mr Arraes and Mr Tarragô argue, makes Brazil an ideal partner for Africa.

More here

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Mobile Technology and the promise of the Urban Low-Income Informal Music Industry

MobileActive highlights a new paper which points out that:

Music making and distribution is a large scale phenomenon in urban informal settlements in Africa. The talent, vision and passion of the musicians living in the African slums would be appreciated by the music lovers around the world if only the artists had a chance to practice as well as possibilities for recording and sharing. Furthermore this would contribute significantly to livelihoods of the people living in the slums and to economic development of Africa as a whole given the estimates of the contribution that the informal music industry is already making.

Watch related video after the jump:

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Higher Prices for Cocoa and contd. Commodity Dependence

G. Paschal Zachary on the advent of higher prices for cocoa and the consequent higher income for farmers:

Image via Wikipedia

The benefits to African farmers should be significant over time. Unlike some other crops, new gardens can require years of planning and labor. Existing trees are subject to blight and aging and must be worked intensively to maintain yields. When I visited Ghana’s cocoa-growing region a year ago, I was struck by the prosperity of farmers I met but also the relative inflexibility of growing cocoa. Expansion of output is hard to achieve. Inputs, such as fertilizers, are expensive and are used less than they should be by non-organic growers. New trees take years to reap fruit. Field labor is surprisingly costly. Producers also fear a glut; they can benefit from stagnant production too...[continue reading]

Shouldn't the farmers be exploring ways collectively or otherwise to add value to their primary product? The irony of having to purchase chocolate derivatives in the West for usage back on a continent is simply inexcusable 50 years after independence.

Reinforcing Photography and Unifying Africa

Continuing our focus on clusters and ecosystems we take a look at their importance in photography.Tam Fiofori writes in 234Next:

Photo courtesy of Uche James Iroha

One of the most gratifying manifestations in the growth and professionalism of photography in Nigeria is how the present ‘young' generation of photographers have embraced the ideals of working together in collectives, networking and their staunch refusal to be drawn into the simplistic frame of mind that they are in competition with one another as photographers.
They have, by adopting these positive ideals, been able to achieve as a group, a remarkable level of social responsibility in generating a huge body of authentic documentary images of ourselves as a people in all spheres of life. Our eminent historians and literary people have always advocated that we are, and remain, the best positioned people to write our history and tell our stories. Our photographers have now followed suit.

Commending James Iroha for his role in fostering this emergent community

A lot of praise must go to Uche James Iroha, an accomplished international-award winner, for his brave and unselfish decision to invite other equally talented, aspiring and inspired photographers to collectively contribute towards the production of Unifying Africa; a book of huge relevance, captivating images and in-depth documentary strength.

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"Women Are Not Baby Making Machines"-Muza Gondwe

From Mywage Madalitso Kateta in conversation with Muza Gondwe:

Last born in a family of three children and leading a successful single life, Gondwe believes that the social pressure on girls to be raised for marriage and child bearing has been a major cause of many young girls’ academic failure.“The general feeling in many African societies is that girls have to be raised to be married and have children. However, the world is changing and we need to move away from this perception that sees women as baby-making machines,” she said.

Continuing she indicated that:

“We are living in a changed society and we have to accept the reality that marriage is not for everybody. We have to move away from cultural and traditional principles that girls have to marry and have children, to a society where girls are able to make their own decisions based on what they aspire to be in life,” she said.

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Nnedi Okorafor's fantastic journey into Sci-Fi

In the Sun Times Mary Houlihan reviews Nnedi Okoroafor's latest novel Who Fears Death:

...it is mix of fantasy and reality set in a post-apocalyptic Saharan Africa. It deals with dark issues, including genocide, rape, female circumcision, prejudice, child soldiers and the constraints of fate. But there also is true love, deep friendships, hope, valor and great adventure.The narrative unwinds around the life story of Onyesonwu, a young sorceress, born after her mother is raped. She slowly comes to understand she is the key to the survival of her people, the Okeke, who are persecuted by the Nuru, the tribe of her rapist father.

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A Royal African Science Prize

Muza Gondwe on her wish for all encompassing science prizes

We don’t need an African Nobel, but our own way of recognizing and celebrating achievements in all scientific disciplines from mathematics via biochemistry through to astronomy and environmental science. We need awards that will capture the interests of everyone across the continent from school drop outs to graduates, both the young and the old, the urban and rural, the artists and the scientists.

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Institute of Mathematical Sciences

Like AIMS the IMS was established to provide a backbone of homegrown scientific talent:

Africa's Mathematics Community faces a problem of educational and research infrastructure not strengthened enough to produce an adequate number of mathematicians with advanced degrees.This has resulted in African born mathematicians acquiring their masters and doctorate degrees from outside the country. These foreign trained African Mathematicians after acquiring their qualifications usually do not come back to their native countries.It is against this background that IMS was setup to cater for the needs of young and enterprising African scientists to help them develop their full potential.

Innovation Clusters and Systems

Continuing our focus on Industrial Clusters,in the preface of an overview document for the recently concluded Innovation Systems and Innovative Clusters in Africa conference it was noted:

Image courtesy of Mckinsey & Co.

...that firms which operate close to related firms and supporting institutions are often more innovative and therefore more successful in raising productivity than firms that operate in isolation. The innovative cluster approach is thus an appropriate and established tool for analysis of industrial dynamics and for policy initiatives to foster innovations, growth and economic development.Consequently, the debate has now moved from whether or not innovative clusters are important, to how to best organize and manage clusters in order to exploit their maximum potentials. Thus, recently hundreds of cluster initiatives have been
launched, involving nearly all the regions of the world except Africa. Is Africa an exception in these global initiatives? An understanding of the concept and the salient features of innovation systems and innovative clusters, and the critical factors for building and improving them are imof these global initiatives.

More here (PDF)

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